What’s the Best CRM for Hotels? Everything You Should Consider

CRM software for your hotel enables you to keep track of guests’ preferences, market to potential customers, collect feedback from guests, and much more. It’s an essential piece of software for every modern hotel and can help you ensure steady bookings.

However, it’s important to choose the right CRM software. Otherwise, you could be left with messy, unusable data or an expensive software platform filled with features you don’t need.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to choose the best CRM for hotels and highlight four platforms to consider.

Key Takeaways

• Hotel CRM software enables you to build a profile of each of your guests so you can offer more personalized experiences. It also helps you speed up bookings, market to customers, establish a loyalty program, and analyze your hotel’s data.
• When comparing CRM software, look for hotel-specific features like the ability to take online bookings, manage reservations, upsell guests, and collect feedback from guests after their stay. CRM software should also offer automated workflows and be very easy to use.
• Hotel CRM software typically costs $5-$15 per room per month or $25-$50 per month plus 1-2% per booking.
• Top hotel CRM providers include Little Hotelier, Revinate, Experience Hotel, and eZee Absolute.

What Is CRM for Hotels?

Hotel CRM software is a type of customer relationship management (CRM) software that caters specifically to the needs of hoteliers.

It’s designed to automatically track your interactions with every one of your hotel’s customers. You can use it to record guests’ preferences (for example, whether they prefer a room with a queen bed or king bed), collect feedback after their stay, keep track of email and phone communications, and send personalized marketing emails to encourage them to visit again.

All of this information is organized into a digital profile for each of your hotel guests, so you can quickly access information when you need it.

Importantly, CRM software tools for hotels typically have hotel-specific features that differentiate them from other types of CRM software, such as for sales teams and restaurants. For example, hotel CRM software may enable you to take bookings online, assign guests to rooms, or offer a loyalty program for repeat guests.

The Benefits of Hotel CRM Software

Choosing the right CRM software can help you supercharge your hotel’s growth and ensure your rooms are consistently booked. Here are some of the key ways a CRM for hotels can help your business:

• Offer personalized experiences: You can use the data in your CRM to recognize VIPs when they check in, cater to guest preferences, recommend things they might like to do during their stay, and more. This enhances the guest experience and encourages customers to stay at your hotel again.
• Speed up the booking process: Many hotel CRM platforms let you accept bookings online through your website. This is a better experience for customers and saves you from paying commissions to third-party sites like Booking.com.
• Deliver effective marketing campaigns: A CRM can help your sales team create email campaigns with content and promotions personalized to each guest. Personalized campaigns are much more effective at encouraging customers to make a booking.
• Establish a loyalty program: You can use hotel CRM software to create a loyalty program to encourage and reward repeat stays. Rewards could include room upgrades, free breakfast, or even a free night after a certain number of stays.
• Track your hotel’s performance: A hotel CRM platform can help you survey guests after their stay to collect feedback about their satisfaction, including what they liked and what could be improved. You can analyze guests’ responses in aggregate to find opportunities to deliver better guest experiences.

Picking the Best CRM for Hotels

There’s no one-size-fits-all hotel CRM software for every business in the hospitality industry. So it’s important to know how to choose the right platform for your business’s needs.

Here are some of the most important things to consider when choosing a CRM for your hotel.

Features

Hotel CRM software is usually packed with features, some of which you might not even need. Based on our experience, these are the most important things you need in a hotel CRM:

• Guest profiles: Your CRM software should automatically build detailed profiles for each guest and record every interaction you have with them. You should also be able to segment guests into different categories (for example, business vs. leisure or solo travelers vs. couples vs. families).
• Online bookings: A great CRM will let you take bookings online and handle deposit payments. It should also enable customers to manage their bookings through an online portal.
• Reservation management: Your CRM should offer tools for allocating rooms to guests based on their preferences, automatically remind guests about upcoming stays, enable guests to check in online, and more.
• Email marketing: A hotel CRM software must offer marketing tools like an email campaign builder. You should be able to personalize campaigns using data from your guest profiles and use A/B testing to find the most effective messaging.
• Upselling: Your CRM software should also help you upsell guests on larger rooms, meals, or other experiences to increase your revenue per guest. Upselling offers can be delivered through email campaigns or during booking or check-in.
• Loyalty programs: A hotel CRM should enable you to create a loyalty program and keep track of guests’ loyalty status or points to enhance customer engagement.
• Guest feedback: Your CRM should help you collect feedback from guests through post-stay surveys. You should also be able to send automatic emails to guests to remind them to leave a review about their stay.

Automations

Automation is a key part of effective hotel CRM software. It makes the features we highlighted above more usable and helps your team be more productive.

As an example, you can use automated workflows to automatically send emails to loyalty members whose points are about to expire and encourage them to book a stay. You could also use automation to send surveys to guests a few days after their stay.

It should be easy to create automated workflows. Look for platforms that offer no-code solutions, like a drag-and-drop workflow builder.

Reporting and Analysis Tools

Hotel CRM software should also come with tools to help you analyze your guest data, marketing campaigns, customer satisfaction, and more. This ensures you can make data-driven decisions about how to market to guests or improve your guest experience.

For example, analysis tools can help you identify common issues that guests identify in post-stay surveys. They can also help you measure which email campaigns or promotions are most effective at driving bookings.

Look for customizable charts and reports, plus the ability to export your data to Excel for even more in-depth analysis.

User Friendliness

If your CRM isn’t user friendly, your sales team and front desk staff won’t want to use it. That can lead to lost productivity and messy guest records, preventing your hotel from enjoying the benefits of a CRM.

Many hotel CRM providers offer free trials or free demos. Take advantage of these to test-drive different solutions and see how easy it is to create guest profiles or email campaigns. If possible, ask members of your front desk or sales teams to try out the software and provide feedback.

Customer Support

You need to be able to get help with your CRM software when you need it. Look for providers that offer live chat or phone support during extended hours (24/7 support is ideal). Some providers also offer onboarding training when you switch to their platform, which can be very helpful for familiarizing your staff with the new software.

Integrations

Integrating your CRM software with your accounting software, property management system, helpdesk software, or booking engine can make it easier to run your business and keep all your teams on the same page. Look for CRM platforms with ready-made integrations for the software you already use or an API that supports custom integrations.

How Much Does a CRM for Hotels Cost?

Pricing for hotel CRM software can vary widely based on the size of your hotel and what advanced features and integrations you need. Many providers charge based on how many rooms your hotel has, while others charge a fixed monthly fee plus a percentage fee for each booking.

In general, expect to pay around $5-$15 per room per month for providers that charge on a per-room basis. For providers that charge based on bookings, expect to pay a fee of $25-$50 per month and 1-2% per booking.

4 Hotel CRM Platforms to Consider

Let’s take a quick look at four hotel CRM platforms that offer a lot of features and great value for your money.

Little Hotelier

Little Hotelier is a CRM built specifically for small hotels—generally 50 rooms or fewer. It offers a built-in booking engine, integrations for booking sites like Booking.com and Expedia, a website builder, and outstanding reporting tools to help you make informed decisions about your business. Little Hotelier is also very easy to use, although it lacks automated workflows.

Revinate

Revinate is an all-in-one hotel management platform with a CRM module that helps you build incredibly in-depth guest profiles. It’s especially good if you want to segment guests for marketing campaigns or loyalty programs, or develop highly targeted upselling offers. Revinate is best for larger hotels or businesses with multiple locations.

Experience Hotel

Experience Hotel is a CRM and property management system that uses automations to help you deliver highly personalized guest experiences. It also collects guest feedback and tracks your hotel’s online reputation so you can ensure good publicity. Experience Hotel is best if you already have a booking engine and don’t need reservation management tools.

eZee Absolute

eZee Absolute is another all-in-one solution that combines CRM features with property management tools and an online booking engine. It enables guests to manage reservations online and offers excellent analysis tools to help your business track guest satisfaction and revenue. eZee Absolute is best for hotels with an in-house restaurant since it also includes a restaurant point-of-sale system.