In order to create an efficient work environment for staff and a smooth customer experience for guests, it’s crucial for hospitality companies to stay on top of changes in the IT world. Optimized IT systems lead to faster check-in times, better access to company and guest data, increased productivity and decreased expenses.
What is Hospitality IT Support?
IT support services for the hospitality industry can mean a number of different things.
Every online function that your hospitality company has will need some form of updating, maintaining, or repairing at some point. To ensure that your hospitality company functions like a well-oiled machine, it’s essential that you take IT functions into consideration.
Ways that an IT support service can improve your hospitality company’s IT include:
- Making sure that all databases are current.
- Ensuring that your systems are user-friendly (hospitality companies lose a lot of business just by failing to consider the user experience of their clients).
- Maintaining a secure payment processing system that is easy to use.
Why IT is Important in the Hospitality Industries
Whether you are a hotel, a bed and breakfast, or a restaurant, you need to have IT systems that are current.
The hospitality industry is all about satisfaction and creating loyal guests. Most hospitality businesses underestimate the role that IT plays in creating loyal customers, ones who write glowing online reviews and make recommendations to their friends.
Good IT is important because word of mouth recommendation and online reviews play such a huge part in generating new business for hospitality companies.
Common IT Problems That The Hospitality Industry Struggles With
There are dozens of potential IT problems that hospitality companies face. Even if everything seems to be running smoothly, under the surface there are often huge IT issues that managers and staff aren’t even aware of.
This is why it’s necessary to have an IT company periodically do an audit of all of your systems and make updates or bug fixes where required.
Here are some of the most common IT problems that companies in the hospitality industry face:
- Payment processing system issues: this is a real turn-off for potential customers who are booking online. Payment issues will lose you business. Potential customers are hesitant about putting personal and sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) into systems that don’t look secure or aren’t straightforward.
- A lack of analytics: this is likely harming your business more than you know. Without adequate analytics, it’s impossible to be able to tell where exactly you are losing customers.
- Problematic relationships with vendors: companies that supply your hospitality business with food or other supplies are vital in making sure that your company runs smoothly. A lack of IT maintenance can lead to miscommunication with suppliers who are vital for your company’s function.
- Employee dashboard databases: many hospitality companies are using dashboards that are outdated or prone to bugs. If you use an online dashboard to manage employees, it’s in your best interest to update your system to one that is easy to navigate and current.
- Outdated systems: these can affect communication between managers and staff as well as staff and customers.
- Data risks: when it comes to handling sensitive information, it’s essential that all systems are secure in order to mitigate the risk of breach and cyberattacks.
- Slow WiFi: when people are booking their vacations and deciding where to go — or even choosing a restaurant to eat at, WiFi speeds play a huge part in their final decision. Having slow or sporadic WiFi will affect your online reviews and will lose you business.
How to Keep Your Hospitality Company’s IT Current
While IT problems are often unseen, it is paramount for your hospitality business to keep them all current.
Maintaining good IT practices is essential for bringing in more business, protecting your company and employees from having personal information stolen, and promotes an effortless work environment.
While it’s impossible for managers to be aware of all of the IT challenges that their company faces, a team of IT professionals can jump in where your knowledge is lacking.
Having an IT team come in and assess, update, and troubleshoot your company’s IT will save you endless trouble in the long run.
Here at Succurri, we have a skilled IT team who are able to quickly identify areas where improvement is needed.
Unsure where to start with improving your IT? Give Succurri a call today.
Steps to Better IT for Hospitality Companies
Here at Succurri, we take a unique approach to IT issues within the hospitality industry. Our mantra is, “problem first, technology second.”
This simply means that our team will never attempt to blindly throw expensive tech solutions at the problem until it is fixed. We will first investigate the problem until we thoroughly understand what we are up against.
We focus on current problems while diving deep into databases and providing long term solutions. This method ensures that you will never feel pressured by our IT team to invest in technology unless you are certain that it is the solution to the problem you are facing.
Constant IT Support for Your Hospitality Company
Looking to create better business relationships, decrease miscommunication among staff, increase the online safety of your systems, and improve customer satisfaction? All of this and more is accomplished through quality IT understanding and maintenance.
Having a reliable IT service on call for when you need help is essential in a fast-paced industry like hospitality. Succurri wants to be the IT service that you call when you have questions.
Our skilled team has a deep understanding of the issues that hospitality companies face and wants to minimize downtime and IT risk with our services.
To hear more about how Succurri can help you, give our IT team a call today. We’d be happy to perform an IT audit for you and get you started with improving and updating your hospitality company.
