Smart Hotel Software

Customization of the SmartHotel system

I have inherited a system that was customized poorly by my predecessors. I have been working closely with one of the rep to redesign a system that both fits our unique needs and is easy to use and book online. My experience with her has been wonderful and I hugely value both her vast understanding of the system and communication style. Her determination to assist us in making the system serve us better, and effort/ skills in Crystal have made a dramatic difference to our success.

Pros

The customer service department is fantastic and can help us creating the materials, and systems we require when the standard is not workable for our needs.
I like it's adaptability. It has been reliable for reservations and has not had trouble with 'dropping' reservations that other systems I have worked with have.

Cons

Lack of Training manual or guide
It is clunky and does not look very modern. This is particularly evident in the online bookings.

Highly Recommended with 1 suggestion.

Highly Recommended with 1 suggestion.

Pros

1. Uniresman Customer Service is excellent. In a day and age of automation it is a refreshing change to have a real person answer the support line and in a few short minutes solve your problem.
2. After the initial purchase of software we were impressed by the fact UniResman software is consistently updating and improving the performance to meet the ever changing hospitality environment.
3. I think the strongest pro regarding the software is how easy the software is to learn. We have a diverse group of people working our offices with various education, experience and training. The simplicity of the software has made new training staff member an enjoyable relaxing process.

Cons

If there is one element Uniresman must improve on is the Release Notes for service pack. The notes are written for techs in the back office that have the time to review all the pages in detail. There needs to be a FAST note version I can give to my front desk and sales staff that they can read. I dont care if they call it You asked for it you got the Top Ten FAST Notes i.e. Hotel X asked for a fast button for walk-ins-here it is. A screen shot, basic instructions and a sample all on 1-2 pages per example. If I can give each staff member 10-15 new things to learn each update they can see growth in the software as well as themselves.

This is why I gave the "Feature Richness' 3 stars. The software may have new features but if you don't convey the message in a simpler format my staff and I will not be able to discover them.

Smart Hotel for heli skiing

Pros

It can be customized to meet our needs. Support staff are very good, have an excellent understanding of the system, and can help to determine the best way to fit our needs. We don't fit "inside the box" of a regular hotel, so we have required quite a few custom programs / reports. The system now works very well, is reliable, and fairly easy to use.

Cons

It is complicated and some aspects are not very intuitive.
There is quite a steep learning curve to be able to use this software.

Its not just in the name

Managers didn't realize how much money was being lost buy using another software that had no connection with out finance software.

Pros

Smart Hotel is very user friendly software and easy to learn. Integrated with our finance software which is a god send.

Cons

No dislikes of this software - should have got it 5 years ago

As big (or small) as you need

Highly recommended. The system can be scaled to meet size needs and is flexible enough to meet customized requirements.

Pros

After reviewing a couple dozen different systems, we implemented UniResMan for the hotel front desk processes. It matched our prior processes very closely, is intuitive, and provides the front desk staff with any reservation info they needed at any time (something we could not do prior). It has a full set of standard reports that provide essential information for operations, saving weeks of compilation time. Simply put: this software enables management to focus on growing business more, opposed to solely supporting daily operations.

Cons

The standardized reports are structured to fit what an accountant likes to see, which can obscure information from accurately or quickly being read by front-line staff (front desk or housekeeping).
While all of the information is in the system, it can be difficult to find. The user needs to understand where to find all of the information (user-specific training).

Bloated and very Unstable

This program has a long way to go. When someone says "it should have..." it should not be thrown in front of everyones eyes. For such an unstable program, time should be spent on cleaning out what already exists.

Pros

Many Features

Great Control Screen

I like how everything opens in there own process, but should be tabbed

Cons

Reservations take too many steps and too many ways to do it, therefor very slow.

Program stalls many times a day.

Some reservations don't save properly when adding rooms making for a huge headache later.

The user interface is cluttered with no option of eliminating features.

Training is very extensive rendering the program useless for seasonal operations.

Web interface creates unallocated reservations that if not checked for regularly will result in overbooking.

Objects don't move with reservations, pain when adjusting dates.

Payments don't always default to paying guest in the open reservation

Does not show all outstanding folios.

Stalls when viewing GL's

Cancelled reservations print when you print daily registration cards. Waste of paper, time, and very confusing.

Objects show on all reservation confirmations.

Deposits include objects

Agents and extra guests should not print when printing registration cards.

Honeymoon Bay

I would like to be able to manipulate reports more easily. Like pick up the numbers of bookings from a certain city address or region. Be able to use it more as a tool for tracking specific marketing.

Pros

Uni Res is user-friendly, and I can see how it would be so very useful where many differing departments need to be all on the same page... like housekeeping, maintenance and reception.

Cons

In our situation, it is much more software than we need. This becomes a bit cumbersome as well ... in that it tries to tell us more than we need to know. Sounds like a perfect world ... and it is not a problem. It is simply more than we need.

Good value

I would recommend this product to smaller hotels looking for a budget solution. Definitely buy the additional maintenance and tech support.

Pros

Good value for money, great technical support and customer service, stable and reliable, few technical problems. Adequate online reservations system that integrates with back-end.

Cons

Not the most user-friendly system: takes a while to learn and some processes seem unnecessarily long-winded. "Out-of-the-box" online reservations solution needed some tweaking for our preferences costing us extra money in programming.

Backeddy

Great Service and Great product.

Pros

Easy to use, tonnes of features and fairly straight forward application to figure out.
Customer Support (Liz) is a pleasure to deal with and always comes up with answers/solutions quickly.

Cons

Reporting Function not particularly user friendly.
The use of Crystal reports for guest paperwork, makes fine tuning your confirmations and registrations harder than it should be.

Not URMs fault, but disappointing that the interface to allow our H&L POS to charge to rooms, still does not work correctly.

quilchena

wouldnt hesitate to recommend it to anyone

Pros

birds eye view of all the rooms
easy to use and train others on
capturing of data
awesome customer support
good prompting when taking reservations
good interface with other our restaurant software and simply accounting

Cons

diffivculty when fully booked to transfer to rooms

Mica Heliskiing

Satisfactory to good. We are accessing it on a remote server which causes some issues. Note the licences were purchase by Island Lake Resort Group, exact date unknown.

Pros

this product meets most of our needs.

Cons

a bit cumbersome for building variable package rates. we do not use the invoicing feature as we do not like the presentation.

Just Beginning

Average at best

Pros

-Reporting

Cons

-There are a number of items that have been dicussed that require further attention.
-Ease of use
-Speed of loading screens
-Cutting down the number of screens
-Changing certain reports so that we can find our information quickly and efficiently

Just to name a few

Fantastic

We hope more companies sign up.

Pros

The whole system is a pro. The system is great.

Cons

We are happy with all features at Hotel Res,