Cost Savings
Cost savings is a major reason why most hotels choose a cloud-based solution over an on premise system. Setting up an on premise system often requires a site visit from a system technician to install the system, the costs (lodging, travel) associated with these visits are often carried by the hotel. On-premise systems require software licenses which can easily run $10,000+ or more for a medium sized hotel. On premise systems require dedicated hardware that must be purchased and upgraded over time. This leads to recurring maintenance costs related to support and upgrades. With a cloud-based provider you don’t have to worry about any of this.
Time Savings
Time savings is another major consideration for most hoteliers when making the decision. As mentioned earlier with on premise hardware, a site visit is often required and this takes time to coordinate travel and for a technician to arrive (multiple weeks or more in some cases). Even once installed, you will have to recurring maintenance to do on both the hardware and software to ensure it will keep running. With a cloud-based solution, you are setup and ready to go within minutes, after that you don’t have to worry about maintaining hardware, patching software, training staff on those tasks. You are free to focus on your guests and growing your business
Security
It’s easy to think that having their on premise PMS system in a locked room behind the front desk is more secure than using a cloud-provider, but nothing could be further from the truth. In todays highly networked world your system is online and accessible to anywhere in the world, and all it takes is running an unpatched software or a misconfigured network and a hacker in a cafe in Russia can breach your system and get access to all your data or worse. Physical security is also a concern with on premise solutions, someone physically breaking into the room to install malware. Or another disaster such as a fire or flood which damages the hardware and your business business is now offline, data lost, and customer records gone. With cloud-based solutions all of this is handled by your provider, they have experts who focus on security, breach prevention, and their facilities are hardened against fires and theft.
Feature Release Frequency
A major benefit of cloud-based solutions is their fast feature release schedule with security patches, bug fixes, and new features often being released as quickly as weekly if not daily in some instances. And this doesn’t require any action on the users behalf, this is all made immediately available to you. With on premise tools this isn’t the case, patches and feature upgrades are often monthly or only a few times a year. Additionally someone from you must handle the update yourself, downloading the latest patch and installing it. Worst yet, if you forget to constantly update your on premise software it can become vulnerable to hackers.
Ease of Use
Lastly, cloud-based PMS systems like Pitaya, are much easier to use. They follow modern web conventions that everyone is now familiar with. This will make it easier to onboard new staff, reduce training, and troubleshooting. Another major benefit is cloud-based systems easily integrate with other cloud-based software such as accounting and analytics. This makes it incredibly easy to manage and grow your business. With on premise PMS systems it can be much more difficult to integrate with modern online accounting software or other similar tools you may need.
Location Independence
As the name suggests, on premise requires your staff to be on site with the hardware in order to use the system. This is an old way of running hotels and in times like today, it is far more challenging to run your hotel that way. Cloud-based systems are available anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. This means you can provide more flexible options for your staff to work from home, able to connect to the system while on a business trip, or being able to centralize your staff for multiple properties. We have seen hotels completely move their front of house staff to working remotely during COVID-19 times, with only interacting with guests on rare occasions to limit face to face contact. This would be impossible with out a cloud-based PMS like Pitaya.