Because of the large and diverse range of questions that have been asked, the FAQ section has been divided into 3 categories
- On-line Reservations in general
- Resmac On-line Reservations
- Your Website and our additional services
Q. Why should I introduce yet another distribution channel when I already sell through 3 or 4?
A. Your website offers you an opportunity to sell rooms free of commission and puts you in complete control of price, to alter dynamically if desired and always to sell on your terms.
Q. My reservation request form works very well - why should I change?
A. Countless surveys show that, on average the new web user will not wait longer than 12 seconds, for a web page to load. It follows logically that the majority of your prospective customers will certainly not be happy to wait for an email to find out whether a requested reservation has been made. The problem here is that although you have received some reservations using this method you do not how many you have lost. REAL TIME is the demand of the day and in this regard a dedicated on-line reservations system offers just that.
Q. If I want to make changes to my hotel website during the course of the year do I have to pay again to have the Resmac system installed on the new web-site.
A. There is no additional cost whatsoever. Because the Resmac system is attached to the back-end of your hotel website it can easily be moved to any new site free of charge.
Q. Are customers safe entering their credit card details on the Resmac system?
A. Yes. Customers are protected by 'Verisign' encryption security when entering their credit card information.
Q. Can anyone else see my occupancy levels?
A. No. The only indication of your occupancy level is found in letting a customer know whether or not a room is or is not available on particular dates. The number of rooms available is never disclosed so you are safeguarded.
Q. How much time does it take to maintain my inventory on the system?
A. It varies depending on the number of rooms to be maintained. As a rough guide 100 rooms of 7 different types in a hotel that experiences an average rate of bookings and cancellations could spend 1-3 'man-hours' per week using the system i.e. maintaining inventory, collecting reservation details, creating new special offers etc.
Q. I have found a cheaper system on the market; why should I opt for this one?
A. In establishing the total cost of any system you must take account of initial setup fees, monthly or yearly maintenance costs, technical support, commission you pay on sales and the human resources you must invest in training and inventory maintenance. Having calculated the real total cost in this way our advice is if you have found a reservation system as good as Resmac that is cheaper then go for it, oh and let us know which one it is please.
Q. Can a customer book a room that I am just about to remove from the system?
A. No. As a safeguard against such an occurrence all allocations are 'locked' while you are working on the system and therefore cannot be sold.
Q. Am I limited to using this system from one PC or can I have it available on all PC's in reservations?
A. No. You may choose to operate the Resmac system from many PC's in your reservations department and/or from you front desk. There is no additional cost involved, whatever you choose.
Q. Can I choose my own username and password?
A. Yes. You will be given a username and password when you fist start using the system but you are free to change this at any stage.
Q. What is the guaranteed uptime of the system?
A. The system has a guaranteed uptime of >99.95%
Q. What happens if the system fails?
A. Should the system fail then the customer is prevented from booking rooms until the system is back on line.
Q. How do I calculate the return on investment for such a system?
A. To properly calculate the return on investment you should look at the following costs over a five year period and evaluate them against the number of on-line booking you are setting a target to make during the same period:-
- Initial Setup cost
- Yearly maintenance and upgrade
- Human Resource expenditure on maintenance of inventory on the system
Q. What do I do at the weekend when there are no staff in my reservations department?
A. The email notification of new reservations can be redirected to your front desk so that the staff on weekend duty see your website bookings and they can access the system to amend inventory levels if necessary.
Q. Can the system connect to my front office system and if not why not?
A. No the Resmac system does not connect to you front office system. This is the case for many reasons the biggest of which is that viruses and worms are likely to be a fact of life on the internet and we do everything we can to protect our system against them. However if such an infection were to occur and the front office system was connected to the website system then the consequences could be truly catastrophic.
Q. Can you host my website as well?
A. Yes we can host you website also and provide maintenance. Please contact us for further details.
Q. Can you provide a traffic analysis for my web-site ; What kind of information does such an analysis contain?
A. Yes we can provide a very indepth traffic analysis for you website. It will give you information on the following:-
- Traffic Volume
Q. Do you do web-design?
A. Yes we offer web design services to Hotels who are considering anything from a complete overhaul of or subtle change to their on-line image.
Q. How can I increase traffic to my hotels website?
A. There are very things you can do to increase your website traffic. We offer a traffic analysis service and web marketing consultancy for hotels who wish to increase their traffic.