Guest house manager

At Software Experience we believe we've spotted a gap in the market for a web based system to help owners of small guest houses, b&bs, apartments houses & small hotels. We aim over the next few months to deliver a best in class web hosted application that will deliver these benefits to small business:

- time saving
- better organised, daily work schedules
- room availability at a glance
- guest history always a few clicks away.
- always available info, even out of the house
- no software install, just register online and go
- build up a comprehensive picture of the business
- capture financial information
- integrate with selected online booking systems

We aim to deliver a system that is accessible to any business with access to the internet. No software to install as it will all be running in the cloud. This means your data is secure and backed up, the system will be available 24/7 and can grow and keep delivering as more guest houses use the service.

We are aiming to bring all your important data together in one place to allow you to organise, plan and analyse your business. The system will be kept simple and easy to use, with minimal learning curve.

Booking Management

- Take direct bookings
- Import bookings from selected online booking sites
- Quickly find existing bookings
- Record guest expenses and stay preferences (smoking, breakfast, cot)

Guest Booking Request

- We provide a simple to request widget that can be integrated with an existing guest house website. Allow guest to easily make booking request online.

Availability

A graphical and simple view of current room availability. At a glance see what rooms are available for a specific time period.

Guest Management

- The system will maintain a comprehensive guest database
- Quickly find guest by name, email, mobile number
- See details of a guest's previous stay.
- Maintain guest marketing preferences.

Reporting

- We provide a comprehensive list of reports to see how your business is running
  - total stays in a period
  - room occupancy
  - channel breakdown
  - length of stay breakdown
  - guest nationality
  - room rates and extras

Planning

- Daily and weekly work schedules
  - what guest are leaving today
  - what guest are arriving today
  - chase up that balance payment
  - pick up guest from airport

Finance

- Produce guest invoices
- Tourist tax data
- Record expenses

Mobile Web

- Out of the house? No problem login into the system via your smartphone.
- Specially designed web pages to work well from most modern smartphones
- Check availability
- Check for new bookings
- Check a guest history - has this guest stayed with us before?

Channel Management

- most guest houses use a combination of channels to get bookings, whether it's established online booking sites, through the local tourist office, direct marketing through own websites or a simple knock at the door.
- we aim to add in the ability to import bookings make with some boking sites into this system, With all your bookings in one place it becomes easier to plan, report and make money.
- availability and rates can be published to supported booking sites.
- For the first release we will support only booking.com. We can develop for other booking sites as demand rises.

The Technology

So how we will deliver this new system? Using your long expertise in the Microsoft .Net Framework and related tools. The application will be hosted in the Microsoft Cloud called Azure. This means the application will be available 24/7, data will be securely backed up, data is safe, the cloud grows as the usage on the system grows so providing consistent performance to the users.

- ASP.Net MVC
- SQL Server
- JQuery and JQuery.Mobile
- Hosting with Windows Azure

Roadmap

Summer 2012 : deliver first beta. A small group of guest houses are already on board and helping shape and test the application.

Early Autumn 2012 : deliver the first production release.

Beyond this we anticipate a continuous cycle of upgrades to improve the system. As the system is hosted on the cloud each new upgrade will be performed without the impact on the users. We hope the first release covers the core functions, as the community uses the system new features and improvements will arise and we intend to respond We want an evolving system that keeps delivering the most important features.

We may also tune the product to other related markets such as caravan sites, camping sites,multiple property business, larger guest houses and hotels.

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