What’s ThinkReservations?
ThinkReservations types itself as an all-in-one property administration answer constructed to streamline lodge companies. Between the ThinkReservations reserving system, PMS and channel supervisor, this ecosystem of instruments guarantees to avoid wasting time and improve bookings.
However is it the perfect answer for lodge companies? Or may one other software, SiteMinder, be even higher?
On this information we’ll place these two lodge options side-by-side to know their strengths, their weaknesses, and which is perhaps the most suitable choice for your online business.
Why evaluate ThinkReservations and SiteMinder?
It’s necessary to conduct a comparability between ThinkReservations and SiteMinder as a result of a lodge’s alternative of platform can have a major impression on its success transferring ahead. The precise software will supply all of the performance you require, and can help you streamline extra successfully and develop sooner.
ThinkReservations and SiteMinder each promise to boost your lodge enterprise. And per the SiteMinder and ThinkReservations evaluations on HotelTechReport, each options are trusted by the business. So which is greatest?
ThinkReservations is the product of a small staff understanding of Seattle, Washington. It gives an honest degree of performance, with its acknowledged targets centring on driving extra direct bookings, saving time by automation, and inns placing the main focus again on the visitor.
Considerably of an upstart within the lodge PMS area, ThinkReservations faces most of the frequent limitations that come from being a smaller participant: buyer assist is restricted to US workplace hours, integrations with reserving channels and different lodge tech instruments are restricted, and insights aren’t as deep or highly effective.
SiteMinder, in the meantime, is the world’s largest open lodge commerce platform. It’s overflowing with best-in-class performance, providing all that ThinkReservations gives and far, way more: enterprise intelligence, advertising and marketing help, OTA partnerships and a strong reserving engine, to call however a couple of key options.
Like ThinkReservations, SiteMinder is a growth- and efficiency-focused platform, and one which has loads of receipts to again up its claims, from a market-leading variety of integrations to the power for any lodge to construct an optimised and totally useful lodge web site in fast time.
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Between performance, usability and worth, no lodge answer fairly competes with SiteMinder. Work smarter and develop sooner with the assistance of the last word expertise associate.
Full comparability of ThinkReservations and SiteMinder
Each ThinkReservations and SiteMinder promise higher methods to handle and develop your lodge, and the options share a variety of comparable instruments and options that will help you get to the place you wish to go, reminiscent of PMS capabilities, a reserving engine and a channel supervisor.
However there are some distinct variations in these two choices. A number of key factors of comparability embody:
Integrations
It’s crucial that your chosen lodge administration software can combine with the opposite lodge software program and instruments you employ, whether or not OTAs, GDSs, PMSs or third-party lodge apps. The extra integrations an answer gives, the extra succesful and useful will probably be, and the higher it should assist you to streamline and develop your lodge.
ThinkReservations lists a complete of 19 integration companions. Most notably it lacks integrations with crucial channels like HotelBeds and Getaroom, which drive vital enterprise for a lot of inns.
SiteMinder, in the meantime, gives a market-leading variety of integrations: 1350+ in whole, with 450+ throughout reserving channels alone. Regardless of which expertise platforms, OTAs, PMSs, CRSs, GDSs, wholesalers and lodge apps you may use, you will be way more assured that they are going to work seamlessly with SiteMinder.
Assist
Let’s say you’re questioning the way to mix room reservations on ThinkReservations. Or worse, let’s say your software simply crashed. As a comparatively small firm primarily based out of the US, ThinkReservations gives solely restricted assist: you possibly can solely contact the corporate through the hours of 8am-7pm Mon-Fri Japanese US time. This will make issues awkward if a difficulty arises, notably for worldwide prospects. The assist can also be not provided on US vacation dates, when many inns are at their busiest.
SiteMinder, in the meantime, gives actually international, 24/7 assist. Native, devoted success groups work in 20 completely different languages, offering one-on-one assist from the very starting to make sure you perceive the platform and acquire the absolute best return out of your expertise funding. There’s additionally a tranche of on-line assets for these eager to search out their very own options.
Reporting and insights
A significant level of distinction between the 2 options is the extent of perception every gives. The ThinkReservation reporting suite is restricted, exhibiting solely easy accounting and reservation statistics. Whereas it’s able to producing predictive evaluation, reminiscent of yield administration experiences that forecast demand and information price changes, some customers say that these experiences don’t convert nicely to Excel.
An answer that comes full with a robust enterprise intelligence software, Siteminder gives deep and complete reporting. A person can use real-time price intelligence to check their choices towards direct rivals and alter them accordingly. You can too establish and capitalise on traits referring to your prospects, your rivals and your vacation spot.
Funds
ThinkReservation gives direct connections with simply 4 cost platforms: Heartland, MPI, Stripe and Braintree. In case you don’t use any of those platforms you’ll want to attach by an Authorize.web account, a US bank card processing platform with a $25 USD month-to-month gateway charge and a 2.9% transaction charge. It could actually due to this fact be tough and costly to handle ThinkReservation funds, and the answer doesn’t make point out of real-time cost processing.
SiteMinder gives real-time cost processing, which permits quick, correct reconciliation inside its real-time transaction dashboard. There are not any setup charges, no month-to-month charges and no hidden charges – only a small transaction fee charge. All funds are totally safe and PCI-DSS compliant.
App
ThinkReservations is desktop solely. A person must bookmark the reserving calendar on their net browser. The shortage of ThinkReservations app implies that there’s additionally no approach to combine a calling service by your smartphone.
SiteMinder is accessible as an iOS and Android app on your smartphone and pill. The app gives nice performance, permitting you to view your property dashboard, handle charges and availability through a straightforward to make use of grid, test the standing of your property and friends, and get in contact with the SiteMinder assist staff through a useful chat perform.
Why is SiteMinder the very best ThinkReservations different?
In case you’re contemplating ThinkReservations as your most popular lodge administration answer, it could be value pondering once more. In SiteMinder you might have a software that provides just about all of the performance provided by the ThinkReservations login, in addition to an entire lot extra, at a really compelling worth.
Enhance direct income
Each ThinkReservations and SiteMinder put a concentrate on direct bookings – and so they need to. By getting friends to e-book straight with you, you get to maintain the 15%-25% fee charges generally charged by OTAs like Reserving.com and Expedia.Â
Solely SiteMinder, nevertheless, brings collectively a robust direct reserving engine, a clear lodge cost processing software and a devoted lodge web site builder. It’s as much as you whether or not you combine the reserving engine and cost processor along with your present web site, or create a brand new, totally useful web site designed to draw extra direct bookings!
Easy integration to channels
With the power to attach with 450+ OTAs and reserving channels, SiteMinder boasts unmatched distribution protection, notably when in comparison with the 19 integrations listed by ThinkReservations. Regardless of which reserving channels you employ, from the largest to essentially the most area of interest, you will be assured in SiteMinder’s skill to combine.
Keep direct communication with visitor
Visitor engagement is a central focus of the SiteMinder answer, each by way of the automation that offers you extra time to concentrate on the visitor expertise, and the purpose-built Visitor Engagement software, which does every part from offering a digital check-in expertise, to sending personalised upsell gives, to requesting suggestions after a keep.
Streamline processes
SiteMinder can type a staff of backroom employees who work 24/7 on the low worth and laborious stuff, so that you and your staff can concentrate on the excessive worth and enjoyable stuff. Any variety of processes will be streamlined, reminiscent of how the channel supervisor can convey all of your reserving channels collectively on one display screen, permitting you to replace pricing and availability immediately throughout all OTAs.
Drive bookings from social media and metasearch
SiteMinder is uniquely positioned to extend your direct bookings. The metasearch experience provided by our Demand Plus staff places your lodge up in lights on platforms like Google Motels, TripAdvisor and Trivago.
And with automation blessing you with additional time, you possibly can focus extra on curating and enhancing your social media presence, driving much more bookings.
