Understanding the Importance of Property Management Practices in Indian Hotel Industry

Introduction

During recent past property management practices has emerged an important aspect in the international hospitality industry. In fact, hospitality sector has generated huge revenue and employment opportunities in developing counties and India is no exception in this context. Thus, it has become important for the service providers to understand user’s and customer expectations and perceptions as well as the factors that influence their evaluation and satisfaction with the provided service. The enormous changes have been noticed during the recent years in systems used in terms of organizational structure, revenue, innovativeness and information technology etc., of this information technology has dramatically affected the environment hotel operational practices worldwide and India is no exception to this. Today, the nature of hotel industry has changed entirely to cope with the diversity of changes in requirements of guests such as reservations through internet and mobile applications and hassle free check in check out, online feedbacks.

The PMS is fully integrated with sales and catering, accounting, quality management system, central systems —reservation system; and customer information system. For most hotels the key technology is the Property Management Systems (PMS) which is defined as “a set of application programs that directly relate to hotel front office and back office activities e.g. revenue management, reservation management, room and rate assignment, check-in & out management, guest accounting, folio management, account settlement and room status management” (Kasavana & Cahill, 2003, p.4). For the last few decades, the hospitality industry has been identified as a key driver in the growth of the service industry, which in turn, is one of the three main industrial components of a developed and/or developing economy (Kotler & Keller, 2006).

Kokazand and Murphy(2008,2009) have shown that almost all hotels have a property management system however the data used by the PMS is not always “visible” or available for cross functional activities and requires a level of investment in interfaces to fully maximize the benefits of the PMS data, and related data sources e.g. Central Reservation System (CRS), and other relevant data sources.

Chand and Anand (2011) suggested that in the case of implementing property management practices, the owners seem to consider heavily on planning, information collection and pursuing goals and objectives, along with quality and control. Further, According to World Travel and Tourism Council (2013) travel- and tourism-related activities account for over 230 million jobs, or 8.7 per cent of jobs worldwide Similarly, the hospitality industry is the largest and rapidly growing industry in India, employing over 27 million people, accounting for 8.5% of the total workforce, and generating over 5.9% of GDP (Ministry of Tourism, India, 2013)]. However, hotel organizations and managers face real challenges in attracting and retaining tourist as unable to offer a high-quality ‘service’ to the increasingly demanding and discerning tourists .

The present era is marked by the revolutionary changes in the property management systems used by the hotels. A vast variety of services ranging from GDS,CRS, Online Booking Vending machines for check in check out and epos systems have become part and parcel of today’s hospitality industry. Bardi and Hoboken (2003) suggested that PMS as a network of various hardware and software applications used to manage a hotel ; sales & marketing, human resource management, guest handling, reservations, food & beverage, electronic mails etc. Thus, it has become imperative to explore right type of property management practices to use and to ensure more guest wiz-a-wiz revenue.