Over the past couple of years, international tourism has seen a rise in occupancy and travel levels, approaching numbers closer to those seen before the pandemic. Tourism in the Americas, especially in Mexico, is no exception. 

The World Tourism Organization estimated that between January and July 2023, 700 million tourists traveled internationally in the Americas, representing a 43% increase compared to the same months in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Mexican Ministry of Tourism reported that during the first half of 2023, 11.25 million international tourists arrived in Mexico by air, which represents a 7.1% increase compared to the same period in 2022. This also surpasses the 8.2% increase in air arrivals in January-June 2019, which saw 10.398 million tourists.

Despite the encouraging recovery results, it has been crucial for hotels to continue adapting to changing circumstances, maintaining high standards of safety, and offering quality experiences that attract travelers from around the world.

To remain leaders in quality and innovation, our clients in the hospitality industry contacted us to implement the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system Odoo, and in this article, we want to share with you some of the challenges we have faced.

Each client in the hotel industry has needs that align with their business model. We have clients who market their accommodation as conventional lodging and others as timeshares. They have different business units within their structure, including dining areas, amenity or souvenir shops, and various services for their guests. However, they share a common need:

Our clients have demonstrated their forward-thinking approach by using various technological tools to optimize and manage online reservations, perform check-ins and check-outs through their Property Management Systems (PMS), implement accounting software to keep records for each business unit, utilize restaurant software to serve diners in their food outlets, and use applications for their Point of Sale (POS) systems, and more.
 

However, managing all this information independently not only reduces efficiency but can also lead to human errors when coordinating all the information manually. This is where our expertise in Odoo comes into play.

Having specific applications for each of their activities, with independent information, and no possibility of interconnection, brought more problems than solutions for our clients in the hotel industry when it came to managing their business. Therefore, one of our initial challenges was centralizing information in Odoo.

The focal point of hotel operations is their PMS, as these platforms allow for meticulous control of reservations, cancellations, guest check-ins, and check-outs. Unfortunately, these applications do not provide an alternative to keeping the accounting information of lodging costs and expenses in the hotel's food and beverage outlets up to date.

To address this challenge, Vauxoo worked on integrating various PMS systems, such as Clock and RMS Cloud, with Odoo's Accounting application, enabling them to maintain the company's financial records and generate reports.
 

However, we encountered some limitations when trying to separate the business units within hotel chains, such as their food and beverage outlets, lodging, and retail souvenir or amenity shops. This prevented them from managing their financial and accounting information independently, without clear insights into which of these businesses were generating profits or losses. Fortunately, Odoo is customizable software.

Therefore, in addition to connecting Odoo with their PMS, we expanded their capabilities by separating the business units of hotel chains to obtain individual profit and loss statements for each of their services as independent entities. For our clients, we were able to provide advanced fiscal accounting tailored to the challenges of the hotel industry.

The hotel industry features various business models, such as conventional lodging, all-inclusive resorts, timeshares, boutique hotels, spa hotels, and more. These naturally offer different services and amenities to their guests.

Some of Vauxoo's clients have all-inclusive packages at their hotels, which necessitates providing guests with a wide range of services, including food and beverages, entertainment, and other leisure services like spas and massage rooms.

Within these packages, offering personalized services to all guests, along with promptly updating their accounts, managing credit limits, and eliminating the risk of losses, required custom development.

To address this challenge, our team integrated the restaurant and shop point of sale systems with the PMS using Odoo's platform. Thus, when a guest wants to make any purchases, their room account and credit limit are updated, eliminating errors and omissions during check-out.

We even configured smart bracelets for one of our clients that contain guest information and, with a simple scan at the restaurant or shop, can charge the expenses to their room account.

Incredible, isn't it?

Implementing an ERP that works in tandem with a PMS has proven to be a cost-effective and efficient alternative in managing tourist businesses, thanks to the centralization of information and simplification of operations, especially with customizable software like Odoo.

The digital transformation in the hotel industry is definitely underway, and at Vauxoo, we are accompanying the industry on its journey filled with new challenges and opportunities.