Does not accept orders from third-party sites

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People like to book hotel rooms through third-party sites like Priceline or Booking.com for one very simple reason: price.

The harsh reality for independent hoteliers battling the big chains is that 85% of travelers say price is the most important factor when booking a hotel. While these third-party sites take a huge chunk of your profits—commissions of 10% to 30% —they also give your hotel enormous exposure to customers who might not otherwise know you exist.

Symptoms: Probably not. You may not realize how much business you are missing from third-party booking sites until you start using them.

Diagnosis: This is easy to diagnose. After all, you should know whether your software offers integration with third-party booking sites or not.

The cure: If you're not already using third-party sites to increase your bookings, give them a try. Look in our catalog for software that specifically advertises integration with third-party sites.

4. Does not work on mobile devices.
Hotel software should absolutely work on mobile devices for purchase shareholder database both you and your customers. For the latter, this is important because the number of hotel bookings made on mobile devices in the U.S. increased by 67% in 2016 compared to the previous year. For the former, a platform that works well on mobile devices allows you to be more flexible and responsive to both your employees and customers without keeping them chained to their desks.

Symptoms: Customers complain about booking from a mobile device. Or people are visiting your site from mobile devices and abandoning them. On the other hand, you find yourself sticking to your desktop computer when doing tasks because working on mobile devices is too tedious.

Diagnostics: As you can see, the diagnostics are simple: if you find the software too frustrating to use on mobile, it's simply not good enough. As for your customers, survey your guests or set up Google Analytics to determine whether customers are more likely to abandon their visit on mobile than on a PC.

The fix: If you find evidence that your mobile site is turning off customers, or if you don’t like it, it’s time for a change. Check out our ranking of the most popular hotel management apps for some alternatives.

5. Buggy software
Many software companies make big promises about their software or list lots of fancy features, but when it comes to practical, everyday use, many of them get bogged down by crashes or frozen screens. This can cause unnecessary headaches for you as a hotel manager, as well as upsetting customers.

Symptoms: You're constantly struggling with software that crashes or freezes completely, forcing you to restart the program or even avoid using certain features.

Diagnosis: You have software that's just not ready for prime time yet - or at least needs fixing so you can't run your business elsewhere.

Solution: Communicate your frustration to customer service. If you have good customer service, they will work with you to identify the glitch and fix it promptly. If the problem is too big for the development team or the support team is simply unresponsive, it's time to buy new software from our catalog .

6. Too expensive
Price shouldn’t be the only factor when choosing software. After all, expensive software can be well worth the price if it helps you run smoothly and efficiently and frees up your time to focus on your guests. However, depending on what kind of operation you run, the most expensive software may not make sense for your hotel.

Symptoms: You seem to be spending a lot of money on software, and wonder if it's increasing your profits or actually having a net negative effect. This is especially true if you're buying high-quality software, but you're running a bed and breakfast, as your profits may be too small to justify the expensive software.

Diagnostics: You have purchased software that offers a lot of expensive features designed for complex operations when you have simpler operations such as a bed and breakfast, vacation rental, or a small 10-room hotel, to name a few.

Treatment: Check out some of the best free and open source hotel management software or a list of cheap and free hotel invoicing software . Give them a test run. You may find that they are a great fit for your needs.