I will give you IMPORTANT advice, which applies to any software application which is delivered through a global network, as your solution will be.
As you know, 50% of room reservations, and more, are made on-line to certain hospitality destinations. A comparable percentage are now even selecting their destination in the first place through on-line research.
1. Research the living help out of it, I mean don’t rush it, dig in deep. This will keep all the middlemen, and nickel and dimers out of the picture, when you don’t end up signing two year contracts before you know what you need. The industry is loaded, as ecommerce “solutions” demonstrate. So find out FIRST, what to avoid. That can be from internet searches, software/network reviews, complaints boards, etc.
2. Take a look around, for hotels with systems you like and find out what they use from the website references, or from the hotel itself.
3. Research the top reservation systems being implemented by big brands like Hilton, etc, and find out the details of the service they may use, or scaled down versions of software based on their model.
4. Research the servicing end, you probably don’t want to implement an open source solution you have to maintain, nor do you necessarily want middlemen servicing this either. Find a larger network, with various performance and security guarantees, and research the fees of this various solutions.
5. Since I do not know if you have a website, or more, but if you do, and it ranks favorably for traffic and leads, do not jeopardize your online real estate. Some middlemen, in those zones of inefficiency, will also have a hosting or networking relocation of your web. The point is, if you have good traffic, you do not want to sacrifice it, by being stuck in the backend of some affiliate web reservation system, in a lost sub domain, or tail end directory. You want to separate the tiers of functionality. Be careful, because many of these middlemen zones run on high volume, and could care less about web performance for the masses they attempt and do drag in.
6. This offers the opportunity also, to design the whole system in one technically competent place, which targets performance of traffic and reservation functionality, with care. Of the ten that are bottom of the line their are a smaller percentage which are top of the line. You usually pay for this. In this stuff it’s true you get what you pay for, but also, you can also get nothing for a big fee as well.
http://www.starreviews.com/hotel-reservation-reviews.aspx
http://www.productreview.com.au/c/hotel-reservation-services.html
