Meenmutty heights selects SoftHOST

Meenmutty Heights is constructed along the course of Meenmutty waterfalls, entirely with the purpose of imbibing every bit of nature’s handiwork. It is located in a 200 acre coffee estate where the waters run in an eventual, friendly and pleasing manner. This resort is located on the hills of Wayanad in north Kerala - bordering the state of TamilNadu and three districts (Wayanad, Malappuram and Nilgiris). Meenmutty is an ideal family weekend getaway place with lots of outdoor activities such as fishing, cycling,trekking and swimming
 

SoftHOST, the leading software for hotels and resorts would provide the client with Kitchen management, room service management and laundry management to enhance customer experience.

Management Console - one click access to unlimited information

One of the major obstacles confronting any hotel is lack of time from the owner’s end to look into the daily transaction of the hotel. One thing they are wish for is a tool which will give them a snapshot of their daily business. Like what are the current occupancy figures, stock status, and revenue from different departments, employee attendance, restaurant figures etc. Even better would be an option to get daily reports on their mail id.

Living up to the expectations of our customer’s wishes we recently introduced a new module ‘Management Console’ targeted specifically at the time strained owners/managers. The module captures the complete information about the day to day happening of the hotel and presents it to the end customer in a user friendly graphical format. Combined with huge set of reports already available at the customer disposal it becomes an effective tool for letting manger plan and run the hotel operations more effectively. Some of the functions that you can perform using the module include:

• Define, design, and control operations
• Rate assignment by room, type, season, or market segment
• Package deals and weekly or monthly lease setups
• Setting forecasting parameters for enabling yield management
• Marketing analysis report
• Daily closing report to keep a track of operations in hotel
• Customer experience management - upgrade customers to better room, decide better packages

All this is in addition to plethora of information already available at the customer’s disposal which would help him in planning the above fuctions. So why wait? Have access to unlimited information for better management of your hotel.

Visit : Soft HOST

Restaurant Table Booking system

We recently did a complete revamp of existing hotel software at one of our client sites. The client runs a chain of restaurants at London, United Kingdom. We did a fully integrated and centralized web based application to meet the requirement of our client.

This application consists of the following modules

• System User Management
• Customer Management
• Bookings Management
• Table Management

Booking and Table management systems are closely integrated. Any visitor to the parent website has an option to reserve a table at any of the specified restaurants using our application.

The system provides floor map of the restaurant and lets visitors make booking through the user friendly web interface.

In brief following are the features of the front end restaurant booking system

• Option to choose the restaurant to dine, sitting time, no of covers.
• New Customer Registration
• Options to choose slots in alternate restaurants if the specified slot is not available

Customer management system is designed to help restaurant serve its customer better. Inheriting a lot of existing features from customer loyalty module of Soft HOST, the client relationship management system lets the restaurant serve customer his favorite delight, keep a record of his interactions with restaurant and manages loyalty programmes.

It is a flash based application build using .NET technology and has a central database connecting different restaurants in the London based chain.

Best Practices for your Kitchen

Well Balanced Menu – Counter fluctuating ingredient prices

Food markets fluctuate depending on the season, the weather and the price of gas. One day lettuce may be Rs 10.00 a bundle and then the following week it has jumped to Rs 30.00 a bundle. There is little you can do when prices jump, short of changing your entire menu every few weeks, and who has time for that? However, when you balance expensive items, which are prone to price fluctuations, with items that have stable prices, you can help maintain your desired food cost. So, go ahead and have some fresh lobster and beef on your menu, but temper it with some less expensively priced chicken dishes or pasta dishes.

Portion Control

One reason that chain restaurants are so successful is that they have a firm handle on portion control. The cooks in those restaurants know exactly how much of each ingredient to put in every dish. Each burger will have same amount of chicken, salt, cheese in it. This is portion control.

In order to practice portion control in your own kitchen, everything should be measured out. Chicken, beef and fish should all be weighed, while shredded cheese can be stored in portion control cups and a measuring cup can dish out mashed potatoes. Once you feel comfortable cooking your menu, you can eyeball the serving amounts but in the early stages of your restaurant, err on the side of caution and measure everything out. Another way to practice portion control is to purchase pre-portioned items, such as steaks, burger patties, chicken breasts, and pizza dough. They may be more expensive, but can save you money in labor and food waste.

Food Costing

Food cost refers to the menu price of a certain dish in comparison to the cost of the food used to prepare that same dish. In other words, how much you pay for food will determine how much you need to charge for it. Generally, food cost should be around 30-35%. This means that if you pay Rs 10 for something, you need to charge minimum of Rs 33.4. It may seem like you are charging a lot more than necessary, but keep in mind that you aren't just paying for the food itself. You are paying someone to prepare the food, serve the food, and clean up after the food. Everything in your restaurant, from payroll to the electric bill needs to be covered by the food you serve.

Let’s look at a typical menu item that many restaurants offer: Chicken Biryani

The initial cost of a chicken biryani can be broken down into the following areas:

* Chicken which will cost around cost you around Rs 10 per portion
* Basmati rice costs around Rs 12 per portion
* Other ingredients (ginger, yogurt, onion, salt, chili powder etc.) costs Rs 10.

Therefore, the entire meal costs you Rs 32. Generally cost of major ingredients is maintained but a guess estimate is used to account for minor items. One workaround possible is to maintain total number of biryani served over a period of time and add the minor ingredients to have the complete information. Get the picture? Every thing that goes onto the customers’ plate needs to be accounted for.

So how do you decide on a final menu price? Time to brush up on that high school algebra you swore you'd never use.

The formula for costing goes as follows:

Cost of your product/.35=menu price or Rs 32/.35= Rs 91.42

Rs 91.42 is the absolute minimum you need to charge in order to make a profit off the chicken biryani. Of course, Rs 91.42 is an awkward looking number, so you might bump it up to Rs 99. If you bumped it up to Rs 99, your food costs would drop below 30%, which means you make a bigger profit.

Soft HOST with its new module on Food Costing helps you keep cost of ingredients under check, at the same time gives you flexibility to maintain profitable pricing and reduce wastages.

Features:

* Identify food costs for a dish
* Calculate the menu price & profitability for a new dish
* Evaluate the profitability of existing dishes on a menu
* Update menu prices when ingredient costs change
* Store recipe information
* Store ingredient information
* Print out recipe cards
* Sales tax option
* Recipe overhead calculation.
* Ingredient wastage tracking
* Portion control

Customer Loyalty Programmes for the Hotel Industry

In the current downturn where it is becoming increasingly difficult to get new customers, it has become all the more important to retain the existing ones. The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software contains with it a hidden wealth of information which if effectively used can prove to be the panacea for the badly affected industry.  Few of the things which you can do with your CRM software includes customized menu preparation for guests, serving him his delights and suggesting him side dishes which he likes. Preparing the room of your guest as per his personal preferences e.g. soft cotton pillow for his bed, ‘The Hindu’ for  newspaper, mini bar stuffed with drinks he likes. Such minutes details may cost you nothing but in return will help you have a very satisfied customer. There is nothing more precious then a satisfied customer as it is often said a happy customer will in turn get ten more customers for you.  This is all more important for hotels dealing with corporate clients whose satisfaction the hotel has to guarantee at all cost. Even if you cater to tourists/leisure travelers their word of mouth referrals can prove to be more than handy for your business.

Soft HOST with its added emphasis on ‘Customer Relationship Management’ helps you do exactly that. Keep your customers happy with its enhanced bundle of benefits. 

 

Revenue management – What hoteliers need to know?

The importance of having an effective and robust revenue management system can not be under estimated. If hotels have every thing under place they can easily generate more revenue from their existing properties. Revenue management systems better know as Yield management systems work on the principle that different set of customers have different requirements and are ready to pay different prices for the same service. So how does a Yield management system works?

Take example of airline industry, have a look at the pricing scheme that they follow. If you book your ticket well in advance you might have to pay as low as Rs 1500 for a Delhi – Mumbai flight. But if you happen to book your ticker just in time you end up paying a cool Rs 5000, that too for using the same service.

Similarly, for hotels the customers can broadly be divided into two categories Leisure travelers, who pre plan their literary and are on a look for price discounts and Business travelers, who often have to plan their trips on a short notice without any prior reservation. Revenue management is equally important for hotels/resorts which get seasonal inflow of tourists, it can help them increase their occupancy rate in off season by providing accurate discounts and at the same time let them make most of their resources by blocking some rooms for just in time travelers during peak seasons.

So how should an hotelier manage these customers? How many rooms should he book in advance at a discount and how many he should keep unreserved for the business travelers? Most of the hotels currently employ a revenue manager who would take a call on the number of reservations to be made based on his hunch. But such decisions are not free from human error. What is needed is an automated system which can take into account various parameters like last year occupancy rate, expected demand, especial occasion like holidays or weekends, surge in demand because of an event and accordingly predict the accurate occupancy rate to be followed to maximize the Rev PAR (Revenue Per Available Room) of any hotel. 

Soft HOST with its yield management system can work wonders for such hotels. Its Yield Management tool takes into consideration all possible parameter to predict the occupancy rate of a hotel must follow to maximize its revenues from room reservations. 

With over a decade of experience in the hospitality industry Soft HOST is one of the most popular cost saving solution for hotels in South India.