O8A.ORG
DISCLAIMER: The opinions and comments of individual franchisees expressed herein are solely the opinions of those individual franchisees and do not necessarily state or reflect the opinions of the Owners 8 Association or its attorneys. The information in this website is the sole property of the Owners 8 Association and any duplication or reprint cannot be made without the express written consent of Owners 8 Association. 7/13/08 Issues with Softhotel sent in by yet another franchisee member. 1. Misreporting allocations 2. Monthly revenue reports generate different data depending on the report generated. 3. Availability is often incorrect and prevents my staff from booking reservations. 4. Cancellation policy does NOT print on the confirmation letter nor the confirmation email. 5. Group function is poorly designed. Room allocations are unnecessarily manual. 6. ALL operations are extremely slow. 7. System does not follow an intuitive progression for checking in a guest. 8. System does not follow an intuitive progression for making a reservation. 9. System requires numerous amounts of unnecessary clicking and pointing with regards to 10. Assigned rooms (not occupied) shows up on the housekeeping list. 11. System reports “unhandled exception error” when making reservation. Tech supports 12. The inability to have notes printed out on the housekeeping list. (Such as crib or 13. Inability to post misc charges for faxes and copies for non- guest clients. 14. Print on the reports (especially housekeeping report) is too small. 15. Total amount of guest charges that is reported on the screen during a checkout is too small. 16. Reports in general are not well designed. Lots of white space which translates to several 17. User interface is poorly designed. The system requires clicking on tiny little pictures on the 18. Being Green. Myportal has a link on the home page suggesting Wyndham is making an 19. Button on the screen should have titles obvious to the user. For instance, on the home 20. No way to cancel the Cash function at check in or on a reservation once the post window is 21. The system is not “seamless”. I still have to check Travel agent commission reports, 22. Groups are now being booked through CRS and I am getting no notification. This affects 23. The “Arrivals” report includes guest that will be in house that day, which makes the reports 24. There is no way to set up a weekly rate in the system. 25. Making multiple reservations for different dates is difficult and time consuming. Also, you 26. When editing rates the system locks up often and requires that the system be re-booted. 27. Inability to check in a sub room if master has not checked in prior. 28. Inability to over-ride inane functions such as the previous. The system is telling me what I 29. Takes almost 5 minutes to change rates for a 6 month period of time 30. Cancelation policy is not visible on screen when making a reservation – my staff has no idea 31. Manually have to change rooms to tax exempt – the system should do this automatically 32. I still cannot print a receipt for an extended stay guest. The system populates huge receipts 33. The inability to change each days’ rate while making the reservation or at check in. 34. If I increase a rate in the system, and make any type of modification to an existing 35. The system should charge room rate and taxes at check-in. Training my staff to remember 36. I want the ability to pick and chose which functions my staff has available to them. I do not 37. The detail function when looking up a reservation is too difficult to decider. 38. Travel agent and 3rd party websites do not require zip codes yet Softhotel does. Tech 39. The system does not save phone numbers in history. Frequent Wyndham Rewards guest get 40. There is no Postage option on the folio for the guest charges. Guests leave things in hotels 41. Training guides are lacking import functions; for example, No-Show procedures. 42. Backdoor changes to the system are done and we are not notified of these changes. 43. Front desk manager property access does not have the power to change/ update rates. 44. Walking in multiple rooms – system does not print Registration Cards. 45. The Search function is not working properly (7/8/2008). 46. System reports ADR as being higher than it actually is. 47. Direct Billing statements lack sufficient information. 48. Credit Card Transactions Report lists account numbers rather than room numbers; which 49. Cash function is very confusing for staff. 50. System asks you to check out canceled ‘SUB’ rooms when checking out the Master. Tech 51. Several of the Property Access options for the staff are not functional. 52. Cannot remotely log into system. June 13, 2008 To, Wyndham Hotel Group
Re: Softhotel Installation for Super 8 Site # _________
Dear Jeff,
Your notice states that we would have received a $3,000.00 credit for IPTU and a discounted regional price, had we signed up earlier. But unfortunately, no dollar amount has ever been provided to my property. Your earlier quote for my property to sign up was approx. $17,000.00 which also included a $3,000.00 credit for IPTU. It has been brought to my notice that similar properties such as mine with 45 rooms have been paying $10,900.00 for the same system. Although, I do not agree with any of these excessive costs, I do find the range in quoted prices to be quite extreme.
Also, the fact that you will charge $2,000.00 extra on top of the quoted price is not agreeable to us. As I had requested earlier, we can connect these systems ourselves. I do not know why we have to pay $3,800.00 or more to someone for just connecting the computers. Individual hotel owners can perform their own computer setup. I understand that the rest of the installation is done over the phone. The quoted training charge for Softhotel is also excessive.
I fail to understand why Super 8 is insisting on updating our system. Especially, since we have noticed that there are numerous flaws in the Softhotel system that as of today continue to plague those utilizing the software. E.g. a) Soft hotel is very slow and takes approximately 4 to 5 minutes to process a check in, compared to the normal time of a minute in our current system. b) Softhotel does not have any credit card interface except SDC and this has put hotel owners under a vulnerable situation since SDC has been charging enormous annual fees and charges installation fees every time there is a change of banking details. c) The rates are not presented correctly and the software has numerous problems while displaying different rates in the same week. d) If you move a guest from one room to another, it takes several minutes for the software to update. On many occasions, we do not have time to waist for the system to update a minor change. These and many other problems have not been resolved by your technical team. In fact, they are aware of the problems and continue to tell us that they are working on an update for these issues. I do not understand the rush to force motel owners to buy this expensive system which is filled with so many flaws, when we are content with the current system. No guarantees have been provided in any of your information or even this notice that we will not be required to upgrade from Softhotel in the near future. As we have seen with Wyndham, we continue to be forced to implement different software solutions. We are the only chain that has multiple software solutions being utilized simultaneously.
Please note that as franchisees we are obligated to the franchisor to comply with their policies as long as the policies are fair and do not penalize franchisees for no fault of their own. We cannot sign up for Softhotel for the following reasons: 1) The software is flawed as is evidenced by those currently using the software. It will put our business at risk by dramatically increasing our check in time and the flawed system will also prevent us from exercising our revenue management techniques, which will in turn result in loss of revenue for the property and the brand. 2) Different hotels with the same number of rooms have been charged different prices. No explanation is given as to why I would have to pay $17,000 for my motel while another motel in a similar situation with a similar number of rooms will pay $10,000 3) I do not pay any money annually for the interface on my existing system. Also, other motel owners with HSS and MSI do not pay any extra monthly fees for processing credit cards through their system. With Softhotel, we will end up paying an extra $50 every month plus the installation and maintenance charge from SDC for using the credit card interface. 4) No monthly recurring charges have been provided in your notice. However, it has been brought to my notice that the monthly charge will be up to $200. This does not include Direcway charges of $160/month or SDC charges of $50/month. This along with the initial fee for software installation will put a hotel like ours with 45 rooms into enormous financial stress. These monies could be spent on improvements for our motel which will be a better investment for both the brand and for our motel. 5) Our franchise agreement does not mandate that we installing Softhotel which is a flawed PMS which will result in negatively impacting my business.
I would like to take this opportunity to bring to your attention that we have been with Super 8 since , and never had a default. Forcibly invoicing my property without installing the system will be a violation of any basic accounting practices and will violate my rights as a franchisee. To turn my hotel off the reservation system while I am paying my franchise fees, will be another violation of my rights as a franchisee. Some may even deem this a criminal offense.
I respectfully urge you to issue a letter repealing this notice as soon as possible. Respectfully, ____________________
cc: John Valletta See the information below regarding issues with SoftHotel: Subject: SoftHotel Problems as sent in by a member of O8A 1) Too slow –
A. You certainly should not be experiencing lockups or system slowness to that level, I will connect remotely and make sure everything is configured correctly on your property. If SoftHotel is not configured correctly, it can severely effect performance. (USING DIRECTWAY IS THE REAL PROBLEM, YOU ARE USING A DIALUP SYSTEM WHILE OPERATING A WEB BASED PMS SOLUTION) 2) Grid limitation –
A. Guests only appear on the room board once the room is assigned to their reservation because without assigning the room, the system does not know which one you would like used. Accessing previous guests folios can be done via the advanced search option, We can walk through this process on the phone.
3) Direct Bill – Limited room rate and trip reward qualification A. I am not sure what exactly you mean in regards to the trip reward qualification, we can clarify on the phone. B. Adjusting a room rate that has been posted to a direct bill account simply requires that you reverse the posting, and then re-post it with the correct amount, you then apply the reversal as a payment to the original posting and only the new adjusted rate will appear on the statement. C. Unfortunately, at this point, SoftHotel does not calculate commissions, however this may be an enhancement we could see in a future build. D. Direct bill invoicing is being addressed in one of our upgrades this year, we can discuss exactly how you would like to see it, and I will gladly pass that along to our development team for consideration.
4) Post audit Rate correction – When it comes to delete or apply credit for early departures, Room revenue is not adjusted in final monthly report. Once audit is done Adjustment to mass room account is not allowed. A. Room revenue should be calculated by adding up all of the “Room” codes posted throughout the month, including adjustments. I may be misunderstanding exactly what you mean here, but we can discuss it further.
5) Limited fund transfer function – If we are to apply credit card fund to multiple rooms then , initial master folio of paying guest does not reflect transferred amounts. A. When you setup one guest to pay additional guests charges, all charges from the subordinate accounts appear on the master accounts folio. This happens when the amounts are posted during the night audit. This may be a configuration problem, I will check into it when I connect to your system. 6) Trip reward qualification – We have tried many times loading rates but still trip reward is applied automatically , A. Trip rewards qualification is setup at corporate for rate plans, if you have rate plans that are qualifying that you do not want setup that way, Revenue Management should be able to help you remove those settings from your local rate codes. 7) Limited direct bill audit – Very hard to apply payments to appropriate invoice since statement does not reflect the same account number on the same invoice in payment application screen. A. As mentioned in item 3 on the list, we are looking to add additional functionality around this during this years upgrade schedule, I believe we can find a suitable workaround for you until this upgrade reaches your property. (THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM AS THEY ARE WORKING TO UPGRADE) 8) No Maintenance report – There is no way room maintenance log is created. unable to documents repair item and keep up with repair history. A. This is an item which also is scheduled to be included in a release this year.
(THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM AS THEY ARE WORKING TO UPGRADE) 9) Limited inventory management – There is nowhere we could keep track of lost and found items, Inventory of cribs and rollaway bed is not possible. A. I agree that this would be a valuable addition to the program, and will add it to our future enhancement list. (THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM AS THEY ARE WORKING TO UPGRADE) 10) Limited E mail billings or faxing – Emailing detail statement or faxing directly from module is not possible, Also group contract terms could not be customized. A. Emailing of statements is possible from within the program, faxing is however not available from within program at this time, as it requires an additional piece of hardware be added. B. There will be a new group contract and pickup report added to version 2.2.13 tentatively scheduled to be released in June of this year. (THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM AS THEY ARE WORKING TO UPGRADE) 11) Very limited Housekeeping report – We are not able to add comments on housekeeping reports, A. I will forward this suggestion as an enhancement for a future version to our development team. (THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM AS THEY ARE WORKING TO UPGRADE) 12) Suggestions – Internal front desk messaging would be helpful to communicate with staff A. There is a module in the system to send messages to users, via the messaging icon on the bottom status bar. We can walk through its use on the phone. B. Inventory messages allow you to follow up on any problems that were encountered when a message was sent to CRS and to keep aware of inventory levels for future dates. They are addressed to users flagged with “Receive Admin Messages” in the user profile. C. Remote login is something we are currently working to bring to SoftHotel, in fact, it has already been added to the program, and is currently being tested for production properties. This is something you should see implemented in the very near future. (STILL WORKING ON THIS TOO) 13) Unique Situation – We are under contract with corporate lodging where they Pay us rate of $55.00 if we sale below 25 rooms per month, if over then $37.99. How could i go back and adjust rates in this case A. This would require accessing the checked out folios and performing a room rate adjustment, applying that adjustment to the original posted amount and then applying the credit to the newly adjusted total. We can go over this as well. Many of the problems outlined above still have no answers yet they are forcing owners to pay a huge amount of money to upgrade to these systems.
Policy is unknown to guest services with this system.
checking in and reservations.
response was that this is a known issue and will be addressed in the next update. We were
updated since then on 4/15 and the issue is still there.
rollaway request, do not disturb requests, linen change, ect.)
Ten or 12 point fonts are not sufficient for an important part of checkout.
pages. Reports should be designed to fit on 2-3 sheets of paper for them to be functional.
screen to access the most used functions.
effort to reduce the toll pollution has taken on our planet. Softhotel could simply
be “GREEN” be allowing a linen change schedule.
screen there are 3 different buttons with slightly different pictures of computers and 2
separate buttons with pictures of envelopes.
open. There is a “Cancel” button, but it doesn’t function, you are forced to post an amount
and then you have to edit it out.
monitor Wyndham Rewards free night stays and bill for them, and Monthly Franchise
reporting.
staffing and ordering supplies. Now I constantly have to monitor reports to stay on top of
my room inventory.
confusing and difficult to read.
must ask for the guests credit card for each new reservation made.
can and cannot do – it should be the other way around.
what the cancelation policies are for any given date because the system isn’t showing it.
after a guest has stayed 30 days. – One more thing I have to manually track
consisting of hundreds of pages – this is absurd. Guests expect to be able to get a receipt
upon request. UPDATE: I had a guest that stayed with us for 35 days. At checkout the
system populated a 38 page receipt. I understand that this is a "known issue" but it is one
that needs IMMEDIATE attention. In a society that is more and more "Green"
conscientious, a receipt of such excessive length is environmentally unfriendly and
unprofessional.
reservation it changes that guests rate which results in rate adjustments later.
to post room charges for pre-audit Check-outs and post-audit Check-ins confuses them. It is
unnecessarily complicated and could be simplified by posting the charges at check-in.
want them to have full manager access -- I cannot do this with this system.
support told me to use a local zip code and leave a note on the reservation to get the correct
zip code. This is not an acceptable solution. My staff will invariable overlook the note and I
will not have a proper address.
upset when we ask for a contact number each time they stay.
often. I would like to be able to track how much money is being spent on Postage each
month and Miscellaneous is too broad a category to track.
makes it difficult to find an error if one has been made.
Support has to override this function. It cannot be done from the property.
6/12/08
Below, you will find a letter that O8A members can copy and edit and then send into Wyndham regarding SoftHotels and why we as franchisees are not comfortable risking our revenue. Further, below this letter are the issues outlined and then further the responses from a Wyndham Softhotel technician. The issues are black and white and the problems must be resolved before a complete rollout. The problems with the software combined with the excessive costs are the issue.
Download the MS Word Doc. SoftHotel Letter for Wyndham Here
Attn: Jeff Edwards
Chief Information Officer,
1 Sylvan Way,
Parsippany, NJ - 07054
With reference to your notice dated June 09th 2008, we would like for you to understand that our current systems were updated three years ago. My property had paid $3,000 at the time of installation.
cc: Chris Demetriou
cc: FAB
cc: FSM
1. The groups are hard to pull up and make reservations for. Not everyone at
the front desk gets it. I am unsure if it is a training issue or just a
computer glitch. It is easy for someone to get in to a reservation and change
it. Maybe password protect it to Sales and Management?
2. Takes entirely too long to transmit information back to central. If we
change a room in the system, it takes 5-10 mintues to show up clean as an
assignable room.
3. Will sometimes bump a guest that is already in house to another room. We
tried to make a room stayover this morning and it bumped them out of room 101
to room 223. No reason to it but we had to put the room in as clean wait a fair
amount of time and then put them back in room 101.
4. If you set tax exempt, it for some reason still puts taxes on the room. Is
this a glitch or is there something that we are not following through with?
5. There need to be LESS rate plans. There are way too many to choose from thus
we are underselling the amount that we can get for the room. Not sure if this is
a load issue on our side or not.
6. Sometimes when you run a report, it does not hold true to the parameters
that you set in. You can command promt it to make a report for 2/07/08-2/16/08
and it will not hold true to those dates.
7.Is there any way to make the message icon bigger or highlight the fact there
is a message differently? There are messages put in and they are overlooked
because the icon is smaller than a fingernail.
8. The printer is very slow to print on the folios but will spit out a report
in 2 seconds. Is it just our computer or is there a way to speed this up?
This system is extremely slow, If I am to set group block It may take up to six minutes, System gets locked several times esp while we try to search in history.
Reservation does not appear on grid unless rooms are assigned, Going backward and looking to past folios is not allowed
unable to adjust room rate once audited or posted.
Unable to separate third party commission on hotel level.
Unable to produce a statement with correct invoice numbers which leads to major confusion to the vendors when it comes to reconciliation.
Unable to produce statement with folio numbers that match newly generated account numbers on statements.
Unable to produce detailed statement with itemized charges.
We are still not sure why we are getting inventory messages. those should be user directed not to property.
Remote log in would be very helpful
Originally Posted in October 2007
SoftHotel: This new PMS sytem that Wyndham has scheduled to roll out by the Summer of 2008, is a very costly sytem. Projected cost for each site is $15,000-$18,000. Most owners have just upgraded a year ago at an expense of $7,000-$10,000. During that refresh Wyndham was charging $2,000 per site for installation. This time with SoftHotel they are attempting to charge $7,000-$10,000 for installation and training. It appears that they may benefit extensively from this software installation.
WE HAVE ASKED EVERY MEMBER TO PUT THE ROLLOUT ON HOLD. MANY USING IPTU WHICH IS AN INTERNET BASED SYSTEM, HAVE FOUND THAT IT IS MUCH MORE COST EFFECTIVE AND PROVIDES THE MOTEL'S WITH AN EXCELLENT SOFTWARE SOLUTION. ALSO, MANY OWNERS USING HSS, MSI, AND BRILLIANT HAVE BECOME COMFORTABLE USING THESE SYSTEMS TO THEIR BENEFIT.
Directway: Many of the hotel owners would be surprised to find out that some brand owners only pay $100 per month for direct way. However, Super 8 owners are charged $160 per month. Again, whether it is $100 or $160 it is still unfair as directway is just another form of internet through satellite where normal charges range from $30 - $45. This could be established in a less expensive format while yielding the same results. One owner was quoted $39 a month for Directway to install and maintain their system.
