restaurant and hotel combo

[wfbtr]

hello-
i work for a company that is building a high end hotel and a couple restaurants next to it. we're in the process of deciding which pos and pms to use. i believe micros is the only vendor to make both, and others have an integration module to connect to micros' pms system (i've only seen Aloha at this point). i'm wondering if there is any advantage/disadvantage to using micros only. cost is certainly an issue, but functionality is as well. i'm the network admin. and i probably won't have much to do with the systems, as we'll use their contracted support- but for some reason i've been put in charge of researching this.
any thoughts?
thanks.

 

[DTSMAN]

wfbtr, read through the other threads on this forum a few pages back. There have been other discussions on Micros PMS.

 

[honda004]

if i can recommend a good software with hotel interface i will suggest Squirrel systems. i am not a vendor nor i work for squirrel, but i used to manage a site with squirrel and hotel interface and trust me, it was great no problems.

 

[suchasynic]

Most Food & Beverage systems out there on the market have an interface "module" that you can purchase in addition to the base system.

What I would be looking for with an interface is specifically what information is sent back & forth between the interface?

For example, some FnB systems send the basics -- date/time, room #, posting total, tax1, tax2, tax3, gratuitity, employee. Other's can send the category information like a food total, liquor total, beverage total, etc... Some can send only 1 tax amount, other's can send more.

The PMS system may send more or less -- it could send "Voice Mail Waiting at Front Desk!" to the user on the FnB Workstation or allow the employee to perform a "check-out" for the guest from the FnB sytem that would total all their purchases, including room charges and allow the employee to accept payment. I would definately look at, in detail, the information included in any message format sent between the two systems. I would assume most software companies would spec this information out on paper at some point.

If the PMS system is where most of the accounting/audit information is being generated (reports, etc...), the more information that is passed back and forth between systems will improve reporting on the PMS side -- if the FnB location does their own thing, then it may not matter that the systems share copious amounts of information.

It's also a two way street -- if you have a PMS product that can send any amount of information to any other system the receiving system may only be able to accept very little and a simpler interface is the result.

My experience as a user is with Micros, Lanmark, Epitome for Windows (CLS) & 5 Star for PMS, all great systems.

Micros, Squirrel, & 5 Star for Food & Bev systems.

All were okay in regards to the interface -- there were no issues that I can remember. I do remember the combination of Lanmark PMS with Squirrel FnB or Micros PMS with Micros FnB or 5 Star PMS with 5 Star FnB provinding alot of information to the FnB side like "Voice mail message waiting at front desk!" for example.

I think there are more companies that do offer both products. In the end it's only two computers talking back and forth and they will ultimately tell each other what we want them to; I would imagine the more $$, the more chatty they will be ;-)

 

[wfbtr]

thanks for all the input. next week i'm meeting with Aloha, Micros, and InnFinity. I know Innfinity will run on a basic server with RAID 5, not sure about the others. the less i have to interface with those systems as a network admin the better!
i'll give some feedback after the meetings next week.