Tips
Before we jump in, let me quickly say that SynXis does so many things extremely well. There is a reason they are one of the most popular hotel CRS and booking engine platforms around. Even still, we get this question a lot – especially from more resort-style hotels that don’t fit the classic hotel checklist – so I wanted to take a few minutes to quickly answer whether Inntopia Commerce is a good SynXis alternative.
Now, keep in mind that hoteliers use SynXis for a lot of things, but in this post we’re going to be focusing on the booking engine.
Let’s start with SynXis. SynXis’s booking engine is really good at selling individual hotel rooms from a single hotel. It also does a good job when you need to offer a few add-ons like room upgrades or in-room enhancements as long as those are based out of the same PMS that the rooms are being pulled from. In other words, if you’re a standalone hotel and the majority of your revenue comes from lodging, Inntopia Commerce may not be a great alternative to SynXis.
SynXis does offer another way to sell add-ons and enhancements through their Retail Studio platform. This is essentially an extranet where you can build and store inventory that guests can select between choosing a room and checking out. However, the cut that SynXis takes on these products can be significant which makes it unrealistic to sell some products. Even more, these products cannot be date-specific and there is no way to integrate with the systems where some of them live. For example, if you’re selling spa services as an add-on, you can only sell generic spa credits rather than allow them to book times/inventory from your spa system.
As I mentioned, however, once you move out of the traditional hotel concept and start to add in other lines of business – golf, spa, concerts, wellness, activities, etc. – and a hotel looks more like a resort, this is where Inntopia Commerce is a popular alternative to SynXis. Just like SynXis can pull live inventory into their booking engine from a single PMS, Inntopia Commerce can pull live inventory in our booking engine from multiples systems including non-lodging systems that sell rentals, tickets, spa reservations, etc. so the guest can book everything they need in a single transaction and get one receipt when they’re done.
This one-cart booking can happen online with our booking engine, in the call center using our call center software, and can be accessed via the Inntopia Commerce API for custom projects. Like SynXis, you can also build additional inventory in our extranet, but this inventory carries very low (or no) fees to sell and can be date, time, and inventory limited so you can offer everything from cabanas and rentals to lessons and massage services.
Let’s look at a few situations where Inntopia Commerce is a popular alternative to SynXis. Or, said another way, the most common types of properties that move from SynXis to Inntopia Commerce.
While resorts like Massanutten offer many activities, golf is a key part of their business. Massanutten needed a way to sell all of these things in one booking engine. As you can imagine, a hotel-centric booking engine just isn’t set up for this type of shopping experience but Inntopia Commerce is.
Here’s what they said about the results of using Inntopia Commerce:
“The benefit to the customers using one shopping cart for their purchases has led to a substantial increase in online sales and per-reservation amount.”
Camelback Resort in Pennsylvania also has a long list of products they offer, but at the top of that list are both an indoor and outdoor waterpark. Again. alternative booking engines built primarily for hotels can’t handle this very well but Inntopia Commerce can.
Here’s what their team said about the switch:
“I love that everything is in one booking engine instead of multiple booking engines. The ease of being able to put multiple adventures into your cart means guests can essentially create their own custom vacation. That’s really important as we push people to book direct.”
The same is true for any other resort or hotel that sells lodging plus at least one other activity or product, especially if that product plays a major role in either the reason guests travel to that property or how much of an impact that product has on the bottom line.
Inntopia Commerce also has advanced packaging capabilities, seamless handoffs between the booking engine and call center so guests can start or end their booking wherever they feel most comfortable, and advanced confirmation emails powered by Inntopia Marketing Cloud. Even more, Inntopia Commerce takes security incredibly seriously and is both ISO 27001 certified and PCI compliant.
Hopefully that clarifies things a little. In some ways, Inntopia Commerce and SynXis really aren’t competitors because they are built for two different types of properties. Hotels with simple needs and very few ancillary products usually find SynXis great. Resorts with activities or experiences besides the hotel room often love Inntopia’s ability to sell live inventory from every system in one transaction. But many resorts or hotels use SynXis for distribution and Inntopia Commerce for their booking engine.
In other words, if you’re not just selling hotel rooms and offer your guests multiple products out of multiple systems, Inntopia Commerce might be a good alternative to SynXis when choosing a booking engine.
Learn more about Inntopia Commerce:
https://corp.inntopia.com/commerce/
Start selling more of everything your resort has to offer.
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