Partner Spotlight: CaterBook

Who:

CaterBook

Where:

North Cornwall, England, UK

What is your business about and how did you get started?

I used to work as an independent e-commerce consultant and rather stumbled into the hospitality sector as a result. Twelve years later, here we are. Our software is an integrated booking system for hotels that provides its own links to online travel agents like booking.com and Laterooms.

What are your core values and mission?

We aim to provide a system which is easy to use and simplifies many of the tasks encountered in the daily running of a hotel. All backed up by knowledgeable UK based support staff at a price which is very competitive.

Why did you choose to work with Epos Now?

We had integrated with some older till systems in the past, but with CaterBook also being a cloud based system, there was an immediate synergy with the offering from Epos Now. We have a number of hotels using our system where key staff are not permanently based at the property, and so it is important to them to have the flexibility to be able to view their account from wherever they may be. Epos Now are also very pro-active with their integrations to third party systems and I think this is a great philosophy.

What are your predictions for the future of bookings?

I think the OTA’s are getting very powerful and it’s hard to see that changing any time soon. Having an easy to use, commission free website booking engine can reduce reliance on third party sites so I could see some of the older booking engines disappearing. It’s a competitive market though, and showing real time availability and pricing on ever more OTA’s seems to be the way forward. Properties will only manage that efficiently through software.

Do you have any advice for businesses?

Keep an open mind, be responsive - but always keep tabs on your business performance. An old boss of mine once told me that turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. That has stuck with me. We’ve seen some properties struggle in recent years because of a mentality that they have always done things a certain way. It may have worked in the past, but if it’s clearly not working now then the opportunity to put things right may already have passed.

Chris Noon, CaterBook

Find out more about CaterBook here, or visit their website. Get in touch on 0800 2 945 945 to find out more about our integration with CaterBook.