If you run a hotel, B&B or some other type of property offering accommodation and related services, the word has it Netroomz can improve the way you do business. Of course, all tools and services out there come with similar claims and promises, so it is up to you to do your homework and find out where the truth lies. We’re here to make your decision easier, so keep reading to discover the truth about this particular engine!
About Netroomz
It is an online booking engine developed for hotels. You can implement it directly into your website. Its developer is an Australian company, Netroomz Pty Ltd, founded in 2004. Unfortunately, there is very little information available about it.
The company appears in a few online business directories and has a LinkedIn page, but all sources repeat the same information provided on the About Us page of the website. The company is not active at all on LinkedIn, the only post it has directing visitors to their official website.
There are no details about the team who developed the booking engine. Also, the overall look of the website is a bit outdated, with frames and lots of text. It resembles the aspect of sales pages used in the 2010s and the color scheme causes eye fatigue.
Accompanying a product that claims to be one of the best alternatives on the market, a revolutionary tool for hospitality businesses, these details don’t suggest anything good. Should you entrust your money to a company you know nothing about, for a tool whose presentation does not reflect today’s trends?
The question is difficult to answer since not even third-party reviewers can express a clear opinion. For example, a review on the HotelTechReport website, belonging to a Director of Operations, states that the Netroomz dashboard design feels outdated and awkward to use. However, the reviewer rated the tool with 5 out of 5 stars for the return on investment and 4 out of 5 stars for ease of use.
Returning to the booking engine, its official website makes a series of bold promises on the very long homepage. The engine will allegedly help you be in the know, up-sell, and know where your business is coming from, whatever that could mean.
You will be able to integrate with other tools and platforms, customize it as you see fit, and access it from mobile devices. It will let you target international clients and promote properties around the world.
The integrated channel manager will make it easy to use. With Netroomz, you can expect access to a sophisticated, cost-effective tool, supported by loads of useful information, and able to take your hospitality business to a new level.
Before you take the respective information for granted, keep in mind that, judging by the outdated design, the information is probably outdated as well. Another detail that supports this idea is the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool metric according to which the website itself is poorly optimized for mobile phones, scoring only 56 out of 100.
All you need to do in order to convince yourself is to access the Netroomz website from a mobile device. You will immediately notice the fact that website is rather difficult to navigate, with lots of barely readable tiny text and menu tabs so small that you can barely tap. So much for mobile readiness!
Moving on, the booking engine does, indeed, support customization to reflect the brand image of the hotel and blend in with the design of the website. It comes with multi-language support and can calculate and display rates in various currencies.
It lets property managers generate various reports, both in writing and as graphs and charts. This is certainly a useful feature for professionals who need to have access to data concerning occupancy, profits, cash flow, and the average number of guests per season. Other details user can obtain are:
- How many website visitors inquired about vacancies
- How far they went with the booking process
- Specific information from Google Analytics, which can be integrated into the engine
- Conversion rates
Those with a special focus on marketing can use Netroomz to assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by integrating promo and referral code offerings into the engine. Users can also add extra services to the basic room-booking service, allowing customers to complete their reservation package with:
- Breakfast
- WiFi access
- Conference room booking
- Newspaper delivery to the room, and more
Making all these extra services available directly through the same booking platform is the tactics of choice of many hotel chains. From this point of view, the tool can be useful for hotel owners who are looking for a fully integrated online booking system at an affordable price (more on this later).
Netroomz Demo
Customers have the option to book a demo on the Tour page before they subscribe. This way, they can learn how the system works without spending any money on it. The same page displays a few screen captures of the engine, covering:
- Rates/Availability screen (visible to the tourists)
- Admin dashboard
- Sales & Booking chart
- Daily allotments
- Bulk allotments
- Booking reports
- Hotel information
The screen captures suggest only the front end (visible to the tourists on the hotel website) can be customized. The backend (dashboard) features the same color scheme of the website itself. The dashboard looks, indeed, easy to use, just as the website claims. However, as mentioned above, its design looks outdated.
A special tab on the Home page states that an iOS mobile app is now available to clients. The tab is clickable and leads to a page opening in a separate browser window, which is confusing for first-time visitors to the website. The mobile app has 3 screen captures available for users to evaluate how it looks and works. Each of these screen captures opens in a different window when clicked on.
The screens indicate that the app has a clean, easy to use and easy to understand structure. It is certainly superior in design to the website itself and the screen captures of the booking engine dashboard.
Top Features of Netroomz
The features users can enjoy depend on the type of subscription they choose: Standard or Professional. There are 20 Standard features, the most important being:
- Room rates and availability screen on the front end
- Flexibility in setting up room types, packages, and rates, as well as the order in which these are displayed to customers
- Remember Me feature for tourists – their contact and personal data will be saved for a future booking
- Secure administration dashboard: registered users can log in securely from any device connected to the internet
- Automatic alerts when a type of room is fully booked or a certain time period is fully booked
- Management reporting for single hotels and for hotel chains
- Easy to load last minute offers and special packages for special events
- Payment processing by interfacing with various payment gateways, such as PayPal, SecurePay. and Payment Express.
These features represent the core functionalities of any professional booking system, suitable for all needs, including small hotels. Large resort hotels and hotel chains can opt for the Professional subscription, which includes all of the Standard features, plus 22 extra features. Among the Professional features, the following seem to be the most important:
- TripAdvisor Connect interface allowing potential customers to reach the booking platform from TripAdvisor
- Customer behavior tracking: time spent on the booking page, point of abandonment for mobile and computer users
- Multi-language and multi-currency support
- Optional survey fields in the booking form
- Currency exchange
- Corporate clients and Negotiated rates
- Advance inventory controls: length of stay, restrictions for changes in booking or cancellations
- Google Analytics tracking
- Customizable HTML email confirmations for guests
- On-demand data export.
These features seem to cover the advanced needs of large hotels offering business travel services and running complex marketing and customer retention campaigns. It is important to note that, besides the above features, these hotels need not just real-time information on availability but also an effective system of alerts to notify them when a certain special offer is sold out so that they can stop the advertising campaign for it.
Netroomz Pricing
The prices differ according to the subscription chosen and the capacity of the business. The rates for the Standard subscription are:
- $99 per month + GST (VAT) for hotels with 1-20 rooms
- $159 per month + GST (VAT) for hotels with 21-50 rooms
- $199 per month + GST (VAT) for hotels with more than 51 rooms.
For the Professional subscription, users can pay 2.95% of the booked revenue. Users with several properties can pay a fixed monthly fee for each property. All subscription plans have a 30-day trial period.
Netroomz Strengths
- It is affordable, compared to other competing booking engines, and comes with several offers to meet various clients’ needs and budgets.
- The features are designed to cover the needs of both small hotels and large hotel chains.
- The backend of the engine has a very simple user interface, easy to use even by the inexperienced.
- The booking engine has an associated mobile app which has a modern look and an intuitive user interface.
- The trial period and the Demo allow potential buyers to evaluate the engine and decide whether it is worth the investment or not.
- The ton of information on the official website suggests the developer did their best to provide target clients with a complete image of the system and its functionalities.
Netroomz Weaknesses
- There is very little, vague, and confusing information available on the company behind Netroomz. There are conflicting addresses on various online resources: own website, Google local directory, business directories. No team member information is available, and the About Us section is very short and limited from the point of view of the information it provides.
- The website has an outdated design and an unpleasant, tiring color scheme. It is not optimized for mobile phones at all, which makes us doubt the claim about the engine’s compatibility with mobile devices and responsive design. The dashboard of the engine has an outdated design and features the same color scheme as the website.
- Despite the bold claims regarding the engine’s capabilities and popularity, reviews referring to it are scarce. If it were such a breakthrough in its field, we would surely be able to find out more information about it.
The Bottom Line
Contrary to the claims on the official website, Netroomz appears to be a budget booking engine. It has many, but not all of the features of other competing solutions, and an outdated design that makes us think it was conceived as a winning tool but failed to live up to its potential and the developer abandoned it.
If you have not yet decided whether your business can benefit from a booking engine and how much money you should invest in one, the free trial and the Demo presentation of this particular engine could be a great starting point.
They will let you find out how the engine works, how well it matches the needs of your business, and how in line with your clients’ expectations it is. If you like what you discover, you can go ahead and pay for it. If not, you will at least be able to eliminate one option from your list.
Just pay attention every step of the way and only provide your payment details when you are absolutely sure this is the right tool for your business. When you have reached a conclusion, don’t hesitate to share it with us and our readers, to help everyone learn from your experience and shed some light on what Netroomz really offers and how it delivers on its promises.
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