Elina

Avantages

My self-catering complex has 12 cottages available for holidays & for short-term rentals, so was needing a system to cope with stays between 2 days - 3+mths. After much research, I selected Elina and couldn't be more pleased. Elina, together with a new website, has increased my booking and we are now operating at over 95% occupancy April - October and 90% occupancy annually. The best features for me are -

- Automatic collection of (2-stage) payments. I now rarely have to get involved with this process.
- Ability to specify arrival/depart days, min/max length of stay (my standard set-up), & then open up a cottage for e.g. a much shorter-stay, or a `non-standard arrival day, to fill any gaps.
- Integration with Staah, so a 2 way integration with many appropriate OTAs
- Slick customer-facing booking-engine gives a clear booking process. Branded to look like my own website, including URL (with SSL certification).
- Very flexible & easy to use promotions tool.
- `Guest Lounge is also a great feature and should be a real USP, as many providers don't offer this. Has contributed to making compliance with GDPR easy, as guests can view their personal data held.
- Continually upgrading & revitalising system, which is very reassuring.
- Customer service I know it has been said in previous reviews, the support has been fantastic. Good (although could be better) user guides and how-to videos also.

Inconvénients

- Would be good to have a mobile-responsive system, so that working off-site on an iPad, or iPhone is easier.
- The back-end property management system is looking a little dated and therefore doesn't reflect/promote the quality of the excellent functionality
- Lots of clicking between screens when making a reservation manually
- Marketing tool is not as swish as it could be.

As I understand it, there are plans to improve all/most of the above though, which would be great.

Avantages

Elina is incredibly feature-rich. It delivers most of the requirements of a dedicated Property Management System and while also being a powerful Booking Engine. The redesign of the booking engine last year produced a very powerful sales process for guests making bookings online.
A strong relationship with STAAH makes the integration for channel management quick and easy.

Inconvénients

The accounting and invoicing modules need updating, something that the team at Elina have been working on in the last year. The customer support team are lovely, very very helpful and know their product inside out. To maintain the level of support as they do means that response times can suffer sometimes in busy periods. They do however always deliver a resolution!

Avantages

The product simply does not function and causes more errors in your reportings. There are no Pro due to this.

Inconvénients

1) Owners Report- Does not work. The system can not give you the basics, ask them to show you a Room Revenue for a single property from Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia- It does not happen. Don't fall for the demo report ask them to show it live. Their solution to us was to manually adjust the entries in the system to get a correct report for owners. Do not also believe that it will be upgraded, in 15 months we worked with them it did not get done.
2) In the reporting the date format is reported as a text and not as dates and the system does not give you number off nights stayed.
3) Everything you ask them costs 150 pounds to get an answer. If you want to see how their API works they will charge you, if you want to have a conversations with them on developing some thing before the conversation they will charge you.
4) Do not do the website with them, they use outdated tools and then start charging you extra to do upgrades. In 12 months we could not get a client to get to the final reservation page on the website cause of their coding.
5) No consistency in their software, when you print reports in some reports the property comes up as a descriptions, in others as a short code in others a full name. Despite several requests this never got done.
6) Very complicated to add customers, owners and suppliers.
7) Not many partners want to work with them cause of their approach. We asked a few companies if they can do an integration with them and most said NO

Avantages

Payment automation & booking management flexibility.

Inconvénients

Pax occupancy-based pricing is complicated.

Avantages

Ease of booking and payment of invoice. Viewing bookings is easy and seeing what availability.

Inconvénients

Sometimes a function can be complicated lots of function before seeing result.

Avantages

Integrating Elina into our business was a great move. The online booking system and ability to sell packages have been instrumental in growing our revenue and we have really appreciated all the hard work Elina has put in in helping both our transition and adaptation over the last few years.

Inconvénients

All of the aspects that we needed to tailor to our individual business, Elina has worked with up proactively to iron out any bumps.

Avantages

This suite aims to offer you a comprehensive package, an all in one solution for your hotel needs.
They offer a lot of features and if you consider how many they are and how costly they can be if you purchase them separately one by one, the price is not even bad.
They make constant improvements and they keep everything in order. being an old time customer, however, over the years I have witnessed many slow downs and server issues that took time to resolve.
When they embark in a major improvement, that can also affect your productivity, because things do not go always well at the first take
If all the functionalities that they offer worked as promised, this suite would be a great tool, however it is more likely that they will not go beyond a certain level of efficiency, because they are too many, too difficult to work together at a deep level, and subject to continuous change from market innovations
It would be betterif your expectations are limited, if you have a small property with simple routines to manage, a simple calendar, rates that don't change too high or low, promotions that don't promote too much, etc.
They also have a small website development agency that is managed with taste, and that i have appreciated even more than the booking engine itself.

Inconvénients

The software has its pros and cons as I have already said, you can get the pros without taking the cons onboard.
What I find was really bad is customer service.
I don't complain too often, but the last time I did - and I believe it was for a right reason - they eventually deleted the ticket itself and dropped it
I am learning the hard way, that software developers really don't have any knowledge of customer care; they just sit on their chair all day with their nose on the keyboard and in the end you have to accept what they give you.
First thing, ,if for any reason you don't like what you get, it is entirely your problem. They don't seem to care,
Well, in spite of 8 years I am happy to have found the strenght to move to a different provider. it took me a big effort, but I am very happy to have done it

Avantages

A fantastic software. We use it for a company that operates both in the apartment and the hotel world and across multiple geographies with varying tax rules. Elina is smashing it - once it's set up properly, it's a breeze. From day-to-day operations to reports and 3rd party integrations (payment gateways, RMS, custom housekeeping app). Take your time to plan out full set up with them inc. marketing and auto communications - it will save you hours and hours of work every week so it's worth understanding it fully and planning out for it. Overall, outstanding software and partnership.

Inconvénients

Nothing, really. There were some points on design and usability but they addressed it with one of their recent new releases.

Avantages

-100% retroactively usable
-super fast support team
-easy to manage and administrate
-own IBE directly from the same company
frequently requested feature will be developed with out any fees for the customer

Inconvénients

I really can't see any cons here...
okay some small details but this is only because of my personal preferences and habits

Avantages

Comprehensive set of functions and reporting. Professional looking invoices which give my customers more confidence in using my services. The booking engine links easily to my website, payment gateway and channel manager. User friendly training suite for reference especially at the beginning. An excellent solution for growth and upscaling your business for the future, without the headache of moving to another provider which has more functionality, because Elina in my opinion caters for small, medium or large size operations.

Inconvénients

The deposit rules can be a bit riged and sensitive to amendments to booking which may lead to customers being over charged on occasions. Not always easy to correct invoices without the help from Elina Concierge

Avantages

Elina PMS is very easy in use, very reliable and provides all what is supposed to. It's simple but is also advanced in terms of features it provides.

Inconvénients

As in every system, there are many things that us as a business would like to see working differently but these are individual options and feature within the system.

Avantages

It controls all aspects of my business. So its a one stop shop that manages to specialise in all (well most) areas. Its generally easy to use and logical and user friendly

Inconvénients

There are a couple of areas id like to improve but they are not priority so i dont know when or if these will happen.

Avantages

- management is supportive of implementing new integrations or improvements from their customers. This is a flexible approach you wouldn't get with larger companies
- ability to automate key tasks and reduce manual processing
- constantly improving and updating
- support team is very quick to respond
- generally reliable, no major issues
- company understands challenges facing hotels and they can support overcoming these e.g. tools and strategies for driving more direct bookings

Inconvénients

- focus on making the system more user friendly, reducing the number of steps needed to complete a task/transaction. This is improving and we have have seen positive steps forward here.
- initially we didn't have much interaction Elina and we were left to get on with things, so felt we missed out on learning more about what more the product could do, but the approach has changed in recent times and we have received much more proactive support

Avantages

This covers all parts of our business from PMS to data basing our customers. Flexible system giving many different options so we never get a 'computer says 'no' scenario. Had personal help to understand areas we were having difficulty with.

Inconvénients

We do have some user operational difficulties but the support team are always there to talk these through with us

Avantages

We appreciate the user-friendliness and flexibility in implementing tailor-made features for our business.
The Elina concierge team always try their best to fulfill our needs and find technical solutions that works in for practical and operational purpose

Inconvénients

As most software it is impossible to adapt to all needs, our company is based in Thailand and time difference is sometimes an issue in terms of quick support but that's nothing you can do about.

Avantages

That you're finally able to get out if you observe your 6 month notice period!

Inconvénients

Bugs, customer service ignore you when you report them, try to fault you for them. They're rude, arrogant, and fail to investigate issues reported. They reply to tickets months later closing them down, saying we believe everything has been resolved. When they have issues with partners they integrate with, they always blame it on the other side, even when the fault is clearly on their side. They don't take feedback on board for product improvement.

Avantages

We particularly like that the back end management system is quite simple and easy to use and the booking calendar has become invaluable. We've used other systems in the past which were more complicated however this suited out needs much more as it's not overcomplicated - it just does what it needs to do well.
The on boarding training and ongoing support is also very good. When we had our initial training it was very thorough and we felt we had a good understanding of how to use the system and also how to make it work for us. When we have any questions or problems they are dealt with quickly and the support team are helpful and friendly and know their product. Again this is very different from past experiences!

Inconvénients

There are some elements of the accounting which need improvement as it doesn't cope very well when a booking is shortened. As a serviced apartment operator we take payment in advance and this is a problem we've found with a lot of systems.

Avantages

Evrything, the ease of use, clever marketing, pricing platforms that work, this system really works for trying to take some % back off the OTA's

Inconvénients

the fact that we didn't go ahead sooner.

Avantages

As owners we like to be able to monitor the business, day to day. Elina gives us lots of options to accomplish just that. Elina is reliable and the staff love the functionallity and efficiency. We have had the software in our hotel for 5 years now, and never experienced a problem.

Inconvénients

Over the years we have requested that Elina added some features that we felt were missing, and this was promptly done and is now an integral part of the software. A good PMS is never "static", but needs to be in constant development in partnership with the users to keep up with the ever changing market.

Avantages

Work flow - offers a well designed booking engine
connectivity with Channel Manager
Elina Concierge Team - Great customer support and constantly adding new improvements
Good value for money

Inconvénients

None

Avantages

Elina offers good software and very good customer support. The team is extremely helpful in all situations. We have been in contact with Sales department, onboarding department and technician department and everyone have been very helpful and understanding. The software offers all the functions we need, and are easy to navigate and use. We have had our own contact person who has helped all the way and we would certainly recommend Elina to other users.

Inconvénients

There are not many Cons in my opinion, but i'd like to team to investigate the possibility to let the users decide the themes of the software. As far as i know there is only one theme available.

Avantages

It becomes a central place for all our guest information. We know all our bookings, guest details and invoicing are to hand. When I took time out to review how time we were spending on manual processes, I realised that using Elina, which can do these tasks for us would save a lot of time. Automation has become a priority so we can free up to spend on growing our business.

Inconvénients

Because it is a large shift from not using any software to selecting a dedicated serviced apartment product like Elina, the most challenging element was committing the time to manage the change process. This has been made easier by the help and support of the Elina team. We changed to Sagepay payment gateway to work with Elina. It would have been great if Worldpay was integrated.

Avantages

It is very user friendly. We have tested lots of other providers and nothing has come close to Elina for user

Inconvénients

The accountancy module needs some work, but this is something that is currently in development. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] from Elina is very good at listening to the end users and taking feedback to the development team in order to design a solution.

Avantages

They listen to our needs & implement changes/updates to acheieve this in a good time frame.

Inconvénients

The system sometimes has a few glitches, but are resolved quickly. Also it is sometimes hard to get hold of the support team (but i understand it is a small team!)

Avantages

Arrivals/departure list of guest.
Easy to check booking history (not accurate 100% though) and payment log to find out source of payment when auditing booking payments.

Inconvénients

Service - lots of interruptions, delayed bookings coming into the system. Their response - input booking data manually for the moment until is sorted out!!
Same with integration of invoices - raise invoices manually!

Not to mention time they upgraded their system. We ended up for a week overcharging customers and all we got was a mere apology - no compensation whatsoever.