This is the third article in a five part series on how the cloud is helping to improve the hospitality industry. Read part two.

Prior to the advent of the cloud, the high costs of traditional IT infrastructures made economies of scale difficult to achieve for smaller hotel companies. But with SaaS, the cloud’s low barrier to entry and “pay as you go” pricing structure enables small hotels to realize similar economies of scale with minimal ramp up time and no capital outlay.

The cloud also gives smaller hotels instant access to the latest Property Management System (PMS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, which is updated automatically — a much better option than struggling with expensive and outdated traditional CRM and PMS. Plus, because technical issues are handled by the cloud service provider, hotel staff only needs to learn how to use the systems on an end-user level, which saves on training and allows non-tech savvy individuals to access mission critical data.

Next week: How the cloud improves productivity and increases flexibility