38% of Hotel Employees Quit Over Their PMS Experience: What Cloudbeds’ Latest Report Reveals—and How Inn-Flow Can Help
As hotels continue to grapple with rising labor costs and talent shortages, a recent Cloudbeds PMS User Experience Report serves as a wake-up call: 38% of surveyed employees said their Property Management System experience significantly influenced their decision to leave a job. When staff feel burdened by clunky, outdated tech, turnover spikes—and operational efficiency suffers.
At Inn-Flow, we see this stat not as a warning sign but as an opportunity. Below, we highlight four key findings from Cloudbeds’ research and offer strategies on how Inn-Flow’s back-office platform can help hotels revitalize training, boost productivity, and keep valued team members on board.
1. Manual Training Overloads Managers
Cloudbeds Insight
- 73% of hotel employees receive in-person PMS training from a supervisor or colleague.
- More than 50% of managers believe new team members need 4 months to 3 years to feel fully confident.
Inn-Flow Perspective
When managers constantly re-teach procedures, operational costs soar and guest experiences risk falling short. A simpler, more intuitive system means less on-the-job shadowing and smoother onboarding.
Action Step:
- Automate Onboarding: Incorporate modular video tutorials and online learning paths. This approach lightens the supervisory load, ensuring new hires can ramp up quickly.
- Provide On-Demand Resources: Foster a culture of self-guided training and continuous improvement, supported by readily accessible user guides and FAQs.
2. Clunky PMS Interfaces Fuel Turnover
Cloudbeds Insight
- “Too many clicks” surfaced as the #1 employee complaint.
- 38% of respondents explicitly linked poor PMS experiences to their decision to leave a property.
Inn-Flow Perspective
Staff don’t want to wrestle with complex screens in fast-paced settings. If every minor task requires multiple steps, frustration builds—and that can spur employees to look for friendlier workplaces.
Action Step:
- Focus on User-Centric Design: Evaluate each system screen. If it takes more than three or four clicks to complete a common task, it’s time to simplify.
- Reduce Administrative Drudgery: Consolidate tasks (e.g., labor scheduling, approvals, and inventory management) into a single interface, so employees spend more time delighting guests instead of toggling between platforms.
3. Data Silos Impede Efficiency
Cloudbeds Insight
- Many properties struggle with poor communication between their PMS and other systems, causing operational disconnects.
- Accurate, real-time data emerged as crucial for employee productivity and retention.
Inn-Flow Perspective
When a PMS doesn’t speak the same language as your accounting or labor management tools, staff spend hours manually reconciling data. Errors creep in, and frustration increases.
Action Step:
- Unify Your Tech Stack: Seek platforms like Inn-Flow that integrate seamlessly with Cloudbeds and other PMS systems (We integrate with all of them!). Real-time data synchronization minimizes duplicate entries and manual updates.
- Empower Cross-Department Collaboration: Give leaders in sales, marketing, and operations immediate access to key metrics so that everyone makes decisions off a single source of truth.
4. A Better UX Spurs Career Growth
Cloudbeds Insight
- The faster employees master the PMS, the more prepared they feel for leadership roles.
- 52.2% of managers said staff need at least four months to achieve confidence—showing a stark gap between basic training and genuine fluency.
Inn-Flow Perspective
People stay where they can grow. With easy-to-learn software, talented employees can tackle more complex responsibilities faster, building a pipeline of future managers and department leads.
Action Step:
- Reward Proficiency: Use performance metrics (like error rates or average check-in times) to highlight superstar users, reinforcing good habits and showing there’s room for advancement.
- Support Ongoing Development: Offer periodic upskilling sessions—virtual workshops, advanced training modules—so staff remain engaged and keep discovering the platform’s capabilities.
Conclusion: A Stat to Spark Change
Cloudbeds’ 38% figure should motivate every hotel operator: The cost of losing staff to poor tech experiences is simply too high. Yet by pairing Cloudbeds’ PMS with Inn-Flow’s streamlined back-office solution, you can address top pain points—slashing training hours, unifying data, and making day-to-day tasks far more intuitive. The upshot? Lower turnover, higher profitability, and a workforce that’s empowered rather than overburdened.
Learn more about how to future-proof your hotel operations:
- Access the full Cloudbeds PMS User Experience Report here: Click here to view the report
- Explore Inn-Flow’s platform and request a personalized demo
It’s time to make technology work for you—and keep your team happily on board.