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Hotel software, from your PMS to your channel manager

Hotel software is never one program. There is the PMS that holds rooms, guests and accounts, the channel manager that keeps every channel aligned, the revenue tools that work on price, and the guest app that follows the guest. The real work sits where those systems hand data to each other. We have been building and integrating software for tourism since 1998, and we stay past switch-on.

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The systems behind one calendar

People looking for hotel software almost always start from one specific incident. Two bookings for the same room, arriving from different portals. Bank holiday rates updated by hand, channel by channel, late in the evening. A night audit that doesn’t balance, with nobody able to say where a charge went missing.
The pieces do different jobs, and it helps to keep them apart. The PMS, the property management system, is the central archive, holding planning, guest records, folios, floor status and paperwork. The channel manager keeps the channels you sell on in step. Revenue tools work on price. The guest app follows the guest after the confirmation. Almost no hotel starts from a blank page, because two or three tools are already there, half working.
The first question we ask is always the same. Which system holds the real calendar? Only one can, and everything else has to read it from there. When the answer is vague, the problem is not the brand of the software, but the fact that two calendars run in parallel and sooner or later they contradict each other. A management system is judged in July, not in a demo.

The systems that keep a hotel running

Separate roles, with none of them doing another one’s job.

Everything else depends on the PMS

The archive everything else depends on. If the PMS is badly configured, every connected system inherits the same mistake.

  • Planning for arrivals, departures and rooms out of service
  • Split folios, extra charges, deposits and prepayments
  • Night audit, statutory filings and reports for management

The channel manager closes the room everywhere

When a room sells, availability closes everywhere at the same moment, and rates and restrictions change from a single place.

  • Room type mapping, channel by channel
  • Minimum stays and closures handled in one place
  • Immediate stop sale when a room goes out of service

Revenue management suggests, you decide

History read alongside the pace of incoming bookings, so you know when to push, when to hold and when to lift a restriction. The system proposes; the call stays with whoever knows the hotel.

The guest app takes over after booking

Messages before arrival, requests that reach the right department instead of the front desk. StayMore is our own guest app. It opens from a link, with no download, and reads guest details straight from the PMS.

Housekeeping and maintenance

Room status updated from the floor rather than from a notebook, with rooms ready, turnovers and faults reported with a photo. The front desk sees in real time what it can assign.

Most of what goes wrong goes wrong in the integrations

Most problems are not inside a piece of software. They sit in the gap between two. Overbooking is rarely a channel manager getting it wrong; it comes from a room type mapped badly, or from a connection that quietly stopped refreshing and told nobody. These are silent failures, and they surface at check-in, in front of a guest.
In a hotel the connections that matter are few and always the same, namely the PMS and the channel manager in both directions, the restaurant till so charges reach the room on their own, accounting and electronic invoicing, door locks that need to know who is in the room and until when, and the public reporting portals. We integrate off-the-shelf PMS and channel manager products. Which ones genuinely connect, and with what limits, gets checked before you sign.
We ask every vendor what they expose, in what form and how often, we test the exchange with real data, and we keep a log of what moves. When a system has nothing to expose we write it down with the cost attached, because that part will stay manual, and you need to know before you sign.

PMS in the cloud or installed on site

This is not a choice between modern and old-fashioned. It is about where you would rather the risk sat, on a connection that has to hold up every day or on a machine in your back office that is yours to answer for.

AspectCloud PMSOn-site PMS
AccessFrom any machine with a browser.From the hotel’s computers, or through remote access.
UpdatesReleased by the vendor, with nothing for you to do.Planned in advance, and often paid for.
If the line goes downThe system is unreachable, so you need a backup connection.The desk keeps working locally, but the channels stay frozen.
CostA recurring fee, per room or per user.An upfront licence, then maintenance and a server to replace.
Backups and securityThe vendor’s job, and the contract is what counts.Your job, tested restores included.
Several propertiesOne login covering every property.One installation each, all to be kept in step.

Changing PMS without stopping the season

Migration is frightening because you picture a day when everything gets switched off. We move in steps instead, and every step keeps a way back.

  1. 01

    Inventory of what is there

    We look at which systems you have running, what data they hold, which connections work and who uses them every day.

  2. 02

    Data extraction and checking

    Guest records, future bookings, history and rate plans come out of the old system, and we check them before they go into the new one. Whatever cannot be exported you find out about now, not on switch-over day.

  3. 03

    Mirror configuration

    We rebuild room types, rate plans, seasons, restrictions and charges, and compare them line by line with the old system. It is the longest phase, and it decides the outcome.

  4. 04

    Connecting the channels

    We map the room types channel by channel and test them with real availability and rates on a few rooms, before opening the whole calendar.

  5. 05

    Running in parallel

    For a set period both calendars run side by side and we reconcile them every morning. If something doesn’t add up you step back, without losing a booking.

  6. 06

    Switch-over and cover

    We pick the date with you, outside the peak months. In the first few days we stay available, and we keep open issues on a list with an owner and a date.

Either the front desk learns the system, or the system stays half used

Systems that fail are rarely the wrong systems. They are systems used at thirty per cent. Two people out of six get trained, the night shift never attends, and within a month everyone has their own shortcut, starting with the booking written in the notes instead of the proper field. The system stays switched on, but nobody looks at the data it produces any more.
So we train on the property’s own data, split by role, starting from the cases that cause trouble, such as the walk-in with no booking, the group whose rooming list changes the day before, the folio split between two guests, and the room move mid-stay. What stays behind is a handful of short guides written around procedures, an internal point of contact, and a refresher once the season is under way.

What to test in a demo, using your own data

A vendor-led demo always follows the path that works. Ask for these tests yourself.

  • Load a real day, with a group and a room out of service, and count the clicks a room move takes.
  • Change a rate on one season and watch how long it takes to reach the connected channels.
  • Split a folio between two guests and post a restaurant charge to the room.
  • Run the night audit and print the reports management actually reads.
  • Produce a day’s police guest registration and try actually sending it to the portal, not just downloading it.
  • Look at the system loaded with the number of rooms you actually have, because demos almost always run on ten-room properties.

Frequently asked questions

PMS stands for property management system, the hotel’s own management software, the archive holding room planning, guest records, folios and paperwork. It is the source of the calendar, so every other system should read availability from there instead of keeping its own copy. When two systems hold two calendars, the guest at the desk is the one who finds out.

Different roles, not competing products. The PMS runs what happens inside the hotel, namely who arrives, in which room, what they owe. The channel manager looks outward, pushing availability, rates and restrictions to the channels and bringing bookings back. What matters is that data moves both ways, and that you can check it.

Vendor subscriptions are nearly always priced on rooms, and that part you can compare on your own. What moves the total is the other half, namely how many systems have to be connected, whether there is a migration to run, and how many people need training. A thirty-room hotel that already has a PMS, a channel manager and a till costs less to set up than a twenty-room one starting from nothing.

It is measured in phases, not against a single date. Technical activation is the short part, because the real time goes into configuring rates, seasons and restrictions, and moving bookings that are already confirmed. That is why the switch gets scheduled outside the peak months.

Often yes, and when that is the case we say so. We look at what the system exposes, which connections it can carry and which features were never configured. Replacing it makes sense when it won’t connect to what you need, when the data can’t be extracted, or when support goes quiet in season.

You start from where the data stops, not from who is at fault. A frozen calendar can come from the channel manager, from a rate closed and never reopened, or from a connection whose credentials expired without warning anyone. We are the ones holding the map of how your systems are wired, so the order of checks is already written down. If the cause sits inside a vendor’s product, we open the ticket and chase it.

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