Hotel management software: how to choose between systems

Start with what happens between a booking and a checkout. Reservation, check-in, room assignment, housekeeping, folio, night audit and reporting form the spine that every other module hangs from. Nothing else matters until these work.

Then add the extras you truly use. A restaurant point of sale, a spa, a banquet hall or a channel manager each change the shortlist. A twelve-room guesthouse needs far less than a sixty-room resort with three outlets and a banquet lawn.

Write the list before any salesperson speaks. Mark each line essential, useful or nice to have, or the vendors will quietly set your priorities for you.

Send each vendor the same script a week ahead. Include a group booking with a rooming list, a walk-in on a corporate rate and a guest who extends one night after the night audit has already run. That last case breaks many systems.

Watch the screen, not the slides. How many clicks move a guest between rooms, and does the folio follow? Can the front desk see a dirty room before assigning it to an arrival?

Have the vendor key in your real rate card during the call. A system that needs a week to set up a weekend surcharge will cost you time in every busy season.

Folio and night audit decide whether the accounts team trusts the numbers on Monday morning. Ask to see a day close with an open folio, a part payment and a refund, since most demos skip all three.

Check tax lines, invoice numbering and export to your accounting tool. A sheet that someone retypes every morning is a hidden cost and the place where errors enter.

Settle who owns the data. Guest records, folios and reservations must export as CSV files without a fee.

Give each requirement a weight from one to five and each system a mark from zero to five, then multiply and add. The total matters less than the gaps it exposes, because a high score can still hide a missing night audit report.

Let the night manager, a housekeeping supervisor and the accountant score separately. Their marks often differ from the owner’s. That disagreement is the useful part.

Add rows for support. Ask for response times in writing and the hours the help line works. Find out whether an engineer can visit when a printer or a server fails on a Saturday night.

Ask how old reservations, guest profiles and open balances move across, and fix a cutover date in a quiet week. Never choose a festival weekend or a conference block for the first night on a new system.

Run the old and new systems side by side for one night audit. Compare totals line by line. Any difference points to a rate or tax setup that still needs fixing.

Book two training sessions per department, one before go live and one a fortnight after. Then fill in the scoring sheet this week and ask your top two vendors for a demo on your script.