How to choose a PMS for a small hotel: 12 questions to ask

Before you talk to vendors: know your own needs

Vendors are good at showing features. They are less good at telling you which features you will actually use. Before the first demo, spend half an hour writing down how your property works today. It makes every conversation shorter and every comparison fairer.

• Number of rooms and room types, and whether that will change in the next two years
• Channels you sell on today: each OTA, your website, phone, email, walk-ins, agents
• Share of bookings that come direct versus through OTAs, roughly
• Who takes bookings and who needs access: owner, front desk, housekeeping, accountant
• How you take payments and deposits, and which invoices or receipts you must issue
• The three tasks that take the most time each week
• What you pay today for all your tools together, including commissions and fees

Keep this page next to you in every demo and bring the conversation back to it.

Questions 1 to 3: price and contract

1. What is the full monthly price for my number of rooms?

Ask for the total, not the headline price. Some PMS vendors price per room, some per property, some per module, and some add the channel manager, booking engine or payments as separate products. A good answer is a single number for your room count that includes everything you listed in your needs. If the answer is "it depends, let us schedule a call", ask what it depends on. Cloudbeds, for example, quotes every property individually; our breakdown of Cloudbeds pricing shows the ranges hoteliers report.

2. Is there a setup fee, and is there a minimum contract?

Setup fees and annual contracts are common in hotel software. They are not always wrong, but you should know about them before you compare prices. Ask whether you can pay monthly, whether a yearly plan is discounted and whether you can cancel at the end of any month.

3. Is there any commission or fee per booking?

This is the question that changes the most comparisons. Some booking engines charge a percentage of each direct reservation. Work through the arithmetic with your own numbers: if you take 40 direct room nights a month at $140 and the fee is 3 percent, that is $168 a month on top of the subscription. A good answer is "no, direct bookings carry no commission".

Questions 4 to 6: channels and overbooking

4. Is the channel manager part of the PMS or a separate product?

A channel manager keeps your availability and rates in sync across Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Google and other channels. When it is built into the PMS, there is one calendar and one set of rates. When it is a separate product, you have two systems, two contracts and an integration between them. Our guide to PMS vs channel manager explains the difference in detail.

5. Which of my channels are connected two way, and which through iCal?

Two-way connections send availability, rates and restrictions out and bring reservations, modifications and cancellations back. iCal shares blocked dates only, on a refresh interval. Both have their place, but you should know which one applies to each channel you use. Ask specifically about minimum stay and closed to arrival restrictions if you use them.

6. How does the system prevent overbooking?

Ask the vendor to show you, not tell you. Create a booking on one channel in the demo and watch what happens to the other channels. Ask what happens when two bookings arrive for the last room at almost the same moment, and what the system shows you when a sync fails. If overbooking has cost you before, read our guide on how to prevent hotel overbooking and bring its checklist to the demo.

Questions 7 to 9: daily operations

7. Can I see and change every booking on one calendar?

The reservations calendar is where you will spend most of your time. It should show every room against every night, let you move a stay by dragging it, and stop you when a move creates a conflict. Check how it looks on a laptop at the front desk and on a phone when you are away. Ask how group bookings and room blocks are shown.

8. How are invoices, payments and taxes handled?

Every property has its own rules for invoices, tax lines and deposits, depending on the country and the local tourist or city tax. Ask whether the PMS produces invoices and receipts with the tax lines you need, whether it exports to PDF and to your accountant, and whether it can take a deposit at booking. If you split bills between a company and a guest, ask to see a folio split.

9. How does housekeeping work in the system?

Housekeeping is where small properties save the most time with a good PMS. Ask whether departures become dirty rooms automatically, whether housekeepers can update room status from a phone, and whether the front desk sees when a room is ready. Our hotel housekeeping checklist shows the routine a good housekeeping board should support.

Questions 10 to 12: data, support and growth

10. How do I get my data in, and can I get it out?

Ask how existing reservations, guests and rates are imported: from a spreadsheet, a CSV export of your current system, or with help from the vendor. Then ask the more important question: if you leave, can you export all your reservations, guests and invoices in a usable format? Your guest data belongs to you.

11. What support do I get, and how fast?

Things go wrong on Friday evenings and holiday weekends. Ask which support channels are included in your plan, whether they cost extra, and how quickly the vendor typically replies. For a small property, clear written support by email with priority on paid plans is often more useful than a phone line that routes you to a call center.

12. What happens when I grow?

You may add rooms, a second property or more staff. Ask what the price becomes at the next size, whether you need to migrate to a different product, and whether features such as staff roles, reports, group bookings or multi-property management are available when you need them. A good answer is a public price list where you can see the next step yourself.

A simple scorecard to compare PMS vendors

After each demo, fill in one row per vendor. Score each item from 1 to 3 and write the monthly total in money. The scorecard keeps the comparison on your needs, not on the vendor's best slide.

Red flags when choosing a PMS for a small hotel

Some warning signs appear again and again when small properties shop for software.

• No public price, and a sales process that needs several calls before you see a number
• A booking engine that charges a commission on every direct booking
• A channel manager sold as a separate contract with its own fees
• A long minimum contract with an early termination fee
• No clear export of your own data
• Screens designed for large hotels, with modules you will never open and settings you do not understand
• Features promised for "the next release" that you need today

None of these automatically rules a vendor out, but each one should come with a clear answer.

How to switch PMS without disrupting your guests

Once you have chosen, plan the switch for a quieter period. Import future reservations first, then guests and rates. Run the new calendar in parallel with the old one for a short time and compare arrivals day by day. Connect channels one at a time and check the first bookings from each. Train staff on the calendar, check-in and housekeeping board before the go-live date, and keep the old system read-only for a few weeks in case you need to look something up.

How Innkeeper answers the twelve questions

Innkeeper is a property management system for small hotels, inns, guesthouses and B&Bs, with public prices by room count.

Explore each module on the hotel reservation software, channel manager software, hotel booking engine, hotel invoicing software and hotel housekeeping software pages, see the plans side by side on the hotel PMS pricing page, or read how the product fits your property on the small hotel management software page.