PMS: what a hotel's property management system does

EHL Hospitality Business School says a property management system automates reservations, check-ins, housekeeping schedules and billing, and names Cloudbeds and Opera among the providers.

Booking.com sorts the companies that connect hotels to it into kinds: a channel manager updates your availability across several platforms, while a PMS offers more features than a channel manager in one place, to help with the daily running of the property. It describes a channel manager as the link between the PMS you manage your rooms and prices in and platforms such as Booking.com, and says some channel managers can provide a PMS if you don't have one.

• Reservations from every source in one diary: booking sites, your website, phone calls, walk-ins and travel agents.
• The room plan: which room each guest is in, on which nights, so no room is given twice.
• Check-in: the guest's details and ID, kept with the booking.
• Housekeeping: which rooms are clean, which need cleaning, and which are out of order.
• The guest's bill, or folio: room nights, meals, laundry and extras added to the account and settled at check-out.
• Invoices with GST, which companies and booking sites ask for. MakeMyTrip's myBiz programme for company bookings, for one, asks hotels to upload GST invoices.
• Reports: rooms sold, average room rate and revenue for any night or month, and who is due to arrive.

Foreign guests' details are reported on Form C. Airbnb's guidance for hosts in India says C-Forms must be submitted within 24 hours of a foreign guest checking in, once the host has registered with the Foreigners Regional Registration Office. A PMS that keeps passport and visa details with the booking saves typing them twice, so ask whether yours does.

• Channel manager: sends the PMS's rooms and prices to the booking sites, and brings their bookings back.
• Booking engine: takes bookings on your website from the same rooms and prices.
• Google: Google lists property management systems among the connectivity partners that can send a hotel's prices for its free booking links.
• Card machines, the restaurant's till, door locks: ask which ones it works with before you buy.

Know which system controls what. Booking.com tells connected hotels to go to Account, then Connectivity provider, in the extranet, to see whether their cancellation and prepayment policies are managed in the extranet, by their PMS or by their channel manager, and to make changes in that system.

When you add a room type or a rate plan, add it in every connected system. Expedia warns connected hotels to map all their rate plans to keep their rooms to sell accurate.

Booking.com says there are usually two ways to pay a provider: by the month, or by the number of transactions, and that some offer a trial. It also suggests counting the days or weeks you will need to set the system up and get used to it.

• It, or the channel manager that comes with it, connects to every booking site you sell on. Booking.com says it works with over 600 hospitality technology companies.
• It works with the booking engine on your website, and can send your prices to Google.
• It prints GST invoices the way your guests, companies and booking sites need them.
• It keeps foreign guests' passport and visa details for Form C.
• It runs on the internet and on a phone, so you can see tonight's arrivals from anywhere.
• Booking.com suggests reading other users' reviews, and checking the connection is reliable and won't overload your staff.
• You know who answers when it stops working at night, and in which language.

1. 1Choose a quiet week to switch, not a festival or the wedding season.
2. 2Export every future booking from the old system, with the guests' details and any payments taken.
3. 3Set up the same room types and rate plans in the new one, with the same names.
4. 4Connect it to your channel manager and booking engine, and map every room type and rate plan.
5. 5Check each booking site as a guest for a few dates: the price, the rooms free and the cancellation rules.
6. 6Make a test booking on each site and on your website, and check each one reaches the new PMS.
7. 7Keep the old system readable for a few months, for refunds and questions about past stays.