15 years
I think going 100% open source is the way to go.
Give away the software for free, or almost for free - make money only on support and custom-made plugins.
There are huge differences between hostels - and so there are also huge differences in what sort of PMS they want. It´s impossible to provide a good solution for all of them. What´s possible though is to provide a basic solution which makes many hostel owners happy. Those who aren´t happy with it need either custom-made plugins for them or the option to make those plugins themselves. Most hostels have a computer geek in their staff who can do that.
Bring those geeks together in a forum like this one and we´ll have a solution for every imaginable task in no time.
An option is to provide server space for a fee. What HostelOffice does seems like a good idea to me. All the data is stored on a server provided by them. The PMS connects to that server, but it works offline as well. As soon as the internet connection is back, it synchronizes data with the server. The obvious advantage is that the hostels don´t have to worry about losing data because their own hardware fails.
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