Front desk systems and property management software

Hi people,

This is very interesting topic. We have been running 90 bed hostel for 2½ years now and Im fed up with BPO. Yes, it is easy to use we have found our way to go around things it cant do... but still, it lacks tons of features.

Many of the comments here seem to be written by the software developers/companies and I thought I would give a real, end user view on this topic as well.

I have now gone through several programs, beacause I want to make the right decision (for us). I even visited ITB (International Travel Fair) to get new contacts.

Softwares I have tried so far:

Assd/Gomio (they are same)
CMS Hospitality
Hotel Linx (Local hotel software producer)
Micros Fidelio Suite 8
Charts
Roomsy
Hostel Office
Resbook
BPO
Visual Matrix PMS
Rezbook
+ Im waiting to get demo from HostelSystems

there's propably few more I cant remember, but I think it tells enough about them..

We have also got offers from SABRE, SIHOT etc, but its a bit expensive.. the price range being from BPO (0e) to SIHOT (~15000e + monthly fees).

What we are looking for is a comprehensive PMS with a good amount of features. We want all the basic features like guest profiles (for individuals and companies), easy room changes, CRM features, chance to sell the same room as different room types etc. and of course full integration to channel manager and/or individual channels.

What else we are looking for? Of course we are looking for a realiable partner, someone who will not be out of business in 6 months after we have changed our system. We need a software which can expanded when we grow (multi-property, door locking interfaces etc.). We are looking for a good and intuitive interface (Charts, come on! It's 2012!!)

So far I have noticed that with 10000e you can get all this and too much to be honest. The hotel softwares are complex and even if you can sell rooms as beds, the lack many typical hostel features like payment upon check-in. Very often daily things are behind too many clicks.

Currently Im waiting to get the Hostel Systems Demo. I just saw their in this topic today, so can't say anything about but that Im curious. From the other softwares, the only one we are still discussing with is CMS hospitality. With them, its about price and not having a demo - you always need to contact them and they will give you remote demo where you just sit and watch. Another hostel from Finland decided to cooperate with them, I will consult them before making any decisions.

BTW, I just found Roomsy today as well and it really looked good. It was a bit too simple for our purposes, but it took me only 5s to figure out how it works. If you just need a basic PMS with easy interface, check it out!

I hope this helped and Im willing to answer questions if you have any. I will let you know what decided. If you still have some recommendations, let me know :)

Ville

Hi guys.

I have been following this post for quite some time.
Besides being revived lately by posts looking for a solution/stating the need for a comprehensive piece of software that has all the features, the tone is almost the same :what to use.
It is a fact that the PMS you use will dictate your workflow and limit/boost your productivity in one way or another.

I live in Rome and the company i work for is the parent company of The Yellow hostel, in rome.
This property for a few years now has been working with BPO.
Now, i must admit that BPO has some pretty good concepts and ideas implemented in it and it's not that bad to work with, but the execution of such ideas on a technical level and the lack of possibility to request customisations has become rather problematic during the years.

Like i said, developing for a property in Italy, soon will become evident that there are a few other facets that a logding business needs to deal with.
- particular guests reports that need to be generated daily and sent in to the closest police station (an archaic italian law falling back from the 70's), known as Schedine
- reports generated for the italian tourist authority that need to be sent in daily, known as C59
- a standard billing item of 2 euros per person per night to be applied to every given booking, known as Citytax.
- detailed reports on the above mentioned city tax based on the duration of the stay, to be sent in every three months
- the necessity to create proper invoices with a predefined layout and be printed on the defined form (hence the defined layout).
- manage multiple booking channels and not have to update manually each and every single agent. this forcing us to split the number of beds between sellers instead of maximising in a "first come first buy" basis
- revenue management, thus modifying the price per bed/room based on the rooms left to sell
- the ability to have a proper flexible booking engine that at least will allow multiple room types and arbitrary number of nights giving flexibility to the user.
- the ability to have time-based-rental billing items, say ipads for whoever does not have their own device to use the free wifi and so on
etc etc the list could go on for another few

Leave alone the BPO , that operates under the "if it ain't broken there's nothing to change" i very sadly haven't seen one other PMS to support even half of these features.
It's fully understandable that there is no software that will include all sorts of localised modifications, because just as i'm mentioning a bunch of italian-speific tasks, i'm sure there are a bunch in every country.
On the other hand having custom payment types (ie. citytax ) and being able to generate reports targeted on that type, based on a dynamic filter, i'm sure would be useful anywhere.
Being allowed to create my own layout for the invoice would be a useful feature too, instead of having businesses have to use a second piece of software just for that, or the more old-fashion, write them by hand.

Having faced all of these matters with no solution, about a year ago i had to start putting together a parallel PMS that would handle all of these tasks.
It was/is build around the BPO, which remains our main hub since HW does not offer the data api to non-commercial partners (believe me, i've tried) and our bookings go straight in there.
What this software does it i'mports all bookings from the BPO itself and ads all of these other features to it.
It is built in a modular way so whenever the need comes up i just create another module, plug it in and off it goes.

I will attach a few screenshots.
the first one is the main view of the incoming bookings list
the second one is a grid created fromt he in house bookings
the third one is the importing utility that grabs the bookings and all other data from bpo.
***I won't go into a full-blown feature list because i'm not trying to shop this software around but if anyone want more details on it, just drop a line here and we can get into it.

All of this, to have a few extra features.

I am in contact as we speak with a few other PMS provers (the usual names) and although many of them have many amazing features, they are all extremely rigid.
I foresee there's going to be a lot of work done in customisations.

There is clearly a lot of need for this, and only on this thread i see a lot of interested tech-oriented people.
I still cannot believe that in the day and age we live there is no open source software comprehensive enough to to do the job properly. After all hospitality is one of the biggest markests in world economy.

Now, this software was developed to run on the browser, runs on a webserver we have in the network, so all data is kept here and does not care if there is internet connectivity to do it's thing.
It was commissioned and created as a simple plugin system but later became a machine of it's own and at this point once it's passed several dozens of thousands of lines of code, it can no longer be maintained by i single person/company.

My question is , would anyone be interested of developing an open source PMS? As a skeleton to work with. Plugged with whatever channel manager you use (this would already be a start).
Let's discuss all the needed featured to start making the most global/customisable things possible.

I would very happily contribute with codebase from what i already have.
Let's create a standard set of features and try that. Plugin based. If anyone wants more features speak up and have someone do it (i would be the first one to try to help but clearly this would be a commercial setting) or just grab the source code and do it yourself.
This way we have a constant everchanging environment that is up to date with the required features.

If anyone is interested in this topic in any form please speak up.
It's rather unbelievable that a grouping of such resourceful people that manage their businesses , in 2012 still has to deal with "yeah the software we use lacks a few things but we deal with it".

This is an open conversation. I'm still on the lookout for existing software that can be modified to do the above without spending months in development.

Best Regards

Sid

I would be interested in working with you on this.
I am in the process of starting up a hostel and the software out there seems too expensive or not what I want.
Would be good to have a very customizable booking system.
I have done a small bit of C programming many years ago and would be ok with HTML.
Will the software be a web based app or a windows install.
I am sure there are a number of others on Hostelmanagement who might be interested .
Should we setup a new thread?

Hey,

Sounds exciting. Where are you planning on opening up? I would recommend:

1. I think most owners probably don't live on property. They may at the beginning, especially if it's a smaller operation, and a 20 bed hostel isn't too much to live with. But for one's own sanity, I would live off site. Also, offering a guest free nights for work exchange is pretty common, but normally happens for an extended period of time (somebody who's willing to stay X months). Changing that person every couple of days would be time consuming and you're more likely to have someone running things that you shouldn't..

2. For check-in and check-out times, I would look at how other hostels in your city/area do it. Some guests like to sleep in, and they weigh hostels' check-out time as part of their decision on where to stay in your city.

That's my 2¢

-Tim
www.bananadesk.com/