What a consultant-free hotel PMS setup really requires

Plenty of hotels pay someone to change a rate, add a staff user or build a report. Sometimes that is fair: a hard problem deserves an expert. But when a routine change needs a ticket, a quote and a wait, the hotel has stopped owning its own system.

"No consultant" is an easy thing to promise and a hard thing to deliver. So this article is deliberately about what it really requires: from you, from the software, and from whoever supports it. It ends with a test you can run in any demo, ours included.

What "consultant-free" should and should not mean

It should mean: the routine changes that happen every week are made by the owner or a trained manager, in the system's own settings, without a ticket, a fee or a wait. Routine means things like a rate for a season, a new staff member and what they may do, a report you need on Monday, a booking source you rename.

It does not mean:

• that you will never need support. You will, for the odd hard problem, and a vendor who says otherwise is selling something;
• that setup takes no time. Someone has to enter your rooms, rates and users once;
• that nothing can go wrong. It means you can see what is configured and check the audit log for who changed key settings.

What it requires from you

Four things, none technical.

1. One named owner of the system. One person, usually the owner or general manager, holds the administrator role and knows where things are. A system everyone owns is a system no one understands. Give a deputy a lesser role, so the knowledge is not in one head.

2. A written rate card. Rates are where hotels most often lean on someone else, and where mistakes cost real money. If your current rates live in someone's memory or a spreadsheet nobody has opened since last season, the first job is to write them down. Whatever system you use, you will enter them from that page.

3. A few hours, early. Entering rooms, rates, users and sources, then trying a day end to end, takes real time while you learn. After that, the weekly cost is small. Be suspicious of any vendor who tells you the early cost is zero.

4. A habit of reading what the system shows before it acts. A good self-run system tells you what it is about to do. Our question screen, for example, matches a plain-English question to a library of questions and shows what it would ask before anything runs ("nothing runs until you tap a question", says the screen). Habits like that are what keep a non-technical owner safe.

What it requires from the software

A system is only consultant-free if every routine setting is editable by the owner, not only by the vendor. This is the part you must verify yourself, because every vendor will say yes.

Here is a short list of changes owners often depend on someone else for. In each case, ask: can I do this myself, in the system, today?

1. Change a rate plan or a seasonal price.
2. Set an early check-in or late check-out fee, including by time of day.
3. Add a rule such as a discount for bookings made a set number of days ahead (for example, 10 percent off bookings made 30 days or more before arrival, between two dates).
4. Build a report by choosing columns and filters (no developer).
5. Add or remove a staff user and decide what their role may do.
6. Rename or merge a booking source (for example when an agency changes its name).
7. See who changed a setting and when (an audit log).
8. Restore from a backup.
9. Produce the immigration export for the day.

If any of those is "we can raise a request", write down the price and the wait. That is your real cost of ownership.

A nine-task test for any demo

Ask the vendor to give you the mouse. Do these nine tasks, with your own numbers, while they watch.

• Create a seasonal rate for one room type, from a date to a date.
• Add a rule that gives a discount for early bookings.
• Create a report with five columns of your choice and one filter, then export it.
• Add a user with a limited role, log in as that user, and confirm they cannot see what they should not.
• Change something, then find the log entry that shows who changed it.
• Open the backup list and find yesterday's.
• Produce the TM30 list for a test foreign guest.
• Rename a booking source.
• Find where an extra such as breakfast is priced and change the price.

If you get through all nine without asking for help, the system is probably consultant-free for the routine work. If you cannot do two or three, you know what you would be paying for.

What the arithmetic looks like

Add up what you paid for changes, reports and setup help over the last twelve months, using your own invoices. Put it beside the published price of the system you are considering. For ours: $100 a month for up to 200 rooms, which is $1,200 a year, then $0.50 per room for rooms 201 to 300 and $0.30 per room above 300. Your own total may be lower or higher. We do not know what you pay, and we will not guess.

Be honest about what the number leaves out: the hours you will spend learning, any optional modules (our add-ons are not on sale yet), any help you choose to buy for moving your data, and the occasional hard problem.

Signs that "self-service" is hollow

• Settings that open with "contact your administrator" when you are the administrator.
• A report builder that is really a list of fixed reports.
• No log of changes, or a log only the vendor can read.
• An "implementation partner" who must configure each change.
• A smart-sounding feature that cannot show you the rule it applied. If a system adjusts your rates, you should be able to read the rule. Ours are deterministic rules with visible thresholds, not an AI making a judgement you cannot inspect.

Back to all articles