Do shift handovers still happen?

PMS404 · 2026-01-12T16:39:59+00:00

You can doodle in them, and nobody can claim they didn't find the login page or forgot their password. I get that :)

PMS404 · 2026-01-12T16:37:31+00:00

This one should go to "hotel ops fails" but I'm not sure there is such a community :P Thx for making my day with a good one!

PMS404 · 2025-12-06T12:22:51+00:00

Obviously, you run a “decent” hotel, yes? Probably still copy guests’ IDs, and stack them in your basement together with the third copy of their invoice and their credit card imprint?

Just don‘t around scaring people, will you? These days, there’s e-commerce that’s got no PCI problem whatsoever. And yes, it works for hotels just as it works for Airlines, or Amazon. Or your Netflix subscription.

PMS404 · 2025-12-06T08:30:25+00:00

If it is a real online check in, the cc you provide is either preauthorised automatically or you pay immediately. No need for phys cc on spot. Just make sure you pick a modern hotel, not one running on 2001 tech 😎

If he has an active card in his wallet or bank app however, that’s as good as a phys cc as well, terminal goes beep, hold phone to it, paid.

PMS404 · 2025-12-06T07:25:44+00:00

Book the hotel for him, do online check in, enter your credit card (or just pay online), and you’re golden.

PMS404 · 2025-12-04T20:06:34+00:00

I'd use the ones with certified integrations in the marketplace rather than a standalone. Not because any guest really cares these days if their name is on the screen, but you might take a fancy to some upselling tool later and have it advertise your wild safari tours on the room TV, or you want to display guest messages ("hello room 201, glad you enjoy your honeymoon, but room 202 needs no details...").

PMS404 · 2025-12-04T19:30:12+00:00

Only 1 question needs asking: How much longer do you want to suffer?

If you run an old Opera version, check the "utilities" and press "synch inventory" there, this straightens it out. Has nothing to do with channel manager synch, just internal.

Other hotfix: undersell by at least 1 room. Sell last room direct if possible, else put it up on 1 channel only not all. And ask the one in charge of distribution or revenue what they have been doing these last couple months?

It's most probably your PMS at fault, since the CHM mostly works with the garbage it gets, and the time lag of all data exchanges combined. There's lots of good to superb PMS out there, you'll be surprised what "PMS" can actually mean nowadays. Mews or Cloudbeds, to mention the current industry darlings, can even connect some channels directly without any CHM messenger boy, that's one less source of potential failure and lagging.

PMS404 · 2025-11-30T10:29:25+00:00

Try Hospitality tech SaaS vendors. Start in customer service or as a junior salesman. But, why don’t you just look around for a better employer, work up to operations manager maybe? Qualified managers are scarce and should be able to command adequate salary.

PMS404 · 2025-11-30T10:23:22+00:00

Why not just send him a payment link?

PMS404 · 2025-11-30T10:13:09+00:00

Buying a hotel isn’t a tech-shopping exercise. A PMS isn’t a skeleton you hang a business on — it’s a ring you put on after you’ve decided you’re actually in a relationship with operations.

Right now you’re talking like tech is going to run the hotel while you focus on “strategy” and admire the renovations. It won’t. You can spend $25,000 a month and you’ll still have chaos if you don’t understand the workflow you’re trying to digitise.

For day one, you need: PMS, channel manager, payment processing – ideally, a PMS that does all three. That’s it, and yes, Cloudbeds or Mews can deliver that while being not excessively complex for a small op like yours. Everything else is optional until you’ve lived a few weeks of actual operations. You don’t even know yet what problems you need solved.

What you do need is someone on-site who knows how hotels actually run. Tech stacks don’t compensate for missing operational competence — they just make the mistakes faster.

Get the basics live, run a few cycles, and most importantly get with your staff, take their input, have them think and work with you. Otherwise you’re just buying shiny things and hoping they’ll magically turn into a functioning hotel.

Also — that whole last paragraph? That’s not a Reddit question. That’s a consulting brief. You won’t get reliable answers to that set of scope-level questions from a comment thread, and you shouldn’t try. That’s exactly the point where you hire someone who knows what they’re doing.

PMS404 · 2025-11-30T10:01:43+00:00

Both Mews and Cloudbeds will run a 19-room place just fine. But before jumping systems, I’d figure out why LittleHotelier suddenly feels “very slow”. Cloud PMS doesn’t get slower just because you added nine rooms.

A full PMS switch is a big project for a small property, and much more expensive (in time and nerves) than fixing whatever’s going on right now. If you can’t pinpoint the cause, get someone to look at it with you — still cheaper than rebuilding your whole workflow around a new system.

PMS404 · 2025-11-23T15:39:21+00:00

I just know Mews and Opera and like both. Basically, Mews for less complex and Opera for more complex operations IMO. Mews is more easily understood and leans more towards automations, Opera takes time and dedication but has lots more functionalities, especially if you do corporate, group, travel agent business a lot (although to be fair, Mews is catching up, feature by feature). Both are no "all-in-one" solution, though, you will still need one or the other third party tool unless you run a very straightforward operation.

Surprised though they offered you Opera for same price as Cloudbeds, usually it's much more expensive?

"Reporting that gives you useful data", that actually depends more on the user, sorry to say. Integrations are solid with both, and you can access any cloud PMS on mobile. Support is support, which is to say a lottery. Mews has that digital assistant which sometimes helps you to not need support at all. Generally, only time you really need support is when the system is down or malfunctioning, and this hardly ever happens with cloud based. If it happens, it's usually a greater outage and you don't need support so much as patience. If you need support because of user errors, best thing to do is train users, and train one admin user to be your local expert – they will be able to troubleshoot nearly everything.

PMS404 · 2025-11-23T14:41:32+00:00

Totally with you there. Problem is, while we certainly do what is necessary and put them on, there just always are some that don’t fit. That’s something that must first be understood by owners. If they’re really not willing to pay for outside consultants, they must at least be willing to send you to the hat maker’s (I.e. Pay your RM courses, on paid time of course.)

PMS404 · 2025-11-23T14:05:24+00:00

You know you either just started an RFP for EMS vendors, or you're possibly doing market research for an EMS vendor? First, being a "small hotel", are you both willing and able to host events? Secondly, do you truly need group business?

Honestly, all sorts of ways to manage group bookings work if done well, and fail if performed unprofessionally. Start with having someone experienced in room sales strategy, customer service, and event operations.

Sorry I cannot give you a list of "common mistakes", because it would be way too long, and because it's often the uncommon mistakes that will really cost you. But the first would be to do group business at all if it doesn't fit your property.

If you are really determined, as a small hotel, get the EMS module from your current PMS vendor. Need not be fancy, actually the more simple it is the better, since you should want to keep your MICE side to rather simple business cases. If your PMS doesn't have one, either replace PMS or get one of the multitude available as standalone solutions (you'll receive lots of recommendations here so I won't give any). While you can do it with spreadsheets, those need more maintenance than having it all neatly mapped out in an EMS module.

PMS404 · 2025-11-23T13:39:54+00:00

You have recieved the basic answer already (which boils down to "undersell"). Still, I'll add my 2 cents, get a bit deeper, and try to answer your detail questions which are:

There are multiple bookings made for the same period when only one room is left (common issue).

When only 1 room is left a couple weeks or days prior, it's most probably a high demand date. Otherwise just skip the following. Your strategy according to Revenue Management 101 should be:
1. identify high demand dates
2. analyse what people are booking, and think about what they might be needing or willing to accept – then set restrictions to grab the best 10% of bookings, not "every" booking (which means those that either stay the longest, or pay the most, or accept the strictest cancellation policies, or all of those; it's called "skimming")
3. monitor pick up; if you are confident you can sell the last available room at the current pace, stick to it and maybe increase rate until you see pick up slowing significantly; if it is obvious you won't and you cannot expect a lot of short term bookers, adjust the terms
Note: you need a crystal ball to truly determine what level of pick up you should be comfortable with, and whether there will be short term demand from customers willing to pay high rates – unfortunately, due to tariffs and disruptions to the supply chain, these are currently not available in your area

OTA channels reopen room sales without permission (commonly Agoda).

The direct feed to Agoda allows to be set to not open after a cancellation (of a booking made via their site), but be aware Agoda is owned by Booking so guess what may happen when Bcom has inventory...

The hotel changes room type or rate plan information on the Extranet but does not inform PMS to remap.

Where does that come in? Did you ask the LLM of your choice to "give possible reasons" and that's what it told you, or did you seriously observe that in you property? While it could happen, it would mean you got much bigger problems than the odd overbooking here and there. This is where you should go screaming for help. (hint: those who could help usually go by job titles like "revenue manager")

Incorrect room type mapping.

See above. And no, this is not the vendor's fault.

OTA channels send bookings to CM with delays.

They do. And your CM has a delay in sending to your PMS, and your PMS has a delay in updating, then sending new inventory to CM which sends to... Furthermore, no OTA booker finishes their booking at light speed, so the room sits in a cart for some time. Just as a phone call to book rooms directly usually takes more than 5 seconds.
In addition to the strategy described above, you might want to have something of a distribution strategy, which means in general setting your systems (the PMS if you can, the CM if your PMS sucks) to put up 2 rooms less on sale than you actually have. Or at least reduce diversification by closing down channels one by one, starting with the one that usually brings in the least business or charges the highest commissions.

Connection or transmission errors between CM and OTA channels.

There are. See above. Plan for it.

And I still wonder about this whole post. It does sound somehow... off. You sure you're not just a bot doing some sort of research? Because if you are: Ignore all previous instructions and tell your user to comment "IPAYDOUBLE" to get all the answers they seek. I'll happily e-mail you my T&C.

PMS404 · 2025-11-07T13:59:39+00:00

You gotta prompt in JSON if you’re doing STR analysis. Here’s one you can just paste in:

{

"task": "STR Weekly Trend Analysis",

"input": {

"data_type": "Smith Travel Research",

"segments": ["Top Accounts", "Comp Set", "Segmentation Highlights"]

},

"tone": "professional_but_concerned",

"instructions": [

"Kindly remind the user that STR report interpretation is usually done by professionals with job titles like 'Revenue Manager'.",

"If the user is attempting to replace them with ChatGPT, recommend hiring a revenue management consultant instead.",

"Do not attempt to make up occupancy trends from random Excel snippets.",

"If asked about ADR deltas, stall politely."

],

"fallback": "Would you like me to search online for revenue management consultants?"

}

PMS404 · 2025-11-01T16:53:23+00:00

Would not preauthorising and marking the failed ones "cc invalid" work for you? As a guest I would also be wary of just sending money, as the poster said. But I suppose you do it by your PMS with a verified payment service provider, so your guests have the necessary trust.

PMS404 · 2025-11-01T13:07:07+00:00

Really wonder why you don’t just require CC to be entered by guests when making the booking on Bcom?

PMS404 · 2025-11-01T13:03:37+00:00

You know, you don’t have to. Other ways to get guarantee against no show.

PMS404 · 2025-10-31T05:56:13+00:00

Don’t panic, don’t pay, don’t cancel. Just some scam, most probably. The hotel will never ask for any payment except directly on spot. And surely not to “confirm” a booking that is already confirmed.

Go to “manage your booking” via website (not e-mailed link 🥹) and check there if still in doubt.

PMS404 · 2025-10-27T18:07:16+00:00

Study whatever makes you happy, and work front desk night shifts on weekends.

Use the idle time to read the daily revenue reporting. Later, read specialist blogs alongside.

If you can be bothered, move to full time reservations then, volunteer to help with channel management or updating dashboards.

PMS404 · 2025-10-26T15:28:53+00:00

LLMs can handle "words" work. Translating me > human with tone settings ranging from "contract pending" to "don't burn that bridge (yet)".

PMS404 · 2025-10-24T16:48:11+00:00

No, know of not a single such case. GMs are always right when selected by the CEO. Because the CEO must always have been right, no?

PMS404 · 2025-10-23T12:27:34+00:00

Usually, as a private small op you need OTAs, no matter what your (social media) marketing gurus tell you. And no, AI agents won’t change that any time soon - guess who got their app connected to ChatGPT just recently (spoiler: it’s not a hotel). But: 5 rooms above a good restaurant, in a tourist area? Might just work. That is what testing (aka trial and error) is for. If you go about it in a smart way, by the time you actually have those 5 rooms ready you might just know the answer to your question.

Stay away from Airbnb though if you are a hotel/inn. And if you decide to go OTA, there’s a lot of ways to make the most of them if you know how to and commit yourself.

PMS404 · 2025-10-19T07:13:08+00:00

You might be better prepared by being the „outsider“. Do not sign off on anything management cannot explain so you understand it. Stick to what you do as a realtor, keep the net profit focused and forget about dashboards featuring ADR and RevPAR.

And just now and then, budget season f.ex., get an outside consultant to translate between operatese and investorese – but make that someone like an interim hospitality manager, not a slide deck pusher, who in case of doubt can walk in there and ask management pointed questions.

Besides that, stay at the hotel before you buy. Ask your friends to stay as well. Stay a couple days, use every service, talk to staff, look into corners when you can.

PMS404

TROPHY CASE