Start with how your property actually runs
Before the first demo, write down the answers to these. They decide what you need far more than any brochure does:
- How many rooms or beds, and how many room types?
- Where bookings come from: walk-ins, phone, WhatsApp, online travel agents, travel agents, companies.
- Whether you run a restaurant, café or bar, and whether its bills go to rooms.
- Who works the desk at night, and on what device.
- Who handles cash, and who checks it.
- Whether you have, or plan, a second property.
- What you use today: a register, Excel, WhatsApp — and what goes wrong with it.
A twelve-room homestay and a sixty-room hotel need different things. The most expensive mistake is paying for the second when you are the first — or buying the first and outgrowing it in a season.
The checklist
Go through it with the software in front of you, not a brochure. The right-hand column is what to ask the salesperson to show you.
| Area | Must have | Ask them to show you |
|---|---|---|
| Front desk | Reservations, a room rack that refuses double bookings, quick check-in, walk-ins, group bookings | Book the same room twice for the same night. Does it stop you? |
| Guest records | The ID document kept as an image, stored privately — not just a typed number | Where the ID photo is stored and who can open it |
| Billing | A bill (folio) per stay, extras posted to the room, deposits, discounts with a reason | Post a restaurant charge to a room, then check the guest out |
| GST | The right rate per night (5% up to ₹7,500 per unit per day, 18% above), SAC 996311, invoice numbers unique in the financial year, company GSTIN on B2B invoices, credit notes | The invoice for one ₹7,000 night and one ₹8,000 night |
| Foreign guests | Form C (now Form III) details captured at check-in — OCI cardholders included — and a record of when it was filed | Where the Form C acknowledgement goes |
| Night audit | Every night charged once, no-shows, a day-end report, a business date | Close today and open the report |
| Housekeeping | A room-status board the desk sees live; maintenance jobs | Mark a room dirty on a phone. Does the desk see it? |
| Rates and channels | Seasonal and per-date rates; a clear list of connected sites and how they connect | Is it a calendar (iCal) sync or a rate-and-inventory connection — and with which sites? |
| Booking page | Your own booking page, and a straight answer on payment | Does it take card payments, and through whose gateway account? |
| Staff | Roles, limits on discounts and voids, a record of who did what | Who changed a rate yesterday? |
| Reports | Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, revenue by department, money by method | Yesterday’s figures, on the owner’s phone |
| Devices | Works on the phones your staff already carry; a plan for internet cuts | What happens when the Wi-Fi drops mid check-in? |
| Your data | Export any time, backups, deletion when you leave | Send me my guest list as a spreadsheet |
The demo script: run a real day through it
- Create a booking for a named guest for two nights next week.
- Check in a walk-in with an Aadhaar card or a passport, the way your desk really does it.
- Post a room-service order to the room.
- Check in a foreign guest and fill in what Form C (Form III) needs: passport, visa or OCI card, arrival in India, next destination.
- Move a guest to another room halfway through the stay.
- Mark tonight’s last arrival as a no-show.
- Check a guest out with a discount and a part payment in cash and UPI.
- Issue an invoice to a company with its GSTIN.
- Run the night audit.
- Open the reports as the owner, on your own phone.
If the salesperson has to “come back to you” on more than two of these, you already have your answer.
Channel managers and booking engines: ask exactly what they do
Three different things are often sold under the same words:
- A calendar (iCal) sync — the software and a site such as Airbnb or Booking.com exchange a calendar of booked dates, so a room booked on one closes on the other. It moves booked dates, not prices.
- A rate-and-inventory connection — pushes prices and availability into each online travel agent. Each connection needs an agreement between the software company and that travel site, so ask for the list of sites connected today.
- A booking engine — your own booking page. If it takes card payments, that needs a payment gateway account in your property’s name, with its own KYC, and the gateway’s fees on top.
None of these is wrong. What goes wrong is paying for one while believing you bought another.
What it really costs
Compare the whole monthly cost for your property, not the headline figure:
- The pricing model: per property, per room, or a commission per booking.
- A setup or training fee, and who actually does the setup.
- What is extra: a restaurant POS, the channel manager, the booking engine, SMS or WhatsApp messages, additional users.
- Payment-gateway fees, which are paid to the gateway on top of any software price.
- The price after an introductory period ends, and what happens on the day a trial ends.
- Any lock-in period or exit fee, and how you get your data out.
Ask for the price in writing, for your number of rooms, with everything you need switched on.
Red flags
- A feature is “on the roadmap” when you ask to see it.
- Your data can only leave as PDFs.
- A lock-in period or an exit fee.
- No straight answer on GST — or an invoice showing 12% on a room, a rate that has not applied to hotel rooms since 22 September 2025.
- A channel manager said to connect to “all OTAs”, with no list.
- Nobody can tell you whom to call at 11 pm when the desk cannot check a guest in.
Setting it up, and the first month
Good software still fails when it is set up badly. Before you go live, load the rooms with their room types and prices, the staff with their roles, and the guests already in-house with what they owe; decide the night audit time. Run the old way and the new way side by side for a few days, then stop the old way on a date you announce in advance — two systems for a month means neither is right.