Many of these programs come with hotel appointment booking software to make reservations easier to occur and to honor. This gives the small hotel a good reputation and makes it likely to have reoccurring customers in the future.

Hospitality software is something that hasn’t been forgotten for the small hotels and these programs out currently show that. There are many programs out there and the newer ones reflect the effort of the smaller hotels and the quality that they have.

Small hotel software is designed to management single-property hotels with less than 100 rooms. Select Module Systems (SMS) provide single-property reservation capabilities and management. SMS typically only provide a focused set of features for guest amenities or front desk operations only. Basic front desk features for small hotel software would include reservations management (check-in/check-out, booking, room availability, unsold rooms), guest profile management, rate management (rate changes, special/package rates), reporting capabilities, customer communication, night audit, daily ledger, and housekeeping management/maintenance. Back office features include payroll, accounts payable, asset accounting, general inventory, and personnel/human resources.

Optional modules of an SMS would be an Internet Booking Engine/GDS module for real-time reservations made remotely via the Internet and a POS module depending on whether the small hotel had restaurant or lounge/bar food and beverage sales. If so, a POS module would track and record guests’ food and beverage charges and apply them to the overall hotel bill. Whether or not an SMS would have and IBE or POS module would depend on the hotel size and scale of operations.

Another option for small hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts is a Basic Reservation System (BRS) module. This has more basic reservation features with less complicated operations. A BRS module is designed for single property hotels to handle standard reservation procedures. Features of a BRS module include reservation and guest profile management, rate management, and reporting. They typically do not have back office features, only the front office features to facilitate booking and guest check-in-check out.