Property Management System (PMS)

While the CRS (Central Reservation System) is in charge of the selling of the hotel rooms and services to the outside world, the PMS (Property Management System) is in charge of the reality of the hotel on the inside. It replaces the traditional reservation book and is the main tool used by the front desk staff, housekeeping, and finance teams.

Its core functions include:

• Front desk operations: Processing arrivals and departures, issuing key cards, viewing the “tape chart” (a visual timeline of room occupancy).
• Room inventory management: A PMS, unlike a CRS, which sells room types (e.g., Deluxe King), assigns specific units (e.g., Room 304).
• Housekeeping and maintenance: Monitoring the real-time status of rooms (Occupied, Vacant, Dirty, Clean, Out of Order) to ensure the front desk knows which rooms are ready for new guests.
• Guest accounting: Tracking all charges for guests — from room rate to restaurant meals to spa services — in a single folio for final billing.

Historically, Property Management System software was server-based, where it was installed physically on a computer in the hotel’s basement. These legacy systems were costly to maintain and hard to integrate with other tools.

Today, the industry is moving towards cloud-native PMS. These systems are hosted online (SaaS) and available through web browsers or tablets. Their greatest strength is connectivity. A modern cloud PMS has open APIs, so you can integrate with an enormous ecosystem of third-party apps, such as:

• Point of sale (POS) systems (restaurant/bars).
• Keyless entry system (mobile keys).
• Revenue management systems (RMS).
• Self-service kiosks.