Guides written by hospitality consultants: choose your software, connect your distribution and steer your revenue, without the jargon.
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Most independent hotels lose revenue not because of their product, but because of a badly chosen or badly connected tech stack: a PMS that doesn't talk to the channel manager, a booking engine that leaks direct bookings, rates frozen all year round.
These resources cover the questions we hear every week on assignment: which PMS for a 20 to 80-room hotel, how to avoid overbookings, which indicators to review every Monday morning. Every guide is free, practical and kept up to date.
You don't need to be technical to move forward. You need to know what each tool does, in which order to connect them, and which questions to ask a vendor before signing a three-year contract.
Read them in order: the PMS is the foundation, the channel manager opens distribution, revenue management turns it all into margin.
Vendors often use the same words for very different products. Here is the grid we use during an audit.
| Tool | Main role | The question it answers | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| PMS | Run operations: bookings, arrivals, invoicing, housekeeping. | Who is staying tonight and who paid for what? | Guest data retyped by hand into a spreadsheet. |
| Channel manager | Sync availability and rates with distribution platforms. | Does what I sell online match what is actually left? | Overbookings, or rooms closed 'just to be safe'. |
| Booking engine | Turn a website visit into a direct booking. | How many bookings do I get commission-free? | A booking path longer than four steps. |
| RMS | Recommend or apply prices based on demand and history. | What price should this room sell for, on that date? | The same rate on a quiet Tuesday and a full weekend. |
| CRM / guest tool | Centralise guest profiles, stay emails and reviews. | How do I bring a past guest back? | No communication between booking and check-out. |
You don't need to change everything at once. This is the order we recommend to an independent hotel structuring its technology.
List the tools actually used and those paid for but forgotten. The free GROOM Compass diagnosis detects part of your stack from your website.
A PMS and a channel manager that are badly linked create inventory gaps and overbookings. Fix the flows before adding new tools.
Once the data is reliable, set up a simple revenue management routine: three indicators, one review per week.
Nothing exotic: the same situations, property after property, and most are fixed without a big budget.
An impressive demo leads to a three-year contract for features nobody ever uses.
Write down your five daily pain points first, then challenge the demo.
Two good products badly connected perform worse than one average tool.
Ask for the list of native connections and a reference hotel already using it.
The website attracts visitors, but the booking engine is slow, untranslated or hard to read on mobile.
Book your own hotel on a phone, with a stopwatch running.
One price all year leaves margin on the table in peak periods and empties the quiet ones.
Start with two seasons and two day types before automating anything.
A full hotel at low rates can generate less revenue than one at 70% sold well.
Track RevPAR alongside occupancy, every week.
Print it or keep it open during the demo. If three answers are missing, take more time.
These questions are also part of the GROOM Compass audit report.
The terms that come up in vendor demos, explained in one sentence.
Short answers here; the detail lives in the matching guide.
The PMS. It holds the booking data every other tool plugs into. Replacing the channel manager first often means redoing the work six months later.
As soon as you sell on two platforms besides your own site, yes. Below that, disciplined manual updates can work — if you do them daily.
A well-kept sheet with two seasons and a few day types is enough to start. An RMS pays off when demand is volatile and nobody has time to watch prices.
By working on direct: a fast mobile booking engine, a clear advantage reserved for your site, and follow-ups with past guests. OTAs still matter for visibility.
Usually several weeks between decision and go-live. Most of that time goes into data migration and training, not installation.
Yes, guides and glossary are open, no sign-up. The maturity diagnosis is free too; only the full audit report is paid.
The scan analyses your website, detects part of your tools and returns a maturity score with your top three priorities.
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