Contents9
- How a small hotel differs from a B&B
- 1. Room allocation: types, rooms and the last one left
- 2. Rate plans multiply faster than rooms
- 3. A desk that more than one person uses
- 4. Payments: deposits, guarantees and no-shows
- 5. The guest register
- 6. How the price scales with your rooms
- The buying checklist: twelve questions
- FAQ
A booking system for a small hotel has four jobs that a B&B system can get away without. It has to allocate real rooms across several room types without overbooking any of them. It has to keep a stack of rate plans in step on every channel. It has to be used by more than one person on the desk without anyone losing track of who did what. And it has to take and hold card payments properly, because at 5 to 40 rooms a no-show is no longer an annoyance, it's a line on the P&L. Get those four right and the rest is preference.
This guide covers what each of those looks like on an independent UK hotel, with the numbers behind them, and the questions to ask before you sign up.
How a small hotel differs from a B&B
Somewhere between about eight and twelve rooms, a property stops being run by one person with a diary and starts being run by a team with a system. The software has to change with it.
B&B (up to ~8 rooms) | Small hotel (~8–40 rooms) | |
|---|---|---|
Who takes bookings | The owner | Owner, reception, duty manager, sometimes night staff |
Room types | One or two | Three to six, often with sea view / accessible / family variants |
Rate plans | One price, maybe with breakfast | Flexible, non-refundable, room only, B&B, dinner B&B, corporate |
Bookings a year | A few hundred | Two to five thousand |
Payments | Mostly on arrival | Deposits, card guarantees, pre-payment, company accounts |
Extras | Rarely | Bar, restaurant and room service charged to the room |
What goes wrong | Forgetting to block a date | Two people selling the last room at once |
If you're at the smaller end, our B&B booking system guide and guest house reservation system guide are the better fit. This one is for the hotel with a front desk.
1. Room allocation: types, rooms and the last one left
Guests book a room type. You sell a Superior Double; the guest doesn't care whether it's room 12 or room 14. That's how the channels work, and it's how your system should sell.
But on the night, someone has to be in room 12, and that's where small hotels get caught. Three things the system has to handle:
Allocation that respects the real building. Room 12 is being redecorated for a week. Room 14 has the accessible bathroom and should be held for the guest who asked for it. If the system only counts "four Superior Doubles available", it will sell a room you haven't got.
Moves, upgrades and extensions without re-keying. A guest extends by a night, and the room they're in is booked tomorrow. You want to drag the booking on a diary and see the clash, not cancel and rebook.
The last room, sold once. With several channels live, the risk isn't selling ten rooms you don't have. It's selling the last Family Room on Booking.com and your own website within the same few minutes. A two-way connection closes that room type everywhere the moment it sells. A calendar feed that updates on a schedule leaves a gap, and the last room is where the gap bites. There's more on that in our calendar sync guide.
Ask to see: the diary with 30 rooms on it. If it only looks good with six, it was built for B&Bs.
2. Rate plans multiply faster than rooms
A B&B has a price. A small hotel has a rate grid, and it grows by multiplication.
Worked example. Four room types × three rate plans (flexible with breakfast, flexible room only, non-refundable) × five places you sell (your website, Booking.com, Expedia, Google, one more OTA):
Count | |
|---|---|
Prices to keep aligned on any one night | 60 |
Price points touched by one 30-night seasonal change | 1,800 |
Nobody updates 1,800 price points by hand without mistakes, and the mistakes aren't random. They're the non-refundable rate left higher than the flexible one on one channel, or last month's price still live on a site you forgot you were on.
What the system has to do:
Derived rates. Set the flexible B&B rate; the non-refundable is 10% less and room only is £12 less per person, automatically. Change one number, and the whole grid moves.
One rate calendar pushed to every channel. You change a season once, not once per extranet.
Restrictions by date. Minimum stays, closed to arrival on Saturdays, a stop-sell on one room type. Use them sparingly. Our seasonal pricing guide covers where they help and where they quietly block bookings you'd have taken.
This is also where RevPAR is won or lost. If you want the numbers behind that, see how to increase RevPAR at a small hotel.
3. A desk that more than one person uses
The day a second person starts taking bookings, three new needs appear.
Separate logins. Everyone on the desk has their own. Shared passwords mean you can't tell who cancelled a booking, and you can't lock out someone who has left.
Permissions. Reception can check guests in and take payment. They probably shouldn't be able to change rates, issue refunds or delete a booking. The system should let you draw that line.
A history on every booking. Who created it, who moved it, who applied the discount, when the card was charged. When a guest disputes something three weeks later, this is the only record you've got.
And the handover. Arrivals, in-house and departures on one screen, with balances due and notes ("late arrival, key in the safe", "cot in 7") visible to whoever is on shift next. Our Monday reports guide covers the five reports to look at, starting with arrivals with balances due.
4. Payments: deposits, guarantees and no-shows
At a B&B, a no-show is a lost night. At a small hotel it's a pattern, and it adds up.
Cancellation rates for independent properties run around 21.8% on OTA bookings and 10.6% on direct. Not all of those are late cancellations or no-shows, but enough are to justify a proper policy.
Worked example: an 18-room hotel. Assumptions for illustration: 70% occupancy, £95 average rate, 1.8-night average stay.
Per year | |
|---|---|
Room nights sold (18 × 365 × 70%) | 4,599 |
Bookings (÷ 1.8 nights) | 2,555 |
Room revenue | £436,905 |
Two uncharged no-shows a month (2 × 12 × £95 × 1.8) | £4,104 lost |
£4,104 is more than most small hotels pay for their booking system in a year. The fix isn't complicated, but the system has to support it:
Card details held securely against the booking, not written on a pad, so a guarantee means something.
Deposits and pre-payment taken automatically by rate plan: non-refundable charged at booking, flexible charged on arrival or at the cancellation deadline.
Folios, not totals. Room, breakfast, bar, dinner and car park as separate lines on one bill, with the option to split it between a guest and a company.
Charges posted from the bar and restaurant to the room, so the dinner bill doesn't get lost between the till and the checkout.
Security matters here. If you're holding cards, the system should be PCI DSS compliant and you shouldn't be storing card numbers anywhere else.
5. The guest register
Every UK hotel, whatever its size, must keep a register under the Immigration (Hotel Records) Order 1972. Every guest aged 16 or over gives their full name and nationality. Guests who aren't British, Irish or Commonwealth citizens also give their passport number and place of issue, and their next destination if known. You keep the record for at least 12 months.
At 2,500 bookings a year, a paper book is a liability. The system should collect this at check-in (or before arrival) for every adult in the room, not just the lead booker, and keep it for the required period.
6. How the price scales with your rooms
A 12-room hotel that becomes a 24-room hotel shouldn't find its software bill has tripled. Pricing for hotel software comes in four shapes, and they scale very differently:
Flat monthly bands by room count
Per room per month
Per booking fees
Commission on bookings, usually on the booking engine
Worked example: the same 18-room hotel, on a hypothetical vendor charging £6 per room per month, £1 per booking, and 3% commission on direct bookings (35% of revenue). All three rates are hypothetical, for illustration.
18 rooms | 36 rooms | |
|---|---|---|
Subscription (£6 × rooms × 12) | £1,296 | £2,592 |
Per-booking fee (2,555 / 5,110 bookings) | £2,555 | £5,110 |
3% commission on direct revenue (£152,917 / £305,834) | £4,588 | £9,175 |
Total a year | £8,439 | £16,877 |
The headline price is £108 a month. The actual cost is more than six times that, and it doubles when you do. None of it is dishonest; it's just spread across three lines on three different pages.
Ask every vendor for the total annual cost at your size and at double your size, with channel connections, the booking engine, payments and reporting switched on. Our hidden fees guide has the full list of what to check, and direct bookings vs OTA commission shows what a commission-free direct booking is actually worth.
The buying checklist: twelve questions
Does the diary work comfortably with your full room count on one screen?
Can you hold a specific room (accessible, under repair) without breaking availability?
Is channel sync two-way, closing a room type everywhere the moment it sells?
Can rate plans be derived from one base rate, and changed once for every channel?
Can you set minimum stays and closed-to-arrival by date and room type?
Does every staff member get their own login, with permissions you control?
Is there a history on every booking showing who changed what?
Can it hold cards securely, and take deposits automatically by rate plan?
Does it run proper folios, with bar and restaurant charges posted to the room?
Does it capture the guest register for every guest aged 16+?
Does it give you occupancy, ADR and RevPAR without a spreadsheet?
What's the total annual cost at your size and at double your size, including per-booking fees and commission?
If a vendor can't answer 3, 8 and 12 clearly, keep looking.
FAQ
What is a small hotel booking system? It's software that holds your rooms, rates and bookings in one place, keeps every channel (your website, Booking.com, Expedia and others) in step, and runs the desk: check-in, payments, folios and reports. For a hotel of roughly 5 to 40 rooms it replaces the diary, the spreadsheet and the separate logins to each extranet.
What's the difference between a hotel booking system and a PMS? In practice, for a small hotel, very little. A property management system (PMS) is the broader term and usually includes the booking system, front desk, payments and reporting. Most small hotels need all of those in one product rather than a separate booking engine, channel connection and PMS that have to talk to each other.
Can a small hotel use B&B booking software? Up to about eight rooms, often yes. Beyond that, check that it handles several room types with real room allocation, multiple rate plans, separate staff logins with permissions, and folios with extras charged to the room. Those are the areas where B&B software usually runs out.
How do I stop overbooking the last room? Use a two-way channel connection that closes the room type on every channel the moment it sells, rather than a calendar feed that updates on a schedule. The risk is highest on the last room of a type, when two channels can sell it within minutes of each other.
Do small hotels need to keep a guest register? Yes. The Immigration (Hotel Records) Order 1972 applies to any hotel, whatever its size. Every guest aged 16 or over gives their full name and nationality, and guests who aren't British, Irish or Commonwealth citizens also give passport details and their next destination. Keep the record for at least 12 months.
How much should a small hotel booking system cost? Compare the total annual cost, not the monthly headline. Add up the subscription, any per-booking fees, and any commission on direct bookings, at your current room count and at double it. Per-booking fees and commission can cost several times the subscription on a busy small hotel.
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