Hotel PMS Features — Front Desk, Housekeeping, Billing & OTA

What are the core features of a hotel PMS?

The core is the daily loop: sell a room, check the guest in, post the charges, clean the room, close the day and report the result. Every feature should make one of those steps faster or more reliable. Features that do not connect to that loop are decoration.

That is why configuration matters more than the length of the feature list. A hotel needs its own rate plans, folios, approval limits and night-audit checks, but it should not need a fork of the software to get them. The test is whether a new rate plan, a new outlet charge or a new report can be handled by the team without a development ticket.

What should the front desk do?

The front desk should handle arrivals, departures, room moves, folios and payments without leaving the screen. It should see the guest’s profile, the rate, the room status and the credit position at the same time. A check-in that requires five screens is five chances for a queue.

What should housekeeping do?

Housekeeping should see the room board, the departures, the stayovers and the arrivals, and update status from the floor. The desk should trust that board without calling upstairs. Maintenance tickets should attach to the room, not to a radio conversation.

What should billing and night audit do?

Billing should keep one folio per stay, with split and routing rules that finance can audit. Night audit should be a configurable sequence with blocking checks and a short exception report, not a binder of manual steps. Every correction should leave a trail.

What should OTA and channel features do?

The channel manager should push availability, rates and restrictions, and receive reservations with the right rate code and guest details. It should surface failures instead of silently overselling. The booking engine should use the same inventory and rate rules as the desk.

Which reporting features matter?

Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, segment mix, outlet revenue, AR ageing and the daily audit pack. The definitions should be the same at property and group level. A report that cannot drill down to the transaction is a screenshot, not a control.

Which permissions and audit features matter?

Access should be role-based and narrowable to the action: discounting, voiding, changing a rate, reopening a closed folio. Operation logs should record who, when and why. Sensitive guest notes should be permissioned separately from the basic profile.

Which features are optional?

POS, membership, procurement, spa, activities, golf and multi-property consolidation are optional because they depend on the property. They should be native to the same data model, not separate products connected by brittle interfaces. Optional does not mean unrelated.