What is a Property Management System?

A Property Management System (PMS) is a software application that is designed and can be implemented to meet the varied requirements of any size hotel or hotel group. A PMS should provide all of the tools that hotel staff need to do their day-to-day jobs - such as managing room inventory, handling reservations, checking guests in, assigning rooms, accommodating in-house guest needs, checking guest out, handling all billing and accounting requirements, reporting and marketing. The application should be configurable to each property's specific requirement and can be configured to operate either as a single-property or in a multi-property configuration, whereby all properties within a group share a single database. Multi-Property functionality can help hotel chains dramatically reduce hardware and software investments, and labour expenses, by running multiple properties off of a single database / hardware platform. Centralised hardware and software can also make system support and upgrades easier as all hardware and software is contained to one central location. Hotels may also reduce labour costs by sharing common functions between properties such as reservations, accounting, sales and PBX.