Switching PMS Without Losing a Weekend

Why hotels stay on systems they dislike

Ask a GM why they have not moved and the answer is almost never "the current system is good." It is the live inventory, the reservations already on the books for next season, years of guest history, and a genuine fear of losing a booking during the changeover.

That fear is reasonable. It is also the single biggest asset an underperforming vendor has, which is why so little effort goes into making departure easy.

The order that actually works

A migration for a small property is not a big-bang cutover. It is a sequence, and the sequence matters more than the speed.

Set up the property first, with no live data. Room types, rooms, rate plans, taxes and users. Nothing is at risk yet, and this is where you discover whether the new system can express how you actually price and charge — including the awkward parts like per-guest nightly tourist taxes or occupancy-based rates.

Then import the forward book. Confirmed reservations for arrivals ahead of you, with balances. This is the part worth checking guest by guest for at least the first fortnight of arrivals.

Then guest history. Useful, but not urgent. It should never be allowed to delay a cutover; it can land after go-live without anyone at the desk being blocked.

Then connect distribution. Channels last, deliberately, and one at a time. Rate parity errors are the expensive mistake in a migration, and they are much easier to spot when a single connection changed.

Then run both for a short overlap. A few days of double-checking arrivals against the old system costs a little duplicated effort and removes almost all of the risk.

Pick the week deliberately

Go live in your low season, mid-week, with the owner or GM on site — not the Friday before a busy weekend, and not while the person who knows the rate structure is on leave.

It sounds obvious. It is routinely ignored because migrations get scheduled around the vendor’s availability rather than the property’s occupancy calendar. The vendor should be adapting to your quiet week; if they cannot, that is information about how the rest of the relationship will go.

Warning signs during onboarding

Onboarding is a live audition for support, and it is the best data you will ever get before committing.

Watch for onboarding handled by a different team from support, with no handover — you will re-explain your property from scratch the first time something breaks. Watch for a fixed number of included sessions with billing afterwards, which converts every later question into a purchasing decision. Watch for anything about your operation being described as unusual; if it is unusual to them during setup, it will still be unusual in month seven when you need it changed.

And watch the response times you get while you are still a new customer. This is the most attentive the vendor will ever be. Whatever you experience now is the ceiling.

How this works at Frontdesko

There are no setup fees and no charge for onboarding help, which removes the awkward dynamic where asking a question costs money. The same team that knows hotels handles the questions during setup and afterwards — the contact page lists the direct line, live chat and a four-hour email target, and the help centre covers the self-service path.

Because the PMS itself is free forever with no room limit, there is also a lower-risk option than a scheduled cutover: set the property up in parallel, at your own pace, and satisfy yourself it handles your rates, taxes and workflow before any live reservation depends on it. The switching guide covers what moving over involves in more detail.