Hotel software or lodge software?
Hotel property management systems are excellent at selling rooms. Many lodges sell something else: a week of guided days, meals and evenings at the bar, with the room included. Here is how to tell which one your lodge needs.
What each is built to do
A typical hotel PMS against Malvavisco. Every PMS differs, so check the ones you are considering.
| Feature | MalvaviscoLodge software | Hotel software |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | The whole stay: rooms, guided days, assets, meals and the bar | Rooms, rates and availability |
| Selling online | Not yet: no booking engine or channel manager | Usually a booking engine and a channel manager for online travel agencies |
| Activities | Sold on the booking, then scheduled with a guide and the assets they need | Often sold as extras without a schedule, a guide or equipment |
| Guides, boats and horses | Crew and assets with their own calendar rows, skills, languages and overlap checks | Rarely modelled at all |
| Meals | Included meals planned for everyone on site, with a dietary brief and kitchen tickets | Meal plans as a rate option; the kitchen usually works from a separate list |
| Bar and shop | Point of sale charges straight to the booking’s bill | Often a separate point of sale connected by integration |
| Groups | One booking per party, charges to one guest or split across the group | Usually one reservation per room, linked as a group |
| Fiscal invoicing | Not included: a printable invoice that is not a fiscal document | In many countries, connected to the tax authority |
How to decide for your lodge
Three questions settle it for most lodges.
1. Where do your bookings come from?
If most nights are sold through Booking.com, Expedia or Airbnb, you need a channel manager, and a hotel PMS is the better tool today; Malvavisco does not connect to online travel agencies. If most bookings come by email, phone, agents and repeat guests, a booking engine matters less than running the week well.
2. What does the guest pay for?
Add up last season’s revenue. If rooms are most of it, a hotel PMS covers what matters. If guided days, meals, the bar and extras are a large share, or the room is sold as part of a guided week, those are the parts a hotel system leaves on spreadsheets and whiteboards.
3. What has to be scheduled every day?
A hotel schedules housekeeping. A lodge schedules guides, boats, horses, vehicles and the kitchen around every guest’s day. If your morning starts with “who takes which group, in which boat”, you need software that plans resources, not only rooms.
Do you need electronic invoices from the same system?
In much of Latin America, invoices must be issued through the tax authority (ARCA in Argentina, the SII in Chile, DIAN in Colombia, the SAT in Mexico, NF-e and NFS-e in Brazil). Many local hotel systems connect to them. Malvavisco does not: its invoice is printable but not fiscal, and electronic invoices stay in your invoicing system.
Hotel software for lodges
A property management system: the software a hotel uses for reservations, rooms, rates, check-in and check-out, and often its booking engine and channel manager.
Yes, many do, especially lodges that sell rooms online. The guided days, guides, boats and kitchen usually end up in spreadsheets alongside it.
It covers what a PMS does for bookings, rooms, housekeeping, payments and reports, and adds activities, guides, assets, the kitchen and the point of sale. It does not have a booking engine or a channel manager yet.
No. There is no channel manager. Each room or asset has a one-way calendar feed that shows when it is unavailable, which other calendars can subscribe to.
