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What is a hotel reservation system?

A hotel reservation software (HRS) is software used in the hospitality industry to manage rates, availability, and reservations. It can either integrate into your property management system (PMS) or function independently. A good HRS also provides performance insights to help you make data-driven decisions.

Why is a hotel reservation system important?

A hotel reservation system improves operational efficiency and enhances profitability by driving direct bookings. The easier it is for guests to book once they find you online, the more likely they are to complete the reservation.

Direct reservations put you in control of the guest experience, giving you valuable insights into guest behavior and booking patterns. By leveraging real behavioral data, you can refine your processes, improve conversion rates, and optimize demand generation for future bookings.

How do hotel reservation systems work?

Hotel reservation systems display real-time rates and availability across all booking channels, allowing guests to book directly through your website. Here's how the process typically works:

1. A guest visits your website, selects the number of guests, and enters check-in and check-out dates.
2. The system checks availability and displays room options in real-time.
3. The guest selects a room, enters personal details and special requests, then makes a payment or deposit through an online payment portal - all without leaving your site.
4. The system generates a confirmation number and automatically updates inventory, ensuring accurate availability without manual intervention.

Differences between a hotel reservation system and a booking engine?

While both an HRS and a booking engine help hotels manage reservations, they serve different purposes:

• A hotel reservation system manages reservations internally and integrates with a PMS, channel manager, and CRM.
• A booking engine is guest-facing and integrates with your website and payment gateway to process direct bookings.
• A booking engine receives reservations from direct online bookings, whereas an HRS manages bookings from various sources-OTAs, booking channels, and manual staff entries.

Benefits of using a reservation system in hotels?

There are so many benefits of a hotel reservation system, let's look at eight of the key benefits.

Enhanced brand reputation

A consistent, seamless experience across all touchpoints helps build trust with your guests and strengthens your brand. With an HRS, you can ensure a smooth booking process that reflects your brand's values, making it easier for guests to connect with your hotel. This consistency-whether it's the look and feel of your booking page or the reliability of the system-builds loyalty and boosts brand perception from the very first interaction.

Less chances incorrect data

Allowing guests to input their own data reduces the likelihood of errors. With multiple languages and accents, it's easy for staff to misinterpret or mistype information. An HRS takes away this risk by putting the responsibility in the hands of the guest, ensuring accuracy from the start.

Reduce your reliance on third parties

An HRS with an integrated booking engine on your website enables you to secure direct bookings. This reduces your dependence on third parties, ultimately lowering commission fees.

Automate processes

An HRS streamlines the reservation process by automatically providing room availability, rates, and inventory in real-time. This means your front desk can focus on other revenue-generating tasks, without manually handling reservations. The system also sends confirmation emails automatically, so your team only needs to manage availability, update rates, block out dates for group bookings, and prepare for guests' arrivals.

Reduce risk for human error

Manual reservation inputs can lead to mistakes, especially when managing multiple channels. An HRS reduces this risk by automatically updating rates and availability, preventing issues like overbookings or inaccurate data.

Smoother operations

Technology that simplifies processes leads to smoother operations. When operations run smoothly, everyone benefits-guests, staff, and your overall business. By empowering your team to engage with guests instead of spending time on tedious manual tasks, your staff will be more motivated to ensure a seamless guest journey.

Boost employee satisfaction

Employees are happier when they feel their work contributes to the success of the company. Manual tasks can be uninspiring, but an HRS takes care of these, leaving staff with more meaningful interactions and tasks. This not only boosts satisfaction but improves team morale.

Drive a better guest experience

The booking experience is a guest's first real interaction with your brand. With an HRS, you ensure a smooth, frictionless booking process. Guests can quickly input dates, select the right room, confirm, and pay securely-all in just a few clicks. A simple and intuitive booking process is key to delivering a great guest experience.

What features should a good reservation software have?

A good hotel reservation system should do more than just take bookings - it should simplify hotel operations, empower staff and provide a clear, real-time overview of reservations. Here are seven essential features to look for:

1. Straightforward management of reservations

A reservation management software should be straightforward, allowing you to visualize reservations in one dashboard in real time so that you can make informed decisions about the best way to manage your bookings. Plus, since the hotel industry is constantly evolving, the software should be agile, allowing you to make changes quickly and easily.

For example, a system like ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ’ allows you to automatically optimize your bookings in the ideal arrangement, and in the case of an overbooking, find a free slot. The dashboard is visual and easy to use so that you can intuitively manage your reservations, which is a key element in choosing the right system for your hotel.  

2. Ability to manage group bookings

When it comes to group bookings, the right reservation management tool should be able to make your life easier. While group bookings are great for revenue, they also require a lot of extra logistics for your front desk staff. Having a tool that makes the process more efficient is key to optimizing your operations and making handling groups hassle-free.

Some of the key features that can help make the group process easier are, if you are a multi-property hotel, to be able to manage group bookings across your properties from one single place. Other important features are the ability to add in tentative reservations that allow you to track inquiries without blocking availability, as well as smart rooming lists, group billing, and the ability to make updates to multiple reservations all at once.

Learn more about how rooming lists help make group bookings easier.

3. Easy management of room assignments

Making sure that your reservations are well-distributed across the hotel is no easy task, which is why you should find a tool that makes this easier. Look out for software that allows you to optimize the process based on different room assignment strategies. For example, you should be able to designate a room to a guest based on their preferences, based on the floor, or randomly to better distribute the guests throughout your hotel.

Having the ability to manage different room strategies within one tool is great for your front desk because it allows flexibility and the chance to assign rooms to best suit the current occupancy and guest preferences.

You may also like: 

• Strategies to attract group bookings to your hotel
• Benefits of managing online real time reservations

4. Mobile-friendly

Nowadays, busy hoteliers need to be able to manage their reservations on the go, which is why finding a tool that is mobile-friendly is crucial. This enables you and your front desk staff flexibility to manage the reservations, rooming assignments and more from mobile devices no matter where you are. 

5. Automation

As we’ve mentioned, automation is at the core of a successful hotel operation. Automation for reservations can come in many forms depending on the tool you choose, such as automating room assignments and distribution to best suit your hotel, automating confirmation emails so that once a guest books they immediately receive a booking confirmation, as well as automatically syncing reservations with your channel manager. 

6. Easy inventory management

Another key feature of a booking management tool is being able to easily manage inventory, or rather your available rooms. Understanding your availability and being able to move around the rooms based on occupancy allows you to better strategize in order to fill those rooms.

If you notice, for example, that all of your ocean-view rooms are available, this could perhaps indicate that you need to lower the price. Being able to visualize this information in a clear dashboard that allows you to make changes by dragging and dropping enables you to have a more dynamic strategy that can change based on inventory. 

7. Intuitiveness and ease of set-up

Intuitiveness refers to ease of use and set-up. Because reservations will be handled by a range of staff with different levels of computer skills, it’s important that the tool you choose be intuitive. It should easily sync with your other tools like your property management system, channel manager, payment systems and others so that they all work together as an integrated ecosystem that will make managing reservations as straightforward as possible. 

With an intuitive tool you will also need less training so you can dedicate your resources to improving your daily operations instead of having to learn how to use a tool. Of course, you will still want to make sure you have the customer support you need should there be a technical issue with the software. 

8 Best hotel reservation systems of the market in 2025

With so many different types of reservation management software on the market, how do you choose which one is right for your hotel? We've compiled a list of the 8 best options on the market. Keep reading!

1. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ' hotel reservation management software is what you need to transform reservation management, arguably one of the most important elements of your hotel's operations. Streamline your reservations, make it faster, more user-friendly and take the system anywhere with you thanks to the mobile app.

With ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ you can manage reservations efficiently getting a clear overview with the user-friendly interface, optimizing room and space allocation by the day or by the month, with easily searchable features. Boost direct revenue and easily manage group reservations across different properties.

2. Group Reservation System

Group Reservation System (also known as GRS) as the name suggests helps hotels and hostels distribute rooms for groups to Tour Operators. This reservation system allows you to better control inventory and distribution among tour operators and to boost group bookings. You can use this RMS to open and close dates, allocate a percentage of your rooms to group bookings and select the tour operators that most align with your target market.

3. Amadeus iHotelier

This global distribution system easily connects with different PMS and global distribution system, channel manager, central reservation system and channel manager. With the help of Amadeus, you can be sure to increase revenue, lower costs and boost your overall performance.

4. SHR

SHR offers a place to centralize reservations and distribution. You can easily manage all your different channels, your booking engine, your rates and guest profiles in one place.

5. Mirai

Mirai offers an easy connection between your PMS to ensure that rates, availability and reservations are up to date in real-time. Room types, rates and restrictions are also easily synchronized, allowing you to increase efficiency, optimize revenue and have a smooth guest experience across multiple properties and channels.

6. Bakuun

Bakuun helps to streamline the connection between travel agencies and hotels, allowing them to book via one platform. This way you can help increase direct bookings by expanding distribution efforts and driving incremental revenue.

7. Cubilis

With Cubilis you can manage availability and prices across different booking channels. Send price, restrictions and inventory updates from your PMS from Cubilis, and receive bookings directly from your website commission-free.

8. Busy Rooms

Busy Rooms allows you to manage revenue, distribution and Reservations from one place. Easily synch with your PMS to manage reservations in real-time and use revenue reporting features to drive better performance.

What can ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ hotel reservation system do for your property?

With ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ hotel reservation system, you can manage reservations with an interactive timeline, easily manage spaces, and see the status of a reservation at a glance. Whether it's managing groups with a smart rooming list, booking links or making bulk reservation updates, or managing different properties in one software, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ is a great option to take care of all these functions.

With over 1000 integrations available you can use ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ hotel reservation system to centralize everything having to do with reservations, rates, availability, revenue, guest experience, and important insights from one all-in-one platform.

Conclusion

We've looked at everything having to do with hotel reservation systems, including what it is, why it's important, the benefits, the key features, the differences between a booking engine and an HRS, the best software for 2025 and how these systems can help your property rock operations.

With all this information clear, you now have what it takes to be successful. The right software in your toolkit should help you manage everything as simply as possible, allowing you the ability to drive direct bookings and boost revenue.

Download our guide 'Switching Your PMS'