hi all?i am new here and i have learnt this forum is about a sambapos pos .PMS and POS goes hand in hand,I wanted to seek your assistance in suggesting the best hotel software for our facility.we need a desktop version without channel management or booking managers.A system that can check inn,check out,cancel reservation etc but with detailled reports and user management.
kindly assist
I did an intergration with newbook but that’s a cloud based system…
I charge to rooms and all cash counter sales are synced to the PMS making PMS a single point for reporting.
Room entities show guest name etc and even made intergration for half board package option which samba accounts for automatically when taking the orders.
Might be worth looking at as has worked very well for us…
You issue with a local PMS is it is less likely to have an API vs a cloud based system.
Thanks @JTRTech I like your solution, can it work for a hotel with about 100 rooms?
hope the below is the link
NewBook you mean?
I dont know if they have a limit at there end, we have 32 and no issue, you would just have to scroll down more but you can change the sort order etc.
Samba side 100 rooms wouldnt be a problem, you would want to split the entity screen buttons over multiple screens else they would likely start getting a bit small on the screen, by floor maybe…
If you mean a local setup from the other topic… well TBH if I had 100 odd rooms I would definatly go with a dedicated PMS system to get online bookings and booking site links like expedia and booking.com. I wouldnt want a 100 room hotel based purely within samba and with that many rooms you can easily justify the expence of a propper PMS.
Your issue then becomes finding one with a good API.
The issue with getting access to an API is many of the PMS providers are very cagey - I have tried contacting a few and unless there is an exting client of theirs wanting to have samba generally they dont even give me the time of day even though - given api access it would require no cutom work there end which is what they dont understand as other POS systems would most likely expect them to make changes/tweeks to comprimise. but with Samba we have the flexability to pretty much do it all Samba side and give the PMS whatever their API needs.
It could be doable but for that number of rooms dont you want direct - real time online booking and links to booking channels like booking.com?
The post you linked to is relating to NewBook PMS which is the booking system and samba is just the POS side which passes all sales into NewBook, NB is the core and Samba acts as an extention/interface for POS.
I mean you could use a seperate booking system and just do POS/Room charges on Samba but for that many rooms I would reconmend an intergrated option.
What do you curently use for booking system?
Amazingly no system in place, am task to look for a system
What country you based in?
am In kenya, and the hotel is just started
Ok, well IO dont know if NewBook offer service in Kenya although being cloud based it shouldn’t be that hard for them but I would recommend them based on our experience so far.
SambaPOS is far from being capable of being a ‘Good’ PMS system especially for a large hotel.
For a small place you could get away with it doing manual bookings or using small online system and using SambaPOS as the on site ‘in house’ guests system but it would take allot of work to even come close to being a actual booking system.
The offline/samba only topic I guess your actually refering to would be doable even for larger hotel and with dev could definatly be made better but you would really be better off with a real PMS system with than many rooms.
Since you dont have an existing system if I were you I would choose one with an API they are open to allowing access to - check it has required requests and butcher my PMS intergration scripts to work for that PMS.
Thanks for your advice I have to do a thorough research to get one with a good API
Take a look at NewBoo
They list AU, NZ, UK/EU and US on site but that’s not to say they couldn’t offer you something.
They probably (well defiantly) not the cheapest option but we have liked what we have seen so far.
There are open source solutions but not used any.
Thanks JTRTech, I will
Keep me posted if you find something interesting, wouldnt mind having a choice of intergrated PMSs to go with Samba and a hotel system with PMS/POS intergration are generally only propitiatory POS with the PMS or only the ‘big boys’ like IRC touch.
I will keep you posted
Booking.com is a booking channel (sorry if you already know that) but they do offer a ‘booking button’ you put on your site to do online booking through them at a lower rate that traffic from their own site.
For channels (booking.com, late rooms, Expedia etc) if a PMS doesn’t link directly to these types of channels they often go through a middleman called siteminder.
They also may be worth a look at as link to many many channels and do direct online bookings but not sure if they offer a PMS type facility yet.
A channel link in one way or another is a big help if you want to take booking from these sites. About 40% of our bookings come through these type sites and believe many places this % is higher.
If you do resort to a non channel linked PMS is reconmend say siteminder as a channel manager and online booking solution however the availability and rates then have to be managed seperatly from the booking system/PMS itself.
An intergrated system saves allot of overbooking scenarios which used to happen every 1-2 months and now only ever happen when there is an issue with the intergration which has hapend maybe 2-3 times in last 4+ years since having some form of intergration.
Take a look at http://receptionbook.com/ - they are exclusive to East Africa and have many features specific to the local market. I think they are going to cover Kenya too but not sure if they do right now. I worked with them to do an integration with SambaPOS and it’s working for a hotel with 5 POS terminals and about 45 rooms without any problems. It’s cloud based.
I’ll send you a PM and also give you the contact of the guy who I dealt with, he should be able to let you know if it can work for you.