FrontDesk
Try it free

Switching · 8 min read

Switching hotel PMS without downtime: a 30-day plan

A practical plan to move a hotel or a group to a new property management system: what to export, when to cut over, how to run the first week, and what usually goes wrong.

Why hotels stay on software they dislike

Ask a general manager why they have not changed PMS and the answer is rarely price. It is fear of the cutover: future bookings lost, OTAs disconnected, staff confused in August. That fear is reasonable. It is also manageable with a plan.

Day 1 to 7: decide and export

  • ●Export future reservations, guests and rates from the current system as CSV. Every serious PMS has an export; ask support if you cannot find it.
  • ●List every integration: channel manager, booking engine, payment terminal, door locks, accounting, city tax reporting.
  • ●Pick the cutover date in your lowest week, never on a Friday.

Day 8 to 20: set up in parallel

  • ●Create room types, rooms and rate plans in the new system, matching how you sell today.
  • ●Import the future bookings and reconcile counts per night against the old system. The numbers must match before you go on.
  • ●Train the team in a demo or sandbox, on real scenarios: a group check-in, a split folio, a no-show.

Day 21: cutover

  1. Close the day in the old PMS.
  2. Export the delta: bookings made since the first import.
  3. Import the delta into the new system and reconcile again.
  4. Reconnect the channel manager to the new PMS and push availability.
  5. Keep the old system read-only for 60 days for history and invoices.

Day 22 to 30: the first week

Expect small surprises: a rate plan mapped to the wrong OTA product, a guest note that did not import. Check the planner against OTA extranets every morning for the first week. Run the night audit every night without exception.

For groups: one property first

Never migrate every property on the same night. Move the simplest property first, fix what you learn, then roll out one or two hotels per week.

In FrontDesk

FrontDesk imports reservations and guests from the export files of Cloudbeds, Mews, Little Hotelier, Octorate and Booking.com, with presets for each format. Step-by-step pages are in switch from your PMS, for example switching from Cloudbeds.

Simple hotel property management software for independent hotels, chains and groups. 14 days free, no card.

Open the demoStart free trial

More articles