Difference Between Hotel PMS and POS

Hotel property management solutions can be cloud-based PMS, on-premises, and hybrid (a combination of the two).

What is Hotel POS?

A hotel POS System that facilitates the management of sales transactions on the property. The hotel just can input orders and take payments on the spot or add the cost of items or services to an existing account using this software. POS solutions act as a virtual storefront.  

Just like the difference between PMS and a Channel Manager, the difference between hotel PMS and POS is conceptual and functional. 

While a hotel PMS is a wider concept and primarily manages room bookings and inventory, POS is a narrower concept that is just restricted to managing sales, invoicing, and ordering at multiple guest touchpoints such as restaurants, rooms, spas and wellness centers, and boutiques.

These two systems when brought together or integrated allow a hotel to better manage their hotel sales and guest billing or invoicing. How and why? Let’s learn the answer to these questions in the next section.

Why do hotels need PMS and POS? 

Both POS and PMS have their importance in hotel management, making them essential for a hospitality business.  

While PMS allows hotels to effectively manage bookings and handle room inventory management, POS allows for restaurant order processing and restaurant, spa, or souvenir boutique stocks. 

Therefore, a PMS notifies when the room is booked, needs to be cleaned, or is ready to be checked in, while a POS solution tells whether the restaurant table is available or has been reserved. The latter further helps with invoicing activities or extras directly to the room to simplify your guest’s experience.

While these were the functions performed by these two systems separately, what does their integration mean for your hotel? 

A PMS-POS integration helps in the seamless transmission of the guest billing information from each crucial guest touchpoint such as the front desk, bar, spa, etc., to the property management system. This also allows for the addition of the information to a centralized guest account.

With traditional systems and non-integration, this process was done manually, increasing the risk of billing errors and omissions, and thus, hampered guest experience. Automation made this task smoother and more effective, elevating the guest experience.  

A POS system notifies the property management system that a charge needs to be made. Then it matches the guest status with the guest room number in the hotel PMS, automatically assigning the charge to the suitable account.  

The property management system then notes all discount and refund types offered on orders created by the POS in real-time. It additionally captures category-wise POS details, posting sales on all the relevant account heads.  

With this integration, unpaid bills at various hotel services can be automatically added to the guest’s room invoice. In addition, the hotel can create a pre-authorized limit for each room. Once this limit is reached, every sales point linked with the hotel PMS gets alerts and prompts the guest to pay directly, allowing hotels to not have any due payments.  

The integration further allows hotels to accept payments in multiple ways such as cash, credit/debit card, coupons, etc., through online transfer mediums such as wallets. 

Both PMS, and POS perform their unique, yet interconnected functions and their integration hence creates synergies.  

How does PMS-POS integration elevate the guest experience?  

With PMS-POS integration, multiple hotel services including restaurants, boutiques, room service, and concierges are able to access the POS software to provide complete invoices and enter any purchases. 

This allows guests to walk around without any payment cards and thoroughly enjoy their stay, without worrying about billing or invoicing errors.  

Furthermore, in case of a guest package, or credit flagged in a guest’s file, PMS-POS integration facilitates smooth communication and reduces the room for confusion through better-connected services and departments.  

Thus, PMS-POS integration helps to have a transparent billing or invoicing system, allowing guests to have a clearer picture of their spending and saving them time during check-out.  

PMS-POS integration can transform hotel processes in no time

While a hotel can have PMS and POS solutions or tools working separately, their integration provides a lot of benefits and so, some vendors offer them together. Partners like BOTSHOT, offer seamless integration options for PMS and POS software.  

Our solutions are advanced and offer quick and easy integration, allowing hotels to have a more connected sales ecosystem. Just a simple login and a dedicated POS page in the PMS solution help a hotel streamline its billing or invoicing processes as well as boost guest satisfaction.  

Easy POS updates through PMS, secure information and guest data sharing, and easy switch between both systems will allow you to boost inter-system and departmental connectivity, automate workflows, and more effectively monetize data.  

So, do not wait any longer!

Integrate your POS with hotel PMS today and take your hospitality game to the next level! Schedule a demo with us.