What to look for in hotel management software in Nigeria

Most hotel software comparisons are written by the people selling the software. This one is too — so read it as a list of questions to ask, not a verdict. Every question below is one we would happily be asked ourselves, and a few of them are ones we would lose on for certain properties.

The reason to be careful is that a property management system is not a purchase you reverse easily. Your reservations, your guest history and your books end up inside it. Switching a year later is a migration, not a decision.

Start with the questions nobody asks until it’s too late

1. What happens when the network goes down?

Ask this first. Most cloud systems answer honestly that the front desk stops. For some properties that is fine — a hotel on a solid fibre line in Lekki with a decent inverter may lose ten minutes a month.

For others it means the desk cannot check anyone in during a NEPA cut, and the bar cannot ring a sale. Work out what an outage actually costs you before deciding how much resilience to pay for. If it is material, you want the option of a server on your own premises rather than a promise about uptime in someone else’s data centre.

2. Is it priced in naira, and does the price move with the dollar?

Software billed per room in dollars means your software cost changes with the exchange rate, on a business whose revenue does not. Ask for the price in naira, in writing, and ask what happens at renewal.

3. What does it cost per user?

Per-user pricing quietly punishes you for the thing you want — getting your staff onto the system. If your night auditor, three receptionists, two bar attendants and the housekeeping supervisor each cost extra, someone will start sharing a login, and your audit trail is finished from that day.

4. Can I get my data out?

Ask specifically: can I export guests, folios and financial reports to Excel, whenever I want, without asking permission? “We can arrange an export” is a different answer from “there is a button.” One of those is a feature; the other is leverage.

Then the ones about how Nigerian hotels actually run

5. Does it handle cash, transfer, Moniepoint and cheque as first-class tenders?

Not “other payment method — notes field.” Each of these needs to be its own tender that reconciles independently, or your drawer will only balance by accident.

6. Can it bill a company directly, on credit terms?

Corporate and government business is a large share of Nigerian hotel revenue and it does not pay at checkout. You need accounts with credit limits, invoices, and receivables aged by how long they have been outstanding — otherwise the oil company’s March stay is still unpaid in July and nobody notices.

7. Does the restaurant and bar write to the same books?

If the POS is a separate product with its own database, then “charge to room” is a manual re-keying step that someone will eventually skip. Ask to see a bar order become a line on a guest folio in the demo. Watch the actual click path.

8. Can a guest check out with an outstanding balance?

The answer should be no, with no override. If the system allows it “for flexibility,” it will happen on a busy morning and the money will not be recovered.

9. Can numbers be edited after the fact?

Ask what happens when a receptionist posts ₦50,000 instead of ₦5,000. If the answer is “they can correct it,” ask whether the original figure survives anywhere. A ledger where entries are corrected by reversal keeps a trail; one where they are corrected by editing does not, and you will not know which you bought until you need the trail.

10. Who answers the phone, and where are they?

At 7pm on a Saturday, with a full house and a system problem, this matters more than any feature on the list. Ask what hours support covers, what the response time is, and whether you are talking to the people who wrote the software or a reseller who will forward your message.

And the ones about the vendor

11. How many hotels like mine are running this?

Ask for the real number and ask to speak to one of them. A vendor with a hundred customers should be able to introduce you to one. A vendor with three should say so — and if they do, price and terms should reflect that you are taking a risk with them.

12. What does it cost to get from signature to live?

Setup, data migration, staff training, and any hardware. On-premise deployments in particular carry a real installation cost — server, cabling, stations, printers — and any vendor who quotes that without visiting your building is guessing.

A note on matching the system to the property

The best system for a 12-room guest house is not a scaled-down version of the best system for a 90-room hotel with three outlets and an event hall. If you sell rooms only, most of what an enterprise PMS charges for is weight you will never use.

Buy for the property you run now, with a clear price for the tier above in case you grow. If a vendor cannot tell you what the next tier costs, you have no idea what growing will cost you.

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For what it’s worth, here is how we compare against the two alternatives most Nigerian hotels are actually choosing between — paper and Excel, or an imported cloud PMS — including where each of those genuinely holds up. Our pricing is published in naira by room count, and the answers to questions 1 through 12 above are on this site rather than behind a sales call.