What is the difference between a Hotel Management System and a Property Management System?

New technologies, devices, and applications are introduced to the market on a daily basis around the world to help hotels and restaurants improve their operational efficiency.

Whether you are a small bed and breakfast or a global hotel chain your business’s success depends on the efficiency and seamlessness of the guest experience – which is why you might need to consider in, incorporating technology to deal with the complexity of your business operations. 


Automating your business with a management software can be a great solution for this. But once many hospitality businesses decide to invest in a management software the point they stuck on is when deciding it’s an HMS or Property Management System they want. 

In this post, Tigernix experts explain you the difference between a Hotel Management System and a Property Management System, so you can decide what fits you the best depending on your requirements.

What is a Property Management System?

A Property Management System is a software solution designed for real estate and other property managing businesses. The system has the ability to manage all the real estate verticals enabling owners, managers, investors and other stakeholders with easy access to information and management. 

Some features of a Property Management system. 

  • Manage single or multiple properties
  • Property occupancy and vacancy management
  • Visitor management
  • Access control management
  • Agreement, lease, contract, and request management
  • Billing, cost planning, expenses management
  • Generate work orders, invoices, and reports

The system stores all the booking, billing and customer data in one centralized hub which you can access with a single click anytime anywhere. This will help you save more time spend on sorting and searching data while reducing errors and inefficiencies like double bookings in a great deal. The system comes with customizable features is quite user-friendly which enables your staff to operate the system with comfort. 

What is a Hotel Management System?

A Hotel Management System is an end to end software solution that automates your hotel and its operations. It helps you manage all your operations from the front-desk to back office.  The system is capable of managing your entire organisation including your marketing, sales, hotel operations, HR, accounting and finance departments. 

Here are some of the main functions of a Hotel Management System. 

  • Restaurant and menu management
  • Room and facilities management
  • Production control /planning
  • Housekeeping management
  • Management of table reservation 
  • Kitchen order management 
  • Sales management and purchase management
  • Finance and accounting

With features designed to automate your manpower, organisation resources, and daily operations, an HMS can improve your daily efficiency and accuracy of data and enhance the smoothness and seamlessness of operations. With this, you will be able to save money by cutting down wastes through higher business visibility.  

So, what’s the difference?

A Hotel Management System is a software designed specially to tackle the challenges in managing a hotel. On the other hand, a Property Management System is a software solution that targets to ease the management process of a building or facility manager and other stakeholders such as its investors and owners. The system offers only a fraction of features compared to what a Hotel Management can offer you in terms of managing your hotel.

So, without an argument, a Hotel Management System is the way to go if you want to get the maximum out of your investment with your software automation in your hotel.

To learn more about the differences, check out our a Property Management System and a Hotel Management System.