Evaluation guide
Choosing hotel management software
Reservations and check-in are the easy part. The questions worth asking are about what happens to the money once a guest starts spending across the property.
What actually varies between property systems
Every property management system can hold a booking and check a guest in. The differences appear the moment the property is more than rooms.
A resort is several businesses sharing a guest. The hotel sells rooms, the restaurant sells meals, the dive centre sells dives. What separates systems is whether each of those can be measured on its own — or whether everything lands in one pot and the owner never learns which parts earn.
These are the questions that surface that difference.
The questions to ask
Especially the first one. It is the difference between running a property and running several businesses that happen to share a car park.
A guest charges dinner to their room. Does the restaurant earn that revenue and the hotel owe it — or does it vanish into one pot?
In Qvian: A real balance between them, tracked and settled. It is how you find out whether your restaurant actually makes money instead of disappearing into the resort.
Does each location have its own profit and loss, and are balances between them tracked and settled?
In Qvian: Yes to both. Otherwise you know the group made money and not which parts of it did.
Can a room be given to a guest before someone has actually checked it?
In Qvian: No. Cleaned and inspected are different states, and only an inspected room can be assigned. It is the difference between a guest walking into a missed bathroom and not.
Can it calculate Green Tax at checkout with exemptions applied, and hand you the MIRA sheet?
In Qvian: Yes — the right rate for your property, the twelve-hour rule, and exemptions for Maldivians, under-twos and resident-permit holders. Your monthly filing is an export.
Does closing the day post your books and create your tax records, or is that a separate month-end exercise?
In Qvian: Closing the day does both. And the system knows exactly which days you have not closed — which is usually the reason a return comes out short.
Can you click a figure on your tax return and see the invoices behind it?
In Qvian: Every value on the summary drills through to the documents that produced it.
Can you photograph a supplier invoice and have it become a posted purchase?
In Qvian: Yes. Whoever receives the delivery captures it at the door; whoever is allowed to post it reviews and posts it. Those are deliberately different permissions.
Can your staff do their actual job from a phone, or do they need a back-office computer?
In Qvian: Nineteen areas of the system run on the staff app, and each person pins the three they use all day.
When Qvian is the wrong answer
Some properties genuinely do not need this.
- A small guesthouse with no outlets, no restaurant and no activities. The cross-charging machinery that makes Qvian worth it has nothing to do.
- A property whose outlets are franchised or independently owned and already keep their own books elsewhere.
- Anyone who wants channel management alone. That is one part of what this is, and there are cheaper ways to buy just that.
The only comparison figure we quote
A competitor offered our clients free service for life. They stayed, at several times the price. That is the only comparison statistic we have any business quoting.
Frequently asked
If you want to know how each performs, yes. In Qvian each business unit keeps its own books, so a room charge becomes revenue for the restaurant and a balance owed by the hotel. One combined unit loses that visibility permanently and it cannot be reconstructed later.
It should calculate at checkout, apply the rate for your property type, count chargeable days using the twelve-hour rule, and exempt Maldivians, children under two and resident-permit holders automatically. Your monthly MIRA information sheet should be an export, not a spreadsheet.
Because it is not revenue yet. A deposit for a stay in six weeks is a liability — you owe the guest a service — and it becomes revenue when the service is delivered. A busy booking period showing large deposits and modest revenue is correct, and a system that reports otherwise is flattering you.
Yes. Guests can complete their details, scan documents and add requests before travelling, which also captures the information that determines tax exemptions at checkout.
Yes, through a channel manager — availability, rates and reservations sync, so you are not updating four extranets by hand and discovering an overbooking afterwards.
Other evaluation guides
See it against your own numbers.
Bring a supplier invoice and your menu. That is the whole demonstration.