What happens to a hotel when the PMS goes down
An outage is an operations problem, not an IT problem. What to have ready before it happens.
Losing the property management system does not feel like an IT failure to the people on the desk. It feels like a queue of arrivals, no room list, no folios and no way to post a charge. What decides how bad it gets is what was prepared beforehand, not how fast somebody answers the phone.
The first hour, in practice
- Check-in continues on paper: a printed arrivals list, a manual registration card, and keys cut from the locking system, which usually runs independently of the PMS.
- Payments continue on the terminals, which do not need the PMS, provided somebody records what was taken and against which room.
- Housekeeping works from the last printed status sheet.
- Somebody owns the incident and communicates to the desk every fifteen minutes, whether or not there is news.
What has to exist before the day it happens
- A printed arrivals and in-house list, produced automatically every evening and kept somewhere staff can reach without a network.
- A downtime pack at reception: registration cards, a charge log, the emergency contact numbers and a one-page procedure.
- Known recovery targets. Ours are built around a 15 minute recovery time and under an hour of data at risk, using Axcient, but the number matters less than knowing what it is.
- Backups that have been restored from, on a schedule, with the results written down.
- An agreed escalation path to the PMS vendor, with your account details held somewhere other than inside the system that is down.
Cloud PMS does not remove the problem
- A hosted PMS moves the failure from your server to your circuit. If the line drops, the effect at the desk is identical.
- That makes connectivity resilience part of PMS resilience: a second circuit, automatic failover, and someone monitoring both.
- Your vendor protects its platform, not your integrations, exports or Microsoft 365 data. Those remain your responsibility.
Catching up afterwards
- Charges logged on paper are posted back in a defined order, usually room revenue first, then F&B, then extras.
- Night audit is run late rather than skipped.
- The incident is written up the following day while it is fresh, including what was slow, what was missing and what to change.
Questions we get asked
How long should recovery take?
It should be a number you agreed in advance rather than a hope. We work to a 15 minute recovery time and under an hour of data at risk for systems covered by our backup service, and we test restores on a schedule so the number means something.
Is our PMS backed up by the vendor?
Usually the platform is, and your content, integrations and exports often are not. Ask the vendor in writing what they restore, how far back, and how long it takes. The answer decides whether you need your own backup alongside theirs.
What is the most common cause of a PMS outage?
In our experience it is rarely the PMS itself. It is the circuit, a failed switch, an expired certificate, a server that ran out of disk, or a power event in a comms room nobody had looked in for two years.
Start with the Wi-Fi
A guest Wi-Fi audit is the quickest way to see how we work: we survey the property, test what guests actually experience, and report on what needs doing and what it costs. The findings are yours whether or not you go ahead.
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