Notes from the independent house.
A working journal for independent hoteliers, written by people who have stood at the desk, set the rates, and balanced the books. Read, share, argue with us.
Results for “PMS”.
Own your guests
An OTA booking doesn't hand you a guest. It hands you a stay, and the OTA keeps the name, the email and the right to ever talk to that person again. Here's what that costs an independent hotel, and how Tribii is built on the opposite assumption.
Tribii
The street outside is part of your hotel
How guest messaging, local experiences and a traveller board turn a stay into three connections, and why one of them lands as a real line on the folio.
Daniel Vidal
Free booking engine with a payment gateway: what a small hotel should actually look for
Three business models hide behind the word "free", and only one of them leaves your direct bookings alone. Plus the payment question most vendors would rather you didn't ask.
Tribii
What is a hotel PMS? A plain-language guide for independent hoteliers
Not a definition from a brochure. What the software actually does between 7am and midnight at a twenty-room property, and which words mean what.
Tribii
Open-source hotel software vs free SaaS: the real cost of self-hosting
The licence costs nothing. The server, the updates, the backups and the person who fixes it during check-in are not included.
Tribii
How to move your small hotel off spreadsheets
The spreadsheet got you here, and it is not stupid. But there are four specific places it fails, and each one costs you money quietly.
Tribii
Is there a truly free hotel PMS? What "free" covers in 2026
Three different things get called free hotel software, and only one of them is free in the way you mean. Here is how to tell them apart.
Tribii
Do small hotels need a channel manager?
The honest answer is sometimes. Here is how to work out which sometimes you are in, using your own numbers rather than a vendor's.
Tribii
Cloudbeds pricing for small hotels: what you will actually pay in 2026
Cloudbeds does not publish a price. Here is what is known, what is estimated, what to ask on the sales call, and when a small property is overpaying.
Tribii
Channel manager vs booking engine: what a small hotel actually needs
The two tools get sold together and confused constantly. One sells rooms on other people's websites. The other sells rooms on yours.
Tribii
One system, not twenty: the case for running your hotel on a single screen
How independent hotels ended up juggling a dozen disconnected tools, and what it looks like to put the whole house, guests included, on one.
Daniel VidalRead it first, in your inbox.
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