Set up a hotel in Hoteliera, step by step on Hoteliera Blog — Free PMS & Hospitality Tips

Welcome to Hotel Alberto

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Alberto Ferrero runs a small hotel in a restored Liberty palazzo at Via Monferrato 12, in the Borgo Po district of Torino, a short walk across the river from Piazza Vittorio. Until now he has kept bookings in a notebook and a spreadsheet. He wants one place for his rooms, prices, guests and invoices, and a website where guests can book directly.

The hotel is fictional, but everything in this guide was done on a real Hoteliera account, and every clip is a recording of the real screens.

Create your account

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Everything starts with one account: yours, as the owner. The signup form asks only for what Hoteliera can’t guess, and the country you pick does a lot of quiet work, setting the currency (euro for Italy), the time zone and the languages of your booking website. You can invite your staff later, each with their own login.

Hands-on

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Signing up Hotel Alberto

Open the signup page and look for Create a new account.
Your Name: the person who runs the hotel (here, Alberto Ferrero).
Email and Password: the email becomes your login. Pick a strong password.
Unit name: the name guests will see, here Hotel Alberto.
Country: type the first letters and pick it from the list. For Italy, the phone prefix changes to +39 by itself.
Phone: the hotel’s number, without the prefix.
Click Create a new account. You land straight on your Dashboard.

Want the screens in English while your guests see Italian? Click the flag at the top right and pick English. That choice is saved for your login only.

See the effect

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The Dashboard checklist and the empty Planner

The yellow Setup progress button opens a checklist: Room types, Meal plans, Seasons, Rate plans, then the optional steps (first reservation, OTAs, domain, booking website). The next chapters tick these off one by one. The Planner shows a message instead of a calendar for now; it fills in once you have rooms and prices.

Hotel profile and photos

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Guests decide in seconds whether a hotel looks real and trustworthy. A full address, a two-line description and a couple of good photos do most of that work, and they also feed your booking website and your invoices. In Hoteliera they sit in your location: every property you run is a location, and a single hotel has exactly one. Check-in and check-out times live on a separate small screen, so this chapter visits both.

Room types and room numbers

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Guests don’t book “room 103”, they book “a Double”. So Hoteliera separates the two: a room type is what you sell, with its capacity, beds, photos and description, and rooms are the actual numbered doors behind it. Prices and availability are counted per room type, while the planner shows one row per room so you can see who sleeps where. Hotel Alberto has two room types: 4 Doubles (101–104) and 2 Triples (201–202).

Meal plans

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Hotel Alberto serves breakfast, but not every guest wants it. Offering both “room only” and “bed & breakfast” lets guests choose, and lets you price breakfast properly instead of hiding it in the room rate. In Hoteliera a meal plan is simply an option you switch on; the prices come later, in the rate plans, where every meal plan gets its own column.

Hands-on

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Switching on Room Only and Bed & Breakfast

Go to Settings › Meal plans.
Tick Room Only (RO) and Bed & Breakfast (BB). Leave the others (half board, full board, all inclusive) unticked.
Click Save.

See the effect

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Meal plans ticked off in Setup progress

Setup progress ticks off Meal plans. On the booking website, each room will show No meals and Breakfast as two choices; you’ll see that once the rate plans exist.

Seasons

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A season is a stretch of dates that shares the same base prices, for example “summer” and “winter”. Rate plans ask for one price per season, room type and meal plan, so at least one season must exist before you can enter prices. Hotel Alberto starts simple: one season covering the next twelve months. Price differences inside that period, like weekends, come later with price rules, which is easier than splitting the year into many seasons.

Rate plans

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A rate plan is a package of conditions a guest can book: the price for each room type and meal plan, the cancellation policy, and when the guest pays. Most small hotels need two. A Flexible rate for guests who want to keep their options open, and a cheaper Non-refundable rate for guests who are sure of their dates, which gives you money you can count on. Hotel Alberto’s Non-refundable rate is 15% below Flexible and is sold room only.

Pricing and restrictions

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Your base prices are set, but not every night is worth the same. Friday and Saturday nights sell more easily, and when Torino hosts a big event, such as Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, the slow-food fair held every two years (most recently 24–27 September 2026), the whole city fills up. One-night bookings in that week leave gaps you can’t fill. Price rules handle both cases on top of your rate plans, so the base prices stay simple. In this chapter Hotel Alberto adds €20 on Friday and Saturday nights and asks for at least 2 nights during an event week. We use 23–26 September 2027 as an example; set the dates of the event you care about.

Taxes

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Two kinds of tax touch every booking in Torino. VAT is already inside your prices: 10% on accommodation and on food, 22% on most other services. The city tax (imposta di soggiorno) is added on top: €3.70 per person per night for a hotel like this one. New Hoteliera accounts start with Romanian VAT rates, so the first job is to change them to the Italian ones.

Hands-on

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Italian VAT and the city tax

Go to Settings › Taxes & Fees.
Click Edit on each VAT line and change its Name and Amount: VAT lodging 10% (10), VAT food 10% (10) and VAT 22% (22). Click Save after each one.
Click Add tax for the city tax.
Name: City tax Torino. Applicable to: Lodging. Amount: 3.70, and pick EUR instead of %.
Under Applies, pick per person and per night.; under Tax type, pick City tax.
Included in room/product price: No, because the city tax comes on top of the room price.
Click Save.

Torino caps the city tax at a number of nights, and some guests (young children, for example) are exempt. Hoteliera doesn't apply a cap or exemptions yet, so for long stays or exempt guests, adjust the tax line on the reservation by hand.

See the effect

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The tax lines in a booking total

On the booking website, two adults booking two nights with breakfast see the price split out: includes VAT lodging 10%, then + City tax Torino of €14.80 (2 people × 2 nights × €3.70), listed again under Supplements & extra options.

Invoicing details

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Every invoice needs the legal name of the business behind the hotel, its VAT number, an address and, for guests paying by bank transfer, an IBAN. Hotel Alberto belongs to Alberto Hospitality S.r.l. Invoice series keep numbering separate and in order: ALB for invoices and PRO-ALB for proformas (the payment requests sent before arrival). The company details and bank account below are made up for this guide.

Hands-on

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Company, bank account and invoice series

Go to Settings › Invoicing.
Under Final invoice mode, pick Reversals inside the final invoice: at check-out, one final invoice lists the whole stay and subtracts what was already invoiced.
Under Company details, fill in Business name, Business ID - Unique Business code (the 11-digit Partita IVA) and Business registry number.
Under VAT number, pick With country code: the VAT number becomes IT followed by the Partita IVA.
Under Banking, click Add bank account and fill in Account label, Bank name, Bank IBAN / account number and BIC / SWIFT. Click Save in the window.
Under Document series & numbering, set Fiscal invoice series to ALB and Proforma Invoice series to PRO-ALB.
Under Address, pick Italy as Country, then fill in Street & Number and Phone.
Click Save.

Italy and SdI. Italian invoices must reach the tax authority through the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI). Hoteliera issues the invoice PDF but doesn't send it to SdI; your accountant (commercialista) or invoicing provider does that part.

See the effect

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The company on the booking website

The booking website’s footer now names the company, with its VAT number and registry number, which Italian law expects on a business website. The invoice and proforma PDFs carry the same details: see the deposit invoice in Confirming the bank payment.

Staff and roles

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Sharing the owner’s password with everyone is how mistakes happen and nobody knows who made them. Each person should have their own login with only the screens they need. Hotel Alberto has two staff members: Giulia, the receptionist, gets Front desk (reservations, planner, guests, messages), and Marco, the housekeeper, gets Housekeeping, which shows him the room-cleaning board and nothing else.

Hands-on

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Adding Giulia and Marco

Go to Settings › Staff accounts and click Add staff account.
Fill in First name, Last name and Email.
In Permissions, pick Front desk for Giulia.
Under How to set the password, pick I’ll set it now and type a password. Hand it to Giulia in person. The other option, User sets it on first login, emails her an invitation instead.
Click Save, then repeat for Marco with Housekeeping only.
The list shows each person with their permissions.

See the effect

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What Giulia and Marco each see

Giulia logs in and gets the full front-desk menu: Dashboard, Availability & Rates, Planner, Reservations and Messages. Marco logs in and sees only the Dashboard and the Housekeeping board, with rooms 101–104 and 201–202. In Housekeeping he uses that board on his phone to mark rooms clean after check-out.

Your booking website

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Booking.com and Airbnb are good at bringing guests, but every direct booking saves you their commission. Hoteliera gives every hotel a booking website that uses everything you have already set up: room photos and descriptions, rate plans, meal options, taxes and your company details. You don’t build it page by page; you check that it looks right and share the link. In Settings › Websites you can also add a full website with a design and your own address.

Bank transfer payments

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Many guests, especially from Italy, Germany and France, are happy to pay a deposit by bank transfer. It costs you nothing, but you need two things: clear instructions, so the money arrives with the right reference, and a deadline, so a room isn’t blocked forever by someone who never pays. Hotel Alberto asks for the 30% deposit of the Flexible rate by transfer and cancels unpaid bookings after 48 hours.

A guest books online

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Time to see the whole setup work for a guest. Sophie Laurent from Lyon books a Double with breakfast for three nights in November, on the Flexible rate, and chooses to pay the deposit by bank transfer. Nothing in this chapter is set up by you: it shows what happens on its own. The website takes the booking, Sophie receives an email with the amount and your bank details, and the booking appears in your planner, marked as waiting for payment.

Confirming the bank payment

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Two days later, Sophie’s transfer shows up in Hotel Alberto’s bank account with her reservation number as the reference. Hoteliera doesn’t read your bank account, so someone at the desk records the payment by hand. It takes a minute: the booking stops waiting for payment, the guest gets her confirmation, and the deposit becomes an invoice your accountant can use.

Hands-on

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From the bank statement to the payment

In your online banking, find the transfer and its reference (here reservation guestfb80mc, Sophie’s booking). The bank page in the clip is a demo made for this guide.
Open Reservations › Sophie Laurent, go to Financials and click + next to Payments.
Method: Bank transfer. Use Note for the bank’s reference.
Tick the deposit line (120,60 EUR) and click Save.
Total payments now shows 120,60 EUR; the rest is due at check-in.

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Create fiscal invoice from payment

On the payment, click Create fiscal invoice from payment, check the line and click Add invoice. The new invoice appears as Fully paid.

See the effect

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The planner after the payment

In the planner, the dashed border is gone (no more auto-cancel) and the red dot turned orange: partly paid.

Products: the minibar

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Every room at Hotel Alberto has a small minibar: water, a local beer and some crisps. When a guest takes something, it should land on their bill without a paper slip at the desk. In Hoteliera these are products, grouped in collections. A Minibar collection is already there in a new account, so you only add the items and their prices.

Hands-on

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Three minibar items

Go to Settings › Products. Under Collections, Minibar is already listed.
Click Add product, pick the Minibar collection and type the title: Water 50cl.
Leave Sold by on Piece, pick the tax and type the price: 2 EUR.
Repeat for Beer 33cl (€4) and Crisps (€3), then click Save.

Which VAT rate applies to minibar drinks and snacks depends on how you sell them. Hotel Alberto uses 22% here; check the right rate with your accountant.

See the effect

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Minibar items on Sophie's bill

In Sophie’s reservation, Financials › Services and extra products › + opens the product list. Pick the Minibar category, type the quantities (2 waters, 1 beer) and click Save. Both lines appear on her bill, unpaid until she settles at check-out.

Products: the airport transfer

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Torino Caselle airport is half an hour from Hotel Alberto. Alberto works with a local driver and offers a private transfer for €45 per car. It’s a service, not a room, so it becomes a product in a new Concierge collection. When a guest asks for a pick-up by email or phone, the desk adds it to their stay.

Hands-on

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A Concierge collection and the transfer

In Settings › Products › Collections, click Add collection. Title: Concierge (English and Italian), Default VAT: 22%. Click Save.
In Products, click Add product: collection Concierge, title Airport transfer TRN → hotel, a short description, Sold by Piece.
Pick the tax and type the price: 45 EUR. Click Save.

Guests can't add extras like this one to an online booking yet; the desk adds them. Online extras are on the way.

See the effect

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The transfer on Sophie's bill

Sophie asks for a pick-up. In her reservation, Financials › Services and extra products › +, category Concierge, quantity 1, Save: €45 is added to her bill.

Products: concert tickets

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Torino has concerts almost every night, and guests often ask the desk to get tickets. Alberto books them and charges the ticket price plus a €3 booking fee per ticket for the desk’s time. Two desk-only products in the Concierge collection cover it, and both end up on the guest’s invoice with their own VAT rate.

Hands-on

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Ticket and booking fee

In Settings › Products, click Add product: Concierge, Concert ticket, Sold by Piece, 35 EUR.
Add a second product: Ticket booking fee, 3 EUR, with the 22% VAT of a service.
Click Save.

See the effect: on the bill

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Two tickets on Sophie's bill

Sophie wants two tickets for Friday. In Financials › Services and extra products › +, category Concierge: 2 tickets and 2 booking fees. €70 + €6 are added to her bill.

Self check-in email

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Hotel Alberto’s desk closes at 22:00, and some guests land late. A lockbox by the door, one code per room, lets them check in on their own. The day before arrival Hoteliera sends them the code, the address and the Wi-Fi, so nobody waits at a closed door. The codes live on each room; the email picks up the right one for the room the guest is in.

Hands-on

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Locker code and the check-in email

Go to Settings › Room types › Double. In the rooms table, type the Locker code for room 101 (4821) and click Save. Do the same for every room.
Go to Settings › Messaging Settings › Before check-in email/ SMS.
Tick Activate Check-In emails. Leave Send this email only if registration form is completed unticked unless you want guests to fill in the form first.
Select time (in hours) to send before checkin: 24.
Open the EN tab and write the email. Available placeholders lists what you can use; {{access_codes}} becomes Access code for room 101: 4821.
Click Save.

There is no Wi-Fi or room-number variable yet, so Hotel Alberto types the Wi-Fi name and password straight into the text. If your rooms have different Wi-Fi networks, keep the text general and give the details at the door.

See the effect

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The check-in email Sophie receives

The email goes out by itself 24 hours before arrival. To send it now, open the reservation’s Automated messages and click Send on Check-in details (PIN): a preview appears first, then the email is sent. View shows exactly what Sophie got, with her code for room 101 and the Wi-Fi.

Housekeeping

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When a guest leaves, the room needs cleaning before the next arrival. Shouting across the corridor works in a small hotel, until it doesn’t. Hoteliera marks a room Dirty the moment it is checked out, and the housekeeper marks it Cleaned from a phone. The front desk sees the same board, so nobody gives a guest a room that hasn’t been made up.

Hands-on: a guest checks out

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Lukas checks out of room 201

Lukas Weber spent one night in room 201 (booked at the desk with Quick booking, as in Front-desk day).
In his reservation, click Check-in. He arrived yesterday, so pick Save without changing the check-in date and Save.
This morning click Check-out.
Open Housekeeping: room 201 now shows the broom and Dirty Rooms 1.

See the effect: Marco on his phone

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Marco marks 201 clean

Marco logs in on his phone and lands straight on the housekeeping board. He taps 201, then Cleaned. His name and the time go into the room’s history, and 201 turns green; room 104, checked out in A day at the front desk, is next.

A day at the front desk

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Most of a receptionist’s day is small changes: someone walks in without a booking, a guest wants a quieter room, people arrive and leave. All of it happens in the Planner and in the reservation itself. This chapter follows Giulia’s afternoon at Hotel Alberto.

Hands-on: a walk-in

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A walk-in for tonight

In the Planner, click tonight on a free room (here 102), then click tomorrow.
Choose Quick booking.
Type the guest’s name. Phone and email are optional; with an email, the guest gets your messages.
The price comes from your rate plan. Click Book (or Check-in to check her in straight away).

Hands-on: a room change and check-in

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From 102 to 103, then check-in

Open Marta’s reservation. She’d like a room at the back: in Rooms (type, number), type 103, pick it and click Save.
Click Check-in. The status turns Checked-in.
In the planner her card moves to room 103 and turns blue: checked in.

Hands-on: a check-out

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Giorgio checks out

Giorgio Neri arrived yesterday and leaves this morning. Open his reservation and click Check-out.
The status turns Checked-out, and room 104 appears as dirty on the housekeeping board for Marco (see Housekeeping).

Guest registration

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Italian law asks hotels to record every guest’s identity and report it to the police within 24 hours of arrival. Hoteliera keeps a registration form for each guest: the name and dates come from the booking, and the rest (citizenship, address, ID document) is filled in by the guest from a link, or by the desk at check-in. All forms land in one register you can export as PDF.

Hands-on: the form settings

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Choosing the fields and the layout

Go to Settings › Registration form. Tick the fields you need. For an Italian hotel Show State (county) is already off.
Open Printable document and pick the Modern layout, which lets you choose the printed fields.
Click Save.

Hands-on: Sophie at the desk

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Giulia fills in Sophie's form

Open Reservations › Sophie Laurent › Registration form. Each guest on the booking has a row.
Open Sophie’s form and fill in Citizenship, the Residence fields and the ID Type with its number.
Click Save.

Hoteliera doesn't export to the Italian police portal (Alloggiati Web) yet, so the data still has to be sent there separately.

See the effect

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The registration register

Registration forms (the ID-card icon in the top bar) lists one row per guest. Sophie’s row reads Completed, filled in by Reception, with a PDF ready to print or archive.

Group bookings

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The Bruno family, six people, are coming for two nights and want both Triples. They are one group with one person paying, so they should be one reservation, not two. In Hoteliera a reservation can hold several rooms: the planner shows a card per room, all with the same name, and the family gets one invoice.

Hands-on

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Two Triples on one reservation

Go to Reservations › Add (or the + at the bottom of the planner), pick 16 to 18 November and click Search.
Under Triple, choose Flexible · Bed & Breakfast and set Number of rooms to 2. The bottom bar shows 2 rooms, 6 adults.
Click Book, then Add a guest: Famiglia Bruno.
Type an Alias: Bruno family. It’s the name the planner shows.
Click Save. The reservation lists Triple - 201 and Triple - 202.

To add a room to an existing reservation later, use Add room under Rooms (type, number).

Cancellations and no-shows

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Daniel Kim booked two nights on the Non-refundable rate, then wrote to say he can’t come. The rate promised Hotel Alberto the full amount whatever happens. Hoteliera shows the cancellation policy on the booking, but it doesn’t charge the fee by itself, so the desk does two things in order: issue the invoice for the stay (that is the fee the guest owes), then cancel, which frees the room for someone else.

Closing a room

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Room 103’s bathroom needs three days of work at the end of November. Until it’s fixed, nobody should be able to book it, but the other Doubles must keep selling. Marking the room out of order for those nights takes it out of the count, so the planner, the booking website and any connected channels all see one Double fewer.

Hands-on

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Room 103 out of order

In the Planner, go to the dates (here 30 November).
On room 103, click the first night, then the day the room is ready again (3 December).
Choose Mark as out-of-order.
Write a Note: Bathroom maintenance.
Click Mark as out-of-order. A grey Out of order bar covers the nights, and the Double count above drops from 4 to 3.

Need the room for an event but don’t want it sold? Make a normal reservation from the admin instead; out-of-order rooms can’t host guests.

Invoices from start to finish

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Over Sophie’s stay Hotel Alberto issued two invoices: one for her deposit and one for the concert tickets. At check-out the rest of the stay, the minibar and the airport transfer still need invoicing. With Final invoice mode set to Reversals inside the final invoice (see Invoicing details), Hoteliera issues one last invoice with every charge of the stay and a negative line for each earlier invoice, so the total is exactly what Sophie still owes.

Promo codes

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Hotel Alberto prints TORINO10 on the cards it hands out at the Terra Madre fair and in the thank-you email to past guests: 10% off when they book direct. In Hoteliera a promo code is simply a price rule with a code attached. Without the code it does nothing; when a guest types it on the website, the rule applies to their search and booking.

Hands-on

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A 10% coupon

Go to Settings › Price rules and click Add price rule.
Name: TORINO10 coupon. Title shown to guests (optional): Coupon −10%.
Under Change of: Pricing, choose decrease with 10 %.
Scroll to Coupon and type the Code: TORINO10.
Click Save.

Use the Dependencies (dates, week days, room types, rate plans) to limit where the code works, for example only for stays in winter.

Guest messaging

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Guests write with small questions before they arrive: a late flight, a cot, parking. Answering them quickly is easy service, but only if the messages don’t get lost across email, phone and WhatsApp. Every booking made through your website has a reservation page with a chat, and everything guests write there lands in the Messages inbox, next to their booking.

Hands-on: Sophie writes

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Sophie writes from her reservation page

Sophie opens her reservation page (the link is in her confirmation email, or she enters her reservation ID and email on the website) and writes in Chat: she lands late and wants the transfer to wait.

Reports

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Three numbers tell you how a hotel is doing: occupancy (how many room nights you sold), ADR (the average price of a sold night) and RevPAR (revenue per available room night, which combines the two). Hoteliera calculates them from your bookings; there is nothing to set up. The figures below come from the handful of test bookings made earlier in this guide, so they are small. With a few months of real bookings the same screens become your monthly check-up. For the ideas behind the numbers, see ADR and RevPAR, explained simply.

The owner on the phone

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Alberto isn’t always at the desk. On the way to the market or at the bank, he wants to know who arrives today and whether a room is still free for tonight. Hoteliera’s admin works in any phone browser, at the same address, with the same login, so there is no app to install. Add it to your home screen and it opens like one.

Hands-on

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Hoteliera on Alberto's phone

Open the admin address in your phone’s browser and log in.
The Dashboard opens: the setup checklist (until you finish it), then Daily Overview: rooms available, arrivals and departures today, guests in house.
Tap Planner in the menu. It shows every room for the next few days, with the same colours as on the computer; the calendar icon jumps to another date.
Tap a booking to open it, or the + to add one.

Tip: in Safari use Share › Add to Home Screen, in Chrome ⋮ › Add to Home screen.

Connecting Booking.com and Airbnb

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Most small hotels sell on Booking.com and Airbnb as well as on their own website. Updating each one by hand is how double bookings happen. A channel manager keeps them in step: when a room sells anywhere, the others are told within seconds, and prices you set in Hoteliera go out to every channel. This chapter walks up to the point where Hotel Alberto would connect Booking.com, without switching it on.

Day-one checklist

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Print this page or keep it open in a tab. Tick each line as you go; every line links to the chapter that shows how.

Before you sell

☐ Create your account and pick your UI language.
☐ Hotel profile and photos: address, description, photos, check-in and check-out times.
☐ Room types and room numbers: every type, its capacity, beds and photos.
☐ Meal plans: only the ones you really sell.
☐ Seasons: at least the next twelve months.
☐ Rate plans: prices, cancellation policy and payment terms.
☐ Pricing and restrictions: weekends, events, minimum stays.
☐ Taxes: your VAT rates and the city tax.
☐ Invoicing details: company, VAT number, IBAN, invoice series.
☐ Staff and roles: one login per person.

Before your first guest

☐ Your booking website: check it on a computer and a phone.
☐ Bank transfer payments: instructions and deadline.
☐ Make a test booking yourself, as in A guest books online, then cancel it.
☐ Confirming the bank payment: practise once.
☐ Self check-in email: codes and Wi-Fi.
☐ Products: minibar, transfers, tickets.

Everyday work

☐ A day at the front desk: walk-ins, room moves, check-in and check-out.
☐ Housekeeping: the board on the housekeeper’s phone.
☐ Guest registration: forms for every guest.
☐ Group bookings, cancellations and no-shows, closing a room.
☐ Invoices from start to finish and promo codes.
☐ Guest messaging and reports, also on your phone.
☐ When you’re ready: connect Booking.com and Airbnb.