How to choose a booking system for a holiday home or small hotel.

First decide what you actually need.

Three different things get sold under similar names. A channel sync tool aligns calendars between Booking.com, Airbnb and other platforms – and that is all. A booking system adds direct bookings and a guest list. A PMS covers the whole stay: channels, direct bookings, guest messaging, online check-in, NTIS reporting, payments, invoices and reporting.

A single flat with a few bookings a month may only need a sync tool. A holiday home with several cottages, an owner with a few apartments or a guesthouse without a front desk usually needs the whole chain – otherwise you still work in three apps and retype between them. Decide which group you are in, then compare prices: a €25 sync tool and a €49 PMS are not the same product.

Channels: how the system connects to Booking.com and Airbnb.

There are two ways, and both are called “sync”. iCal links pass only booked dates and refresh on the platform’s schedule rather than instantly – between two refreshes, two channels can sell the same night. An official API connection passes availability, rates, minimum stay and the full reservation, and changes travel immediately.

Ask plainly: API or iCal? Then ask to see it: create a test booking in one channel and watch how long it takes for the date to close in the other. Second question – do rates and restrictions travel to the channels together with availability? If not, you will change prices in each platform separately, and that quickly becomes the job you keep postponing.

• API connection, not iCal – shown on screen, not promised.
• Rates and minimum stay pushed to channels from one place.
• A cancellation in one channel frees the dates in the others immediately.

NTIS reporting and invoices: the Lithuanian requirements.

Guest data must reach NTIS (E. turistas) within 24 hours of accommodation. International systems mostly do not know this exists, so you will type it in by hand. Lithuanian systems say “integrated with E. turistas”, but that can mean very different things. Ask them to register two adult guests, deliberately leave an error, and show what staff see: a clear message on the reservation, or nothing.

The same goes for invoices. Business guests will ask for a VAT invoice, foreign companies for one in English. The system should issue it straight from the reservation, at the right rate (12 % for accommodation from 2026) or without VAT if you are not registered. If invoices live in another program, that is one more place where you retype the same data.

Direct bookings and payments.

Every direct booking saves roughly 15 % in platform commission, so the system needs a booking page you can put on your website or social media – with prices, a calendar, card payment and automatic confirmation. Ask whether direct bookings carry a commission or a per-booking fee: a “free” booking page sometimes costs a percentage of every order.

And on payments: can you request a card deposit, does the system remind guests about unpaid bookings by itself, how are refunds handled after a cancellation? These are details – until you have ten arrivals a week.

Guest messaging and online check-in.

Most of the daily work is not bookings but messages: when can we arrive, what is the Wi-Fi, where do we leave the keys, please send your ID details. A good system handles these itself – a registration link before arrival, a door code at the agreed time, answers to the common questions – by email, SMS or WhatsApp. What is left for you is only what needs a decision.

Ask which messages go out automatically, when and through which channel, and whether guests can register themselves before arrival. If the answer is “we have templates”, that means you will be pressing the button.

Price: calculate the annual bill, not the monthly one.

Pricing varies between systems more than features do: per property, per room, per booking, a percentage of revenue, extra for channels, for users, for SMS with a markup. The monthly price on the website does not show this. Ask the vendor to calculate the annual total with your number of rooms, bookings and staff – and compare that.

So you know what you are comparing against: Ovilo pricing depends only on the number of rooms or units – from €39 a month for up to 10 rooms, with no per-booking fee and no commission on direct bookings; SMS and WhatsApp are billed at carrier cost with no markup.

Sources: Ovilo pricing

Migration, and support when something breaks.

Ask who will migrate existing reservations and the guest database from Excel or your previous system, and who checks that dates and amounts match. Connect the channels to the new system before you disconnect the old one – and not in the middle of the season.

And the last, often decisive question: who answers when a guest is standing at the door on a Saturday evening and the code does not work? A person within an hour, or an automated reply in a day? That answer is often worth more than the whole feature list.

• API connection to Booking.com and Airbnb, shown live.
• Rates and restrictions managed from one place.
• NTIS submission with a visible error case.
• Booking page without commission.
• Card deposits and automatic reminders.
• Invoices in LT / EN, with and without VAT.
• Messaging and check-in without manual clicking.
• An annual bill with your numbers.
• Data migration with verification.
• Support in your language and working hours.