Industries: hotels and B&Bs
Hotel software for UK guesthouses and small hotels, built around your channels
Booking.com and Airbnb fill rooms from far away. We build what sits beside them: the website where guests book direct, one calendar for every channel, a room board for housekeeping and a breakfast list that already knows the allergies.
Check-out at ten, check-in at three, and five hours between
Hotel software for a UK guesthouse has to fit a day that turns on two times. Guests leave by ten, the next ones arrive from three, and in between every room is stripped, cleaned and made up while the phone rings about next weekend and a Booking.com guest asks where to leave the car.
A six-room B&B on the Yorkshire coast and a thirty-room town house hotel in York have different needs and the same pinch points. The rooms are sold in three places at once, breakfast depends on notes that arrive in three languages, and the guest who lands at eleven at night does not want to ring a bell nobody answers.
Below you will find, need by need, what we can build beside the booking sites and your channel manager, which UK rules belong in the system, from the guest register to VAT on long stays, and how much software fits your number of rooms. It is not a package you buy off the shelf: it is what your house needs, at a fixed price per project.
Room 5 gets its door code at six
- One calendar for every channelA Booking.com reservation closes the room on Airbnb and on your own site straight away. No double booking on a busy Saturday.
- The late guest does not ringThe code goes out at the time you choose and only opens that room for those nights.
- Breakfast is already plannedWhat the guest fills in when booking lands on the next morning's breakfast list, allergies included.
An example of what we can build, with made-up guests and rooms. You choose which fields a booking has.
Where a small hotel loses its day
In a guesthouse the time rarely goes on the guests themselves. It leaks away around them: retyping a booking, checking whether a room is really closed on Airbnb, the note for the breakfast cook that stays on the counter.
| Moment | How it often goes | With your own software |
|---|---|---|
| A booking arrives | You type it into the diary and close the room on the other site | One calendar that updates every channel and closes the room everywhere |
| A guest wants to book direct | They email or ring, you reply in the evening | They see the free rooms on your site and book or send a request |
| Late arrival | You wait up or phone the guest | A code per room, sent by text or email at a set time |
| Housekeeping starts | They ask which rooms are leaving and which are staying | A room board with departures, arrivals and stayovers per room |
| Breakfast | Notes from three channels on a sheet of paper | A breakfast list by time, with the allergies flagged |
| The guest register | A book on the desk, half filled in | Names and nationalities captured at booking, kept for the required period |
What we do not build is a full property management system or a channel manager that talks to dozens of sites. Those exist, and a hotel with many channels and dynamic pricing should buy one. We build around it: the website, direct booking, the room board, the breakfast list and the links your system allows. How such a link works is on API integration services.
Found in Whitby, booked on your own site
New booking
Room 3, 2 nights, 2 adults, dairy-free breakfast
James, Leeds, today 21:14
- A page per room with photos, price and what is included
- A Google profile with the right category and recent photos
- A booking module that reads the same calendar as Booking.com and Airbnb
An example of what we can build, with made-up guesthouses and reviews.
How to increase direct bookings for hotels without leaving the booking sites
Booking.com and Airbnb are not the enemy. They bring guests from abroad who would never find you otherwise. But the couple coming back for a second year, the walkers on the Cleveland Way and the family who got your name from friends do not need to go through a booking site. On every booking that does, you pay commission, including the guest you won yourself.
Direct bookings start with being found. Guests search for the town and the kind of stay: B&B Whitby, hotel York city centre, dog friendly guesthouse Scarborough. A website with a page per room, photos that show what you offer and the price with what is included picks up those searches. Add a Google Business Profile with recent photos, and a way to ask guests for a review after they leave, as in get more Google reviews. If you want to rank higher in your own area, there is local SEO.
Overseas guests read your site in their own language. A multilingual website in English, French and German is no luxury for accommodation: a guest from Lyon or Cologne books where they understand the terms. How a hotel or B&B website should be built, from the room page to the booking button, is on hotel website design. Whether a guest is better won through Airbnb or Booking.com is weighed up in Airbnb vs Booking for hosts.
Room 4 sold twice, and the board sorts it
The board spotted a problem
Room 4 is sold twice on Friday: one guest from Booking.com and one from Airbnb, because the Airbnb calendar only refreshed hours later.
The board closes room 4 on every channel and moves the Airbnb guest to room 2, the same type and free on Friday. The guest gets a message with the new room.
Fixed: Guest moved to room 2
An example of what we can build, with made-up rooms and bookings. You choose what the board checks.
One calendar for every channel, and a board for housekeeping
Most small places start with iCal: each site publishes a link with the booked nights and reads the link of the other. It is free and often enough for one or two rooms. Its weak spot is speed. Each site fetches the other calendar on its own schedule, and in that window the same room can be sold twice. Prices and minimum stays do not travel over iCal either.
From a handful of rooms a channel manager works better, passing availability and rates to the sites in one go. We then build the booking module on your own website that reads the same availability, so a guest on your site never sees a room that has already gone. If iCal is still enough for you, we build the calendar itself with a request you confirm. Which fits which number of rooms is set out on bed and breakfast booking software.
The room board reads the same calendar. Each morning housekeeping sees per room whether it is a departure, a stayover or an arrival, and which room has to be ready first because the guest is early. An extra bed, a cot or a room out of order for a repair goes on with a tap. If you work with a fixed team and students at weekends, staff scheduling software matches the cleaning hours to the number of departures.
Notes in three languages become Saturday's breakfast list
An example of what we can build, with made-up guests. The AI lists the notes, you always confirm an allergy with the guest.
AI that prepares the breakfast list and the replies
AI makes no decisions about your guests. It prepares work you now do by hand. The notes on a booking arrive through Booking.com, Airbnb and your own site, in English, German or French. The AI puts them on a breakfast list by time and room, with the allergies set apart. You always confirm an allergy with the guest. If you wrap a packed lunch before the guest orders it, the labelling rules in Natasha's Law apply to it.
The same goes for email. A question about parking, dogs or an early arrival gets a draft reply in the guest's language, based on what you have written down about your house. You read, change and send. More on AI in hotels and restaurants is on AI in hospitality; how to have customer questions prepared without a bot answering for you is on AI for customer service.
Eight rooms for a wedding, with the rooming list online
The organiser fills in the rooming list through a secure link and sees what has been paid. Other guests' details stay in the record.
An example of what we can build, with a made-up family and amounts.
Weddings, walking groups and block bookings
A group booking is a small project. A wedding at a venue near Scarborough needs eight rooms for two nights, the names arrive a fortnight before, three guests are coeliac and the groom wants a late check-out. In most guesthouses that lives in a thread of forty emails.
In one record per group you see the quote, what has been paid, which rooms are held and which documents are still missing. The organiser fills in the rooming list through a secure link, and the names and allergies flow through to the room board and the breakfast list. If you work with a caterer or an events company, the same record can show their side; what that looks like for them is on software for caterers and software for event companies.
How much hotel software a house of your size needs
A three-room B&B does not need a property management system. A forty-room hotel with a restaurant needs more than an iCal link. This is what we would build at each size, and what you are better off buying or leaving alone.
| Size | What you need | What you do not need (yet) |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-run B&B or holiday let | A website with room pages, an iCal calendar, a request form, a Google profile | A channel manager, a room board, an app |
| Team of five, up to fifteen rooms | Direct booking with payment, a channel manager, a room board, a breakfast list, late arrival codes | A full hotel system with tills and restaurant |
| 20 to 50 staff, rooms plus restaurant or events | A bought hotel system, with what we build around it: group records, a jobs page, integrations and reports | A hotel system built from scratch |
| Larger, several sites | A platform across the properties, reports per house, a portal for groups and companies | A second system beside the one that works |
For the question of buying or building, see custom software and build vs buy software. To see what drives a project, read custom software development cost, or work it out with your own numbers in the software development cost calculator.
A weekend housekeeper for an eight-room guesthouse
An example of what we can build, with made-up names. You choose what you ask.
Staff for the rooms and the breakfast room
A small hotel runs on a handful of people, and at weekends on students and regular weekend staff. People who clean rooms or serve breakfast do not hunt on a big job board with a CV attached. They look on their phone in the evening for work nearby, and give up on a form with twenty fields.
So we build the job ad on your own site, with the days and hours in it, and an application in three taps: name, mobile number, which days. You see in one list who replied and where each conversation stands. Once someone starts, they get the room board and the day's tasks on their phone, so you stop leaving notes for the Sunday team.
UK rules for paying guests, built into the system
Anyone who takes paying guests in England deals with the guest register, VAT and fire safety, with a national register for short-term lets on the way. These are the rules that most often belong in the software.
| Situation | What the rule asks | What the software does |
|---|---|---|
| Guest register | Under the Immigration (Hotel Records) Order 1972, every guest aged 16 or over gives their full name and nationality on arrival; foreign nationals also give passport number and place of issue, and their next destination on departure | Captures the details at booking and check-in |
| Keeping the register | The record, with the date of arrival, is kept for at least 12 months and open to inspection by the police | Keeps the records for the period you set, then deletes them |
| VAT on rooms | Accommodation is standard-rated at 20 percent; from day 29 of a continuous stay, VAT falls only on the non-accommodation part | Splits room, breakfast and extras on the invoice and flags long stays |
| Fire safety | Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the responsible person carries out a fire risk assessment and reviews it regularly | Keeps the assessment and review date with your property |
| Short-term lets register | A mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England is expected to begin in March 2027 | Your number on the site and in every confirmation once it exists |
| Guest data under UK GDPR | Personal data is kept no longer than needed | A retention period per type of data |
The software files nothing for you and makes no VAT decisions. It makes sure you have the figures and documents when you need them; your accountant checks the VAT. For your website itself the usual rules apply: a privacy policy and, once you track visits or retarget ads, a cookie banner.
A six-room guesthouse over one year
| Per year | Today | With direct booking and a room board |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue through booking sites | £75,000 | £60,000 |
| Commission at 15 percent | £11,250 | £9,000 |
| Hours on admin | 234 hours | 78 hours |
If a fifth of the booking-site guests move to your own website, £2,250 a year in commission stays with you, plus 156 hours you can give to guests or to your own weekend. The fees of your payment provider come off that saving. How many guests book direct depends mostly on whether they find you, not on the calendar itself.
Starting from an ordinary weekend
- A conversation about your houseHow many rooms, which channels, who cleans and who serves breakfast, where does the time go? We look at an ordinary weekend, not a list of features.
- A fixed price per projectTogether we pick the part that costs the most time or commission and give a fixed price for it. A website starts from 1,500 euros; software gets a price after the conversation.
- A season with real guestsYou run the first version through a normal period. What does not fit, we change before the busy season starts. You own the code and your guests' data.
We have no hotel as a client yet; we did build a calendar fed by the Airbnb and Booking iCal with a request form for No.4 Lange Ast, a holiday house in Flanders, and a site with an availability calendar and a small admin panel for Villa Lidia in Umbria.
Questions guesthouse owners ask us
Does your software replace my channel manager or hotel system?
No. The booking sites bring guests and a channel manager keeps them in step. We build what sits beside them: the website where guests book direct, the room board, the breakfast list, late arrival codes and the links your system allows.
Do I need to keep a guest register at my B&B?
Yes. The Immigration (Hotel Records) Order 1972 covers any premises that give lodging for payment. Every guest aged 16 or over gives name and nationality on arrival, foreign nationals give more, and you keep the record for at least 12 months.
What VAT do I charge on a room?
Accommodation is standard-rated at 20 percent once you are VAT registered. For a continuous stay of more than 28 days, the reduced value rule applies from day 29. Your accountant checks how it applies to your bookings.
Can guests arrive late without me waiting up?
Yes, with a lock that accepts codes. The system makes a code per booking that only works for that room and those nights, and sends it at the time you choose. We look at which lock fits together; not every lock allows a link.
What does hotel software cost?
A website starts from 1,500 euros. A booking module, a room board or an integration gets a fixed price per project after a conversation about your house. Write to us through contact.
Custom software
How VBS helps you with this
We build the platform your business runs on every day: your spreadsheets, emails and paperwork in one system that does what you do.
- Your workflow mapped first, then a fixed price
- Screens for the office, the client and the road
- Hosting, backups and security managed by us on AWS
How we approach it is on our page about Custom software.
Less retyping and more guests booking direct?
Tell us how many rooms you have, which channels you sell through and where your weekend goes. We will show you where we would start.
Rather get in touch right away?