Are you on the look out for the best property management software for your business? Let us introduce you to Cloubeds PMS, an award-winning all-in-one suite that we’ve personally used and recommend. Cloudbeds is the fastest growing hospitality management software suite in the world, trusted by more than 20,000 hotels, hostels, inns, and alternative accommodations worldwide. The Cloudbeds suite includes an award-winning PMS that’s powerful and easy to use.
Psst! We’ve teamed up with Cloudbeds to offer you a $50 promo code – what are you waiting for?! In this article we focus solely on the PMS part of Cloudbeds and all the features incorporated. We cover in detail:
- What is Cloudbeds Property Management System?
- How does Cloudbeds PMS work? A look at Cloudbeds PMS features:
- Dashboard
- Calendar
- Reservations
- Rates and Availability (Availability Matrix)
- Guests
- Reports
- Cloudbeds PMS price
- Cloudbeds Demo
- Cloudbeds PMS advantages and disadvantages
- Cloudbeds competitors
- More helpful Cloudbeds articles + $50 Promo Code
- Summary
Once again: We’ve personally used Cloudbeds and this review comes from our firsthand experience of using the software.
1. What is Cloudbeds Property Management System (PMS)?
Let’s keep it simple by referring to this feature as PMS. So, what is Cloudbeds PMS? As the name suggests, the Cloudbeds PMS function is to help you manage reservations and operations with ease.
Within Cloudbeds PMS software there are many functions that can be utilised to get a quick overview of bookings on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. There’s access to guest details, plus quick click solutions to changing bed/room prices and manually changing availability in one easy click. Whatever changes you make within the PMS, rest assured that it will automatically sync up with all linked channels in your Channel Manager, as well as your website booking engine. Within the PMS, there are many primary functions to help you manage all aspects of the running of your property. That is what this guide is here for; to go through these features step-by-step to help you get your head around Cloudbeds and decide if it’s the right fit for your business.
Note: Whilst Cloudbeds marketing focuses as one of the world’s leading hotel property management systems (or PMS hotel system), the software is also used by hostels, inns and alternative accommodations worldwide.
You can find more information about PMS Cloudbeds here. Remember, you can only apply the discount code by using the link below.
2. How does Cloudbeds PMS work?
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to read through our full review of Cloudbeds which gives a broader overview of the entire Cloudbeds Suite and software. Yet, if you’d rather just get an idea of the Cloudbeds Property Management System, here is an very brief overview of what the software includes:
- Property Management System
- Booking Engine
- Channel Manager booking
- Revenue Management/ Pricing Intelligence Engine (PIE)
- Marketplace / Cloudbeds Integrations
- Finance & Payments
Now that you have an idea of what’s included if you are to create an account, we’d like to go into some more detail about the highlights and uses of the main features of Cloudbeds PMS.
Please be aware that we don’t cover absolutely all of them here simply because there are too many. We’ve picked out the most useful (and most used) in our experience.
Note: The best way to really get to know for yourself how the PMS works is to take full advantage of the demo on offer. Yet whilst we have you here, we’d like to help by giving you a quick overview! This is based on our own personal use of Cloudbeds.
Cloudbeds PMS: Dashboard
This is the landing page when you log in to your Cloudbeds account. We really like the bold layout here as it’s very obvious where to find an overview of the current day and following day concerning arrivals, departures, stay overs and in house guests.
(Note: Cloudbeds login is quick, easy and done through the Cloudbeds website. This means there’s no need to download programmes to access your account.)
Alongside the day’s reservation happenings, there is another box which highlights the day’s activities including sales, cancellations and overbookings, The day’s revenue is also highlighted here. Further down the page is a 14 day outlook of your properties occupancy and revenue. The simple chart here offers an easy-glance at all of the accommodations booked and blocked over a 14 day period. This is a really great way to gauge how to move forward with your sales and make decisions about adjusting prices etc.
Cool feature: Simply click on a guests name to access their reservation details. More on that below.
Cloudbeds PMS: Calendar
This is by far the smartest and more useful part of the PMS, in our opinion. Not only is it visually attractive, but it has been designed with such ease and precision that it will only take you a short time to get the hang of how it works.
Recommended: Take the tour and watch the informative video for this section (as part of the demo). On this page it’s possible to manage nearly all of the most important tasks that come with property management. To give you an idea, on the calendar you can:
- See a clear overview of a 15 day period (change dates accordingly)
- Change room prices
- See room availability and bookings
- Enjoy a colour coded legend
- Manually add/remove bookings
The intuitive calendar enables you to drag and drop, and any changes made are continuously in sync with all your channels. Cool feature: You have the power to block dates (say if family are coming to stay, for example), create a ‘courtesy hold’ and list a room as ‘out of service’ if you’re having repairs done.
Cloudbeds PMS: Reservations
Self explanatory really and super easy to use. Head to this section if you need to add a reservation manually or double check any details about your guest’s reservation. Once again you can use the filter tool to select specific dates, including date booked and check in/check out date.
Each reservation offers an overview of all the information you’d hope to get a clear and quick understanding of, including length of stay, which room they have booked, how many nights, price and status. Each guest is also allocated a booking number for your reference. If you want more specific information about any given guest, simply click on their name! This is where you are then able to adjust their booking, including marking as a ‘no show’, creating an invoice and accessing their contact details. All email correspondence is also collected here.
Cloudbeds PMS: Rates and Availability (Availability Matrix)
In our experience, the availability matrix section comes in very handy when you want to double check your room availability and set pricing. This is also the place you go to change these things. For example, if you have a walk-in that wants to book a mixed dorm and you’re not sure if you have space, simply bring up this page to check availability.
Important: Make sure you block off the bed in the system so that it no longer appears on your channels or booking engine. Otherwise you risk overbooking which can be very embarrassing! To change the price, simply click on the current amount, update accordingly and hit enter. The system with automatically sync with all channels in real-time. 
Cloudbeds PMS: Guests
In this part of Cloudbeds PMS you are able to search for and find any guest that has stayed in your property, even if it was a few years ago. Basically, the system will keep hold of all of your guest’s information, including their contact information and the country they are resident in. By clicking on their name, you will land on a more in-depth page about that guest, bringing up useful information such as:
- The date of their last visit
- Their length of stay
- Total revenue
- Source of booking (e.g booking.com)
- Contact information
This is all super useful information to be able to access, especially if there has been some sort of dispute with that guest, or something needs clarifying for either party. Well-informed staff = for happier guests! There’s also an option to add notes to any given guest profile so that all members of your staff team can keep track of correspondence. (For example, note if guest requires breakfast or support with carrying bags etc.)
Top tip: Should you have a returning guest that either walks in or calls to make a booking over the phone, you can locate their history via the Guests tab and select ‘Create New Reservation’. This way, you keep better track of returning guest patterns and stats.
Cloudbeds PMS: Reports
This is the real juicy part of Cloudbeds PMS, whereby all of the algorithms of your property management usage come together to create geeky charts that we at Hostelgeeks just love! And let’s face it, reports are super useful to improve and observe your performance! What we really enjoy is that Cloudbeds has split the reports into categories, making it so incredibly user friendly to quickly pick out the specific information you wish to view. The many different reports fall under these categories:
- Production reports
- Financial reports
- Daily activity reports
- Police report
- Stock and Inventory report
Within these there are many individual reports that break down all of the stats any property owner or manager would wish to oversee. The ease of accessing these reports is thanks to the system continuously syncing and doing the hard work for you. That’s excellent, in our opinion. All you need to do is simply locate your desired report and use it to get an overview of your properties production.
3. Cloudbeds PMS Price
At the moment, set prices are not published on the Cloudbeds website. Yet, the pricing for Cloudbeds is very fair, and will depend on your own accommodation and location. Meaning, when visiting their website, you need to fill in the location of your hostel. Then you will need to fill in how many private rooms and how many dorm beds you offer. This means, the smaller your hostel/ hotel is, the less you pay and vice versa. Simply input all of your accommodation details, request a demo and await a final price for your property. You can choose between these 4 options:
- Essentials / Basics
- Plus
- Premier
- Enterprise
Premier / Enterprise users: Phone support is offered in the United States and Canada, available 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday. Of course, these include access to a number of different features, and the more you pay the more access you’re granted. We’ve included a snapshot below to give you a clearer idea.
As for payment, you can start with a month-by-month contract and then upgrade to a yearly contract with a discount. This way you can test it for a few months and once you’re happy to continue with Cloudbeds, you can easily switch to a yearly contract. No matter what price you are quoted, we are pleased to offer you a $50 promo code to use!
4. Cloudbeds Demo (with Discount)
One of the biggest pros to Cloudbeds is that it’s possible to request access to a 21 day demo of the software. You will have full access to all of the features mentioned in this guide, enabling you to get a feel for how everything works.
What’s more, there are some handy little ‘how to’ videos and step-by-step guidelines of how the main tools work. We really enjoyed that the demo has been set up with alias bookings, prices etc to bring the whole thing to life. This way, you can go through and click and edit everything without a worry that you might mess something up. This is one of the best ways of learning, in our opinion!
It’s highly recommended that you first request a demo with one of the hospitality consultants who will walk you through everything and see if it’s a good fit for your business.
5. Cloudbeds PMS: Advantages & Disadvantages
As with anything, there are always pros and cons to consider when investing time and money into a new property management system. Hopefully by reading through this article the advantages of Cloudbeds have become clear. Either way, let us highlight the main cloudbeds advantages and disadvantages to choosing this particular PMS. Advantages
- All-in-one interface that’s easily accessible and user friendly
- 24/7 customer support
- Trusted by 300+ industry booking channels
- 32% lift in positive customer reviews
- Save 4 hours of employee work time every day
- 20% increase in reservations, on average
- Always working towards solutions & improvements
Disadvantages
- Pricing is not published on the website
- Customer support is largely online causing delay in solving issues
- Issues with mobile use of Cloudbeds at times
- No assigned staff member to your property for support
6. Cloudbeds Competitors
We haven’t used any property management systems other than Cloudbeds, yet we like to offer transparency and of course there are other PMS systems out there to consider. Just briefly, here are some of the Cloudbeds competitors out there to give you an idea:
- Clock PMS – primarily a pms for hotels
- Clock PMS+ – advanced pms for hostels
- Hotello – PMS
- Oracle Hospitality
It will largely depend on your property type and needs that will determine which PMS you decide to use. Again, we love Cloudbeds because it is designed for a wide range of properties. We obviously specialise in hostels, and Cloudbeds is without doubt the best PMS for hostels, in our opinion.
7. More helpful Cloudbeds articles
To help you further in fully grasping everything Cloudbeds is about and what it offers, we’ve put together even more indepth articles. This way, you have the opportunity to get a full picture of this PMS before you commit to a contract.
- Cloudbeds Reviews – about Cloudbeds, Cloudbeds advantages and disadvantages, pricing etc
- Cloudbeds Software for Hostels + $50 Promo Code
Summary
As far as answering the question ‘what is the best property management system’, we hope you’ll agree from reading this review that Cloudbeds is a serious high contender. We’ve enjoyed the simplistic use that comes from an intuitive, fast and efficient system. Cloudbeds is your answer to an all-in-one suite that has adapted to all kinds of accommodation types, and we recommend it for hostel owners and managers. Having used it ourselves in this capacity, we can say with confidence that it does the job well.
Left with any questions or wish to share your own Cloudbeds experience? Drop us a comment below!