Open Source Hotel Management System
Hotel property management is thin in open source, and the reason is structural: the money in this market sits in the channel-manager and payment integrations that wire a property to the big booking sites, and those live behind commercial APIs no free project can fully match. So this is a small, curated shelf rather than a crowded one. What the open source systems here do cover is the core a small independent property runs on every day - reservations, room inventory, the front-desk calendar, guest folios, and invoices - self-hosted, so your booking history and guest records sit on hardware you own even when the outside distribution channels stay commercial. For a boutique hotel or guesthouse, that ownership is often the whole point.
Our picks
Two systems for two very different properties; both self-host, and neither replaces a commercial channel manager.
Full reservation system and booking engine: QloApps QloApps is the most complete option here, combining a property management system, a booking engine, and a hotel website in one install, so a property can publish a site, showcase its rooms, and take both on-desk and online reservations from a single place. It supports multilingual and multicurrency setups and runs on a standard PHP and MySQL stack with Apache, Nginx, or IIS, self-hosted or from a Docker image. Its OSL-3.0 core suits independents through small chains that want direct booking without per-room SaaS fees.
Lightweight PMS for small guesthouses: FewohBee FewohBee is deliberately small, a web-based PMS for pensions, guesthouses, and B&Bs moving off pen-and-paper or spreadsheets. It covers a reservation overview, guest records with GDPR export, room and price settings, PDF invoices, in-app guest emails, a cash book, and iCal calendar export, in German and English. Built on PHP and Symfony over MySQL or MariaDB, it self-hosts with Docker Compose. It is a one-person project, so weigh that against its clean fit for a very small property.
Matching the system to how the property runs
A hotel system lives or dies on whether its room logic matches the building. A boutique hotel, a hostel with shared beds, a guesthouse, and a serviced-apartment block all count rooms differently, so check how the software handles room types versus physical rooms, out-of-order inventory, day-use bookings, deposits, no-shows, early check-ins, and room moves. QloApps is built as a full reservation system and booking engine for properties from independents to chains, while FewohBee is aimed squarely at small pensions and guesthouses, so begin from the one whose scale actually matches yours.
Distribution is where open source hits its ceiling, so be honest about where your bookings come from. If most arrive through online travel agencies, you need either a reliable channel-manager connection or a clean way to sync availability and rates, and that commercial layer is exactly what these projects cannot fully replace. QloApps includes its own booking engine and hotel website with multilingual and multicurrency support for taking direct reservations, which lessens the dependence, whereas FewohBee leans on iCal calendar export to share availability with other applications rather than deep two-way channel sync.
Treat payments, continuity, and data ownership as one decision. Avoid storing raw card data in the application where you can, and confirm the deposit, invoice, and refund flow before go-live, since a weak folio becomes a front-desk problem within a week. Both systems self-host with Docker, so decide whether you can run cloud-hosted only or need local access during an outage, and test the exports you would actually need for reservations, guest profiles, folios, and invoices. FewohBee already ships GDPR guest-data export and PDF invoicing, a reasonable baseline to measure any option against.
Related categories
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a hotel management system and a PMS?+
A PMS, or property management system, is the narrower term for the system of record that handles reservations, rooms, guests, folios, and check-in. A hotel management system may wrap in booking pages, housekeeping, payments, reports, and integrations around that core. In practice the labels are used loosely, so evaluate the actual workflows a tool covers rather than the name on the box.
Is an open source hotel system realistic for a working hotel?+
It is realistic when the software matches your reservation flow and someone owns setup, updates, backups, and integrations. A small independent property or guesthouse can run well on FewohBee or QloApps with only the connectors it truly needs. A busy hotel with heavy online-travel-agency volume, card payments, and night-audit and accounting requirements needs a lot more testing before it trusts the system at the front desk.
Can these connect to Booking.com and other OTAs?+
This is the honest limit of open source here. Deep two-way sync of availability, rates, and reservations with the big booking sites usually runs through a commercial channel manager that these projects do not include. QloApps softens the gap with its own booking engine and hotel website for direct reservations, while FewohBee shares availability through iCal calendar export. If OTA volume drives your business, budget for a paid channel connection.
Should the system store guests' credit card data?+
Usually no. A safer design routes payments through a gateway that tokenizes cards and keeps raw card numbers out of the hotel application, which shrinks your compliance scope even though it does not erase it. Check how deposits, preauthorizations, refunds, and no-show fees are handled, because weak payment handling turns into a front-desk problem fast. Neither listed tool removes the need to think this through.
Only two tools here, is the category worth using?+
It is small because open source hotel software is genuinely sparse, not because the list was trimmed. The two here sit at different scales: QloApps is a mature, widely used reservation system and booking engine, while FewohBee is a focused PMS for very small properties. Both are self-hostable and actively used, so the question is fit for your property, not the length of the shelf.
If the internet drops during check-in, what happens?+
That depends on your hosting choice, and it is worth rehearsing. A cloud-only deployment needs a downtime procedure: cached or printed arrival lists, manual folio forms, and a reconciliation step once service returns. Self-hosting on local hardware avoids some connectivity risk but adds backup and maintenance duties. Either way, test the exact check-in, room-assignment, payment, and receipt steps under a simulated outage before opening day.
What happens if one of these projects stalls or is abandoned?+
Your safety net is recoverable data and replaceable hosting, not the project name. Keep the deployment reproducible, schedule database backups, and test exports of reservations, guests, folios, and invoices regularly. This matters more for FewohBee, which is a one-person project, than for the larger QloApps community. Because both self-host, you can keep running the version you have long enough to export and move if development stops.