A hotel is not a shop with beds. The front desk answers one question all day — is there a room, and for which nights? — and everything else hangs off that answer: the booking, the guest's details, the deposit, the folio, housekeeping, the check-out and the report the owner reads on Monday. Choose software by how well it does these, not by the length of its feature list.
1. The calendar is the front desk's home screen
You should be able to see every room across the next two weeks at a glance, grouped by room type, with the free-room count per night on the group row. Tap a free night to book it; tap a stay to open it. Today's column should be obvious, and a room under maintenance should be visibly unsellable. If a demo starts anywhere other than this screen, ask why.
2. A guest register, not a name box
Kenyan law expects a hotel to know who slept in each room. Good software makes the guest a record — name, phone, ID or passport, nationality — chosen from a register or added properly, never typed loosely into a booking. Returning guests should be found by phone number in seconds.
3. The folio does the maths
Room nights, the deposit, a minibar charge, dinner posted from the restaurant, VAT and levy — the folio should carry all of it and show the balance before check-out. Extra nights must be billed as an extension, not scribbled on a note.
4. Overstays are handled, not hidden
Guests stay longer, staff forget to check people out, and both leave a room looking occupied that is not, or a night slept that was never billed. Look for a list of stays past their date that must be confirmed — extend or check out — and a report that shows every unbilled night.
5. M-Pesa for deposits and check-out
A deposit by Paybill to hold the room; a prompt to the guest's phone at check-out. Both should land on the folio without retyping.
6. Housekeeping that follows the stay
A check-out should turn the room to "cleaning" and create the task by itself. The calendar should show which rooms are ready to sell.
7. The reports a hotel owner reads
Occupancy, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for the period against the period before; which room types and which sources of business bring the money; length of stay; late check-ins; extended stays. Numbers, not adjectives.
8. It keeps working at the lodge
Coastal and safari properties lose signal for hours. Check-in, the folio and printing should work through it and catch up later.
How NodePoint measures up
NodePoint Hotel Management was built around exactly this list: the two-week calendar with free counts per room type, a guest register on every booking, folios with deposits and extras, extend-stay billing with overstay confirmation, housekeeping tasks created at check-out, M-Pesa on deposits and settlements, and reports with ADR, RevPAR and previous-period comparison. It is priced per property with unlimited users — see pricing — and available in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.
Read next: late check-outs and overstays — keeping the register and the revenue honest.