Hotel reservation software or Excel? The right choice for a guesthouse or boutique hotel

2026-10-17 · Hostopus · 6 min read

If you run a boutique hotel, guesthouse or aparthotel in Turkey, your bookings probably live in an Excel file, a notebook, or both. A Booking.com reservation comes in, you type it into the file, then you block the same dates on Airbnb by hand. If another guest books the same room on the other platform in the meantime, you have a double booking and must cancel one guest or send them elsewhere. An article Booking.com wrote for its partners describes the problem exactly this way: when only one room is left and two guests book at the same time on different channels, complications arise. This guide first shows how to set up proper tracking in Excel, then what to look for when choosing hotel reservation software.

How to track hotel reservations in Excel

For a guesthouse with a few rooms, a well-built spreadsheet works for a long time. Create two sheets: a reservation list and an occupancy grid. Give the reservation list these columns:

Reservation no: the number from the channel, or your own running number.
Guest name and phone.
Room: always use the same name for each room (e.g. "Room 3"). Spelling differences break formulas.
Check-in and check-out date: keep the cells formatted as dates, not text.
Nights: a formula that subtracts check-in from check-out.
Number of guests.
Channel: Booking.com, Airbnb, phone, walk-in.
Total amount, commission and the amount you keep.
Payment status: paid, deposit received, pay at check-in.
Notes: late arrival, baby cot, early check-in request.

In the occupancy sheet, put rooms in rows and dates in columns, and colour the booked days. To catch double bookings, add a check column to the reservation list. If the room is in column E, check-in in F and check-out in G, type =COUNTIFS($E:$E,E2,$F:$F,"<"&G2,$G:$G,">"&F2) in row 2 and fill down. A result above 1 means another reservation overlaps in that room.

Where Excel falls short

A spreadsheet is only as accurate as what you type into it. Problems usually show up here:

Channels cannot see your sheet. Until you enter a Booking.com reservation and block the dates on Airbnb, the room stays on sale in both places. A booking that arrives at night and waits until morning raises the risk.
Cancelled dates do not reopen by themselves. If you forget to reopen them on every platform, the room sits empty.
You change prices in each place separately. Season rates are updated one by one on Booking.com, Airbnb and your own list.
Your team cannot see the same information instantly. Reception or the cleaner has to ask you which room frees up today.
Reports are extra work. To see occupancy or what each channel earns, you build formulas and pivot tables on top.

As rooms and channels grow, each of these steps becomes another chance for a mistake. This is usually when owners start looking for a hotel booking management system.

What to look for in hotel reservation software

The best hotel reservation software is not the same for everyone; it depends on your size and where you sell. Ask these questions:

Is a channel manager built in? The software should receive bookings from Booking.com and Airbnb itself and close the sold room on the other channels itself. Booking.com's partner help page describes a channel manager's job this way: once a room is sold, it is automatically removed from all other online providers, and after a cancellation it is put back online immediately. For more on the concept, read our post what is a channel manager.
Is there a calendar per room? You should see every room day by day on one screen and set each room's price separately.
Do manual bookings close the channels too? When you enter a phone or walk-in guest, that room should close on the platforms as well.
Can you give your team permissions? Reception, cleaning staff and your partner should each see what their role allows.
Are reports ready? Occupancy, average nightly rate and earnings per channel should appear without formulas.
Is it simple? If you are after simple software for a small guesthouse, entering a booking without getting lost in menus matters more than a long feature list.
How is it priced? Per room or per property, and is there a free trial?

Is there free hotel reservation software?

A spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets is free and can be enough for a small guesthouse selling on one channel. Hostopus is not free. You can try it for your hotel free for 30 days, then pay a fixed monthly fee based on room count: 1–5 rooms 30 USD, 6–9 rooms 40 USD, 10 rooms 50 USD, 11–14 rooms 60 USD, 15–19 rooms 70 USD, 20 rooms 80 USD. The price list goes up to 20 rooms.

How a hotel is managed in Hostopus

In Hostopus a hotel is a heading, and the rooms under it are sold one by one. Setup today starts from your room listings on Airbnb: you connect your Airbnb account, select the rooms of the same property, answer yes to "Are these rooms of the same business?", enter the property name and say whether breakfast is included in the price. The rooms are set up as one hotel with their photos, prices, rules and existing bookings. A room you open on Airbnb later is added to your hotel the same way. Each room is tracked individually; the classic "room type × quantity" setup of larger hotels does not exist today, so Hostopus suits boutique hotels and guesthouses that sell their rooms individually.

Channels connect at hotel level. From the hotel's Channels page you connect Booking.com, Agoda, Trip.com and Tiket.com with your hotel ID and pair each of your rooms with a room on that platform. The connection is not created until every room is paired, so no room is left without a calendar feed.
An incoming booking lands on the room's calendar and that room closes for the same dates on the other channels. The same happens when you enter a phone booking by hand.
The calendar shows all rooms of the hotel in one grid: rows are rooms, columns are days. Tap a room to open its own calendar and change price and availability there.
Rules and team are set once. Booking rules you save in the hotel panel are written to every room. A person you invite to the hotel is added to all rooms with the same permissions, and you choose once who gets check-in, check-out and cleaning tasks. More in our posts on automatic cleaning tasks and co-host permissions.
Reports come ready. The Dashboard shows your hotel's average occupancy and average nightly rate. Channel Analysis shows what each platform brings in; we explain how to read it in which channel earns more.
You get your own booking website. You can put your hotel on a site under your own domain; when a guest picks dates, only available rooms appear with their prices. See your own site for commission-free bookings and your hotel price on Google.

In short

In short, a well-built Excel sheet is enough for a small guesthouse selling on one channel. Once you sell on Booking.com and Airbnb together, the way to stop double bookings is software that receives the booking and closes the other channels itself. You can try Hostopus for your hotel free for 30 days.