Hotela
French-language hotel management software aimed at West Africa (Abidjan, Dakar, Lomé, Cotonou…): reservations and stays, room planning, website with booking engine, restaurant and bar till, stock and recipe cards, CRM, PDF invoicing, rooms and events, multi-hotel, guest and staff apps, API keys. Prices in CFA francs: Starter 19,900 a month (about €30), Business 49,900, Corporate 89,900; 10% commission on bookings made online through the app or the Hotela network. 14-day trial, payment by Mobile Money.
Hotela brings together in one application what a small hotel uses: room planning, reservations, invoicing, restaurant till, stock and recipe cards, guest file. That scope can be reproduced for a single property; it is even a good example of a human-sized all-in-one. What cannot be reproduced: the vendor's booking network (hence the 10% commission) and Mobile Money payments. For a French hotel, till rules (NF525), tourist tax and the police registration form are added and change the screens to plan.
What you lose
- The vendor's booking network and its customers.
- Mobile Money payments.
- Ready-to-use guest and staff apps.
- The hotel website with a hosted booking engine.
Existing alternatives to Hotela
- QloAppsOpen source
Open-source hotel booking system (OSL-3.0) built on PrestaShop: booking engine and room management; connections to online travel agencies are up to you.
What a home-built tool costs once it exists
- Hosting and database: a server cost, and automatic backups you actually test.
- Security and GDPR: dependency updates, an HTTPS certificate, protection of your customers’ data.
- Upkeep time: who fixes the tool on a Saturday night in the middle of service if the server goes down?
The prompt to build it yourself
Build a small management application for my hotel, replacing an all-in-one hotel software. Context: a 14-room hotel with a 30-seat restaurant, a team of 8. To do: - Rooms and room types with rates and statuses (free, occupied, to clean). - A visual booking planner per room with conflict detection. - Guest records (name, contact, preferences, stay history). - The stay bill with restaurant services charged to the room, and a PDF. - A small restaurant ordering module (tables, dishes, sending to the kitchen) without taking payments. - An ingredient stock with recipe cards and a threshold alert. - Roles: front desk, restaurant, management. Out of scope: online bookings through a network, legal sales recording, payments. Stack: web app, PostgreSQL. README: how to run, daily backup, and a reminder that recording sales must go through certified till software (NF525), and that tourist tax and the police registration form for foreign travellers must be planned.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does Hotela cost, and what do you really pay for?
- Listed price: from €30.34/month. What the subscription covers and is hard to maintain yourself: The vendor's booking network and its customers.; Mobile Money payments.; Ready-to-use guest and staff apps.; The hotel website with a hosted booking engine..
- What free or open-source alternatives to Hotela exist?
- QloApps (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
- Where do you start to build an equivalent of Hotela?
- Copy this page’s prompt into Claude, Codex or Cursor to get a first prototype. Then plan for hosting, data backups and GDPR compliance: that is what costs the most to maintain over time.
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