The Sesion blog

The cloud versus on-premise debate is really about who maintains the system, how you pay for it, and what happens when the connection drops. A comparison of the model, not of vendors.

One vendor for everything or the best tool for each job. The trade is between integration effort and the ability to replace a weak component without rebuilding the stack.

Connecting your PMS straight to two OTAs can work. What changes when you reach the fourth channel, and where the hidden cost of managing connections yourself appears.

The engine bundled with your PMS is already integrated and usually cheaper. A specialist one converts better in most comparisons. How to decide with your own numbers instead of a sales deck.

Automated pricing reacts faster and never forgets a date. Manual pricing understands context a model cannot see. Where each one wins, and how most hotels end up combining them.

A well built spreadsheet runs revenue management at many hotels and costs nothing. The signals that tell you it has reached its limit, and what a system adds that a sheet cannot.

General purpose gateways are cheaper, better documented and familiar. Hotel-specific providers handle the delayed charges, no-shows and folio splits that break generic flows. Where the line falls.

Your PMS already holds every guest you have hosted. What a CRM adds beyond that, and when the PMS database is genuinely enough for the marketing you actually do.

Guests do not have a preference between a bot and a person. They have a preference for a fast, correct answer. Where automation delivers that and where it makes things worse.

Metasearch shows your rate next to the OTAs at the moment of comparison. Paid search catches the guest earlier, before a property is chosen. Two different jobs, two different ways to waste money.