Hotel software versus a spreadsheet
Most Philippine properties under fifty rooms run on a sheet, a notebook and a chat thread. That is the real competition, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.
When a spreadsheet is genuinely fine
One person takes every booking. They come from one place. There are few enough rooms that the whole month fits on a screen. Nobody else needs to see it, and the person who keeps it is never away.
If that describes you, a sheet is free, instant, and already understood by the only person using it. Buying software to replace it would be paying for a problem you do not have — and we would rather say so than sell you one.
Where it stops being fine
Three specific moments, and none of them announce themselves.
A second person starts taking bookings
Two people and one file is the moment a room can be sold twice without either of them being careless. The sheet has no way to refuse a conflict; it only records whatever was typed last.
A second channel appears
Messenger, a walk-in and an agent are three sources arriving at three different speeds. The gap between a booking being agreed and being written down is where every double-booking in this market lives.
You want to know what you kept, not what came in
Revenue is easy to total. Profit is not, because the costs are in a different file and the salaries in a third — so the number that decides whether the business works stays a guess.
The arithmetic
One double-booking pays for a year
A room sells twice for three nights at ₱3,800. You refund one guest ₱11,400 and place them somewhere else at your own cost — call it ₱9,000. The direct damage is around ₱20,400, before the review that follows.
The Starter plan is ₱1,500 a month — ₱18,000 a year. One prevented double-booking covers it with change left over, and that is the pessimistic case: it assumes the software does nothing else useful for twelve months.
Side by side
| Spreadsheet | MangoHost | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | ₱1,500–₱5,000 a month, flat per hotel |
| Setting it up | Already done | An afternoon, with us doing the import |
| Double-booking | Whoever is looking has to notice | Refused as the booking is entered |
| Who can see what | Anyone with the file sees your rates and revenue | Roles per module; a housekeeper sees the room board only |
| Month-end | Three files and an evening | Net profit already calculated; PDF in one click |
| Your staff | A chat thread and a printed rota | Room board, tasks and rota, in English or Tagalog |
| History of a change | The last thing typed is now the truth | Audit log with actor and time |
| If the laptop dies | Whatever was last backed up | Hosted, with your data exportable any time |
Worth knowing
What a spreadsheet does better
It bends. If you want a column for something nobody else in the world tracks, you add a column. Software has opinions, and for the first fortnight those opinions feel like obstacles — a rate has to exist before a booking can use it, a room has to exist before it can be assigned.
That constraint is the whole value, but it is a real cost in week one and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Most operators keep the sheet open in parallel until they trust the calendar, and that is the right instinct.
Questions, answered
- Is a spreadsheet really enough to run a small hotel?
- For a handful of rooms taken by one person from one channel, yes — genuinely. A sheet is free, instant, and already understood. It stops being enough when a second person starts taking bookings, or a second channel does, because that is when two people can sell the same room without either of them knowing.
- What does one double-booking cost?
- A refunded night plus the cost of placing the guest somewhere else, usually ₱8,000 to ₱20,000 all in, before the review. A month of the Starter plan is ₱1,500. The arithmetic only needs to save you one every few years to pay for itself.
- Can I keep my spreadsheet?
- Yes, and most people do for the first fortnight. Keep it open in parallel until you trust the calendar. You can also export a PDF of any date range from MangoHost at any time, so leaving later is not a trap.
Related
Bring your sheet to the call
We will set your rooms and rates up from it in thirty minutes and you can see your own month on a calendar. If it does not beat the sheet, we will say so.
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