How to choose a hotel PMS in Türkiye: questions to ask vendors

A hotel PMS (property management system) is the software that runs reservations, the front desk, housekeeping and billing. Choose one by testing it against your own processes, not a feature list: compliance steps, billing corrections, distribution contracts, data access and written exit terms. Ask vendors to label each answer built, tested or live, and demo on your data.

The demo runs on a fictional property with clean data. Your hotel has a guest paying part of the bill in euros, a charge posted to the wrong room, and a receptionist sending an identity notification while the guest is still standing at the desk. The PMS decision is whether those three moments work. After reading this, you will have a written process list, a compliance question set, a contract checklist and a five-task demo script you can hand to any vendor.

Where should you start before you look at any PMS?#

Start with your own processes and the moments that go wrong today, not with a feature list.

Define the term once for your team: a PMS holds reservations, rooms, guest records, bills and reports, and for hotels it is the primary interface for guest, reservation, folio and room data, as AHLA / HTNG describes in its completed workgroups (2026) (opens in a new tab). Many hoteliers in Türkiye call it an otel otomasyon programı. If you are new to the vocabulary, our hotel technology glossary: PMS, API, channel manager covers the terms you will hear in sales meetings.

Write down the ten tasks that consume the most staff time or cause the most disputes: overbooking, split bills, group blocks, agency allotments, night audit, currency conversion, identity capture at check-in. For each task, note who performs it, how long it takes, and which record or document it produces. Then separate must-haves from nice-to-haves: a must-have prevents a legal failure or a revenue leak; everything else is a preference.

Record the shape of your operation: one property or a group, number of outlets, languages spoken at the desk, how many people touch the system in a day. Turn the list into a five-task demo script and bring the same script to every vendor. Do not ask for a price first: a price without a scope of duties is a number you cannot compare.

Which compliance questions should you ask a PMS vendor?#

Ask how each legal record is produced, who reviews it, and what the system does when the step fails.

In Türkiye every stay involves a payment, a fiscal document (an invoice or e-document), a guest identity notification (KBS) and personal data (KVKK). Ask the vendor to walk through all four in one check-in. The Identity Notification Law (Law No. 1774, consolidated text) (opens in a new tab) requires lodging operators to keep identity and arrival and departure records of every guest, Turkish or foreign, keep them on computer, and report them instantly to the general law enforcement by connecting to its computer terminals. Ask to see the notification produced from the check-in flow, and what the screen shows when the connection is down.

Identity documents need their own question. In Principle Decision 2025/2120 of 6 November 2025, published in the Official Gazette on 9 December 2025 (No. 33102) (opens in a new tab), the Personal Data Protection Board found that recording a guest's name, surname and T.C. identity number under Law No. 1774 is lawful, and that asking to see the card to verify those details is lawful, but that photocopying the card and keeping the copy is excessive processing. Ask whether the system stores card images at all, and how earlier copies are destroyed under KVKK Article 7.

Personal data: the Personal Data Protection Law (Law No. 6698, Articles 4 and 7) (opens in a new tab) requires data to be limited to its purpose and deleted, destroyed or anonymised when the reason for processing ends. The Regulation on Deletion, Destruction or Anonymisation (Official Gazette 28 October 2017, No. 30224) requires every deletion operation to be recorded, with records kept at least three years, and periodic destruction at intervals set in the hotel's policy that may never exceed six months. Ask how the system exports and deletes, and whether it keeps the deletion record.

Fiscal documents: an e-Arşiv invoice is created electronically and delivered to the buyer on paper or electronically as the buyer asks, and businesses enrolled in e-Arşiv issue it to buyers not registered for e-Fatura, per GİB, e-Arşiv Fatura Hakkında (2026) (opens in a new tab). Taxpayers whose own systems are not sufficient can send and receive e-invoices through a special integrator that has completed GİB's tests, per GİB, e-Fatura Özel Entegrasyon (2026) (opens in a new tab). Ask which integrator, who reviews an invoice before it is sent, and what the system stores.

Fiscal devices: Law No. 3100 requires first and second class merchants selling to final consumers to use a payment recording device (ÖKC) that issues a receipt for every sale and a daily closing receipt. Which of your outlets needs one is your accountant's call; ask whether the system can connect devices outlet by outlet. Finally, Ministry circular 2026/1 of 16 April 2026 obliges accommodation facilities and their software providers to send data to the central tourism database through a web-service API, daily if automatic and monthly by the 15th if manual, with a first deadline of 15 May 2026 (alomaliye.com, 6 May 2026). Ask what the vendor has built for it and its status, and confirm scope, dates and your own case with your adviser.

How do you test billing and records before you sign?#

Ask to watch a wrong charge corrected, a business day closed, and a foreign-currency bill settled, on your own data.

Correction, not deletion: financial records are never deleted; corrections are voided and reversed, and the night audit closes the business day. Ask to see a correction performed and then read its trail: who did it, when, from what amount to what amount.

Daily records: the Tax Procedure Law (Law No. 213, Articles 240 and 253) (opens in a new tab) requires lodging places to prepare daily customer lists with consecutive serial and sequence numbers, following their room and bed plans, showing each guest's name and surname with the room number and room rate. Ask how the system produces this list and whether you can export it without the vendor.

Retention: the same law requires those who keep books to retain books and documents for five years, counted from the start of the calendar year after the year they relate to; the Commercial Code (Law No. 6102, Article 82) (opens in a new tab) requires ten years for commercial books, inventories and the documents behind entries, and allows images or data carriers if they match the originals, can be reached at any time and made readable within a reasonable time. Ask how records stay readable for that long, and how a keep duty is separated from a KVKK deletion duty.

Foreign currency: ask which rate the system applies and at which moment, and whether the rate used is stored with the transaction. Central-bank indicative rates are published daily (TCMB). Which rate applies for tax is your accountant's decision, not the vendor's. Reports: ask for the full report list, the name of the person who can change a report, and whether a figure can be traced back to the entries behind it. Month end: ask what the system produces when your accountant asks for a file, in what format, and how long it takes.

What should you ask about distribution and contracts?#

Ask how one room inventory feeds every channel, and what the real status of each connection is.

One inventory: rooms, rates and restrictions should be defined once and served to your website, travel agencies, OTAs and, increasingly, AI assistants. Ask what is defined once and what is re-entered per channel. For agency and tour operator contracts, ask how allotments, release periods, stop-sales and cancellation policies are entered, whether the release date is enforced automatically, and then ask to see an allotment expire in front of you.

Connection status per channel: ask for each channel separately whether the connection is built, in test or live, and since when. A single "we are integrated with everyone" is not an answer. Ask what happens to availability when a channel connection drops: does the room stay sellable elsewhere, and who is told? Ask who can change a rate, whether restrictions such as minimum stay and closed-to-arrival reach every channel, and how a rate change is logged.

Integration effort: AHLA and HTNG note that system integrations in hotels are generally lengthy and complex, especially integrations with the PMS (AHLA, HTNG Completed Workgroups, 2026). Ask for a written integration plan with dates and named owners on both sides. Our piece on how the core systems in a hotel technology stack fit together gives the background.

What must the contract say about your data and your exit?#

Your data must be separable, exportable and returnable in a stated format, and the contract must say so before you sign.

Roles: under KVKK (Law No. 6698, Articles 3 and 12), the data controller determines the purposes and means of processing and is responsible for the recording system, while the processor acts on the controller's authority; Article 12 makes the controller responsible for technical and administrative measures together with anyone processing data on its behalf. Ask the vendor which role it takes for each part of the service.

Permissions: the Personal Data Protection Authority's Personal Data Security Guide (April 2025, sections 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2) (opens in a new tab) advises access only to the extent a task requires, through username and password, an authorisation matrix on the principle that everything is forbidden unless permitted, administrator rights opened only when needed, leavers' accounts closed without delay, and regular logs of user actions. Ask to see the permission screen and one log.

Provider terms: the same guide recommends a written contract under which the provider acts only on your instructions, keeps data confidential without time limit, reports any breach immediately, and can be audited; for cloud storage it asks you to assess the provider's measures and says copies of encryption keys must be destroyed when the service ends. Transfers abroad: KVKK Article 9, as amended by Law No. 7499 in 2024, allows a transfer abroad where a processing condition exists and the Board has issued an adequacy decision for the destination, or, without one, under listed safeguards such as a standard contract; take your own case to counsel.

Exit terms: write down what you get back (guest history, folios, rate history, documents), in what format, by when, at what cost, and whether the vendor keeps a copy afterwards and for how long. On security audits, ask whether an independent audit has been carried out, by whom, against what scope, and whether you may read the summary. A logo on a slide is not a scope.

How do you run a demo that tells you the truth?#

Hand the vendor your own five tasks and ask for a status word on every claim made during the demo.

Script the demo: give the vendor five tasks from your list and watch them performed in one sitting, on a copy of your data or a sandbox that mirrors it. Slides show what a vendor wants you to see; a script shows what happens when the sequence is yours. Status words: built, tested, live. Ask for each promised feature in writing with its word and its date. "We can do that" is not a status.

Define live: ask at how many properties the feature runs, since when, and whether you may speak to one of them. If the vendor cannot answer, treat the feature as built at best. Ask for the failure story: what went wrong in their last implementation, what the hotel lost, and what the vendor changed afterwards.

AI claims: if a vendor says the system is AI, ask what the model was trained on, which decisions it makes, and who confirms a sensitive action. A model that answers questions about your own numbers is a different product from one that changes rates on its own; our questions to ask an AI vendor before buying for your hotel go deeper. Keep a score sheet: same questions, same script, same data for every vendor, scored by status word rather than by how confident the presenter sounded.

What should you ask about support, languages and multiple properties?#

Ask who answers at 02:00 during a night audit failure, and in which language.

Support: hours, language, channel and response time written into the contract, plus a named escalation path. Ask what happens when the night audit fails at 02:00 and the person on duty cannot reach anyone. Languages: ask which languages the staff interface and the guest-facing screens actually have, and who maintains the translations when a new screen is added.

Groups: one login, consolidated reporting, shared guest history, and how a group-level rate change is pushed to each property and logged. Training and handover: who trains the reception team, how long it takes, and whether training is repeated when staff turn over. Change requests: how a request is priced, how long it takes, and whether the change is documented for the next person who reads the contract. If you are weighing a full operating system against a classic PMS, see hotel operating system vs PMS: what changes in daily work.

What to do next#

Write your five-task script this week and send the same questions, in writing, to every vendor on your shortlist, then score the answers by status word rather than by the demo. The order matters: processes first, then compliance and records, then distribution, then data and exit terms, then the scripted demo. A vendor who answers all of it in writing, with dates and status words, has told you more than any presentation can.