Free Reservation System for Maldives Guesthouses
One calendar for every booking: Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb, WhatsApp, email and walk-ins. No double bookings. Check-in, room status, a bill in USD with TGST, service charge and green tax, and daily reports. Free. No subscription, no trial period. Built for local-island guesthouses, not private-island resorts.
OnlineHotelier PMS is a free hotel reservation system for Maldives guesthouses on inhabited local islands. It puts every booking in one calendar: Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb, WhatsApp, email and walk-in. Check-in, room status, housekeeping, bills in USD with TGST (17%), service charge and green tax, and daily reports are all included at no cost. It is built for local-island guesthouses on islands such as Maafushi, Thulusdhoo and Dhigurah. Private-island resorts are not the target. The optional paid add-on is the channel manager, which syncs availability across OTAs automatically.
OnlineHotelier PMS at a glance
| Product | OnlineHotelier PMS, a free cloud hotel reservation and management system |
|---|---|
| Price | Free. No subscription, no trial period |
| Who it is for | Guesthouses on inhabited (local) islands in the Maldives: Maafushi, Thulusdhoo, Dhigurah, Fulidhoo, Hulhumale, Thoddoo, Ukulhas and small dive-centre guesthouses with limited inventory. Not for private-island resorts |
| Local tax handling | Configurable for the Maldives: set your TGST rate (currently 17%), service charge (minimum 10%) and green tax (USD 6 per guest per night for guesthouses with 50 or fewer rooms on inhabited islands, from 1 January 2025). The bill calculates automatically. Confirm current rates with your accountant or MIRA (mira.gov.mv) |
| Billing currency | USD. Guesthouse room rates on local islands are quoted and billed in USD. MVR (Maldivian Rufiyaa) payments can be recorded in the folio |
| Paid add-on | Channel manager that syncs availability and rates to Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb and other OTAs. Pricing on WhatsApp |
| Runs on | Any web browser on a phone, tablet or laptop. Nothing to install. Needs an internet connection: mobile data works |
| How to start | Sign up online, or message us on WhatsApp for guided setup |
One calendar for every booking source
You run a six-room guesthouse on Maafushi. A Booking.com reservation comes in for Room 3 on Friday. An hour later, a WhatsApp message arrives from a guest who found you on Instagram. They want the same room, same night. You check your notebook. You check the Booking.com app. You are not sure which one is more current.
That is the problem the OnlineHotelier calendar solves. Every booking lives in one place, whatever its source:
- Booking.com, Agoda and Airbnb (via the channel manager add-on, or entered manually)
- WhatsApp messages (entered at the front desk)
- Email bookings from international guests (entered at the front desk)
- Walk-ins, phone calls and direct bookings (entered directly)
- Bookings that come with transfers and excursion packages
When a room is taken, the calendar shows it as blocked. No double booking. Nothing missed. If you add the channel manager add-on, a Booking.com reservation closes the room on Agoda and Airbnb automatically.
How Maldives local-island guesthouses take bookings: Booking.com is the main OTA for guesthouses on islands such as Maafushi, Thulusdhoo and Dhigurah. Agoda and Airbnb also bring international guests. A large share of bookings arrive directly on WhatsApp or by email, often from guests who found the property on social media or through a previous visit. Many bookings are tied to ferry transfers, dive trips or snorkelling excursions that the guest arranges alongside their room. Adding all of these to one calendar is how you keep track without a second notebook or a spreadsheet.
Check-in, room status, housekeeping and check-out
The calendar is one piece. The rest of the day-to-day runs here too.
Guest check-in
Record the guest's name, passport number, nationality and room on arrival. The system creates a guest folio (a running bill) from the moment they check in. Read our guide on the hotel check-in process for what to collect and why.
Room status
Mark rooms as occupied, vacant, dirty or clean after housekeeping. Front desk sees the update live so they know which rooms are ready for the next guest.
Housekeeping
Your housekeeper updates room status from their phone as they clean. No calling reception. The room shows as clean the moment it is ready.
Guest check-out and bill
Post room charges, any extras, and the guest's payments to their folio. Apply service charge, TGST and green tax, then print or share the bill at check-out. Done in one step.
Daily reports give you occupancy, average room rate and total revenue for the day. You get the numbers you need each morning without building them by hand.
Maldives taxes, levies and guest registration
The PMS can be configured for the Maldives. You set your property's rates and charges once, and the bill calculates correctly every time. Bills are in USD, which is the standard billing currency for local-island guesthouses. MVR (Maldivian Rufiyaa) is the national currency: if a guest pays in MVR, you record it in the folio.
TGST
TGST (Tourism Goods and Services Tax) is charged at 17% on accommodation, meals, excursions and other tourism supplies. The rate rose from 16% to 17% on 1 July 2025 under the seventh amendment to the Goods and Services Tax Act. You set 17% in your billing settings and the PMS adds it to each bill automatically. Confirm the current rate with MIRA (mira.gov.mv) before each tax filing.
Green Tax
The Maldives charges a green tax per guest per night of stay. The rate depends on the property type.
| Property type | Green tax per guest per night | Effective from |
|---|---|---|
| Guesthouses with 50 or fewer rooms on inhabited islands | USD 6 | 1 January 2025 |
| Resorts and larger properties on uninhabited islands | USD 12 | 1 January 2025 |
If your guesthouse has 50 or fewer rooms on an inhabited island such as Maafushi or Thulusdhoo, you collect USD 6 per guest per night and pass it through to MIRA. You do not keep it as revenue.
Exempt from green tax: children under two years of age, Maldivian nationals and resident-permit holders.
MIRA counts each 24-hour block between check-in and check-out as one taxable day. If a guest spends 12 hours or more in a block, green tax is due for that block. Under 12 hours in a block, green tax is not payable for it.
Service charge
Tourist guesthouses in the Maldives must levy a service charge of at least 10% under the sixth amendment to the Employment Act (gazetted March 2021). The charge goes to staff, not to the owner. TGST applies to the room rate plus the service charge combined.
Sample bill
Here is how a bill looks for a TGST-registered guesthouse with 50 or fewer rooms on an inhabited island. The example: one room at USD 80 per night, two guests, one night stay.
| Room rate (1 night) | USD 80.00 |
| Service charge (10%) | USD 8.00 |
| Subtotal | USD 88.00 |
| TGST (17% on USD 88.00) | USD 14.96 |
| Green tax (USD 6 x 2 guests, 1 night) | USD 12.00 |
| Total payable | USD 114.96 |
Note: TGST applies to the room rate plus service charge. Green tax is a separate pass-through levy collected from the guest on behalf of MIRA. Confirm the correct calculation method with your accountant or MIRA before filing. If you are not yet TGST-registered, your bill would show room rate, service charge and green tax only.
Guest records
The PMS records each guest's name, nationality and passport number at check-in. A guest-list export is available on request: message us on WhatsApp to have it set up for your property. For the current rules on guest registration and reporting, check with the Maldives Ministry of Tourism (tourism.gov.mv) or the Maldives Immigration (immigration.gov.mv).
Payments recorded
The PMS records how each guest paid: cash, card or bank transfer. The folio keeps a full payment history. Your daily report shows total collections by payment type. The PMS records payment; it does not process card transactions.
Who uses it in the Maldives
This system is built for small guesthouses on inhabited local islands. If you manage a few rooms and your main job is keeping track of who is in which room on which night, this covers it. Private-island resorts have different needs and different scale. This is not the right tool for them.
Local-island guesthouses
Guesthouses on islands such as Maafushi, Thulusdhoo, Dhigurah, Fulidhoo, Thoddoo and Ukulhas handle a steady flow of Booking.com reservations alongside WhatsApp and email inquiries. One calendar keeps all of them straight.
Hulhumale guesthouses and city hotels
Properties on Hulhumale, near the airport, often handle transit guests and short stays. Fast check-in and a correct USD bill matter here. The PMS delivers both without a large software subscription.
Dive-centre guesthouses
Small dive guesthouses on popular dive atolls manage room bookings tied to dive packages. Keeping dive-package bookings and room reservations in sync is the biggest daily challenge. The calendar handles both.
Family-run guesthouses
A family-run guesthouse with four or five rooms often has no system at all. A free tool that runs on a phone and takes a few minutes to sign up for is a practical first step from a notebook.
Channel manager: for when you outgrow updating each OTA by hand
If you are on one or two OTAs and you update availability yourself after each booking, the free PMS is enough. Most small local-island guesthouses start here.
The channel manager add-on becomes useful when you are on three or more OTAs and a booking on Booking.com means you need to close the room on Agoda and Airbnb too. Doing that by hand is slow, and a missed update causes a double booking.
The add-on connects your PMS calendar directly to Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb and other OTAs. When a booking arrives, all connected channels update automatically. Read our guide on what a channel manager does before deciding whether you need one.
The channel manager add-on is paid. Message us on WhatsApp and we will give you the current price for your property.