Free PMS for Moroccan Riads and Small Hotels
One calendar for every booking: Booking.com, Airbnb, WhatsApp from guests and tour operators, phone calls and walk-ins. No double bookings. Check-in, room status, a bill in MAD with the taxes that apply, and daily reports. Free. No subscription, no trial period.
OnlineHotelier PMS is a free hotel reservation system for Moroccan riads, maisons d'hôtes, kasbahs, desert camps and small hotels. It puts every booking in one calendar: Booking.com, Airbnb, WhatsApp, phone and walk-in. Check-in, room status, housekeeping, bills in MAD and daily reports are all included at no cost. 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 | Riads, maisons d'hôtes, kasbahs, desert camps, surf guesthouses and small hotels in Morocco with limited inventory |
| Local tax handling | Configurable for Morocco: set TVA (10% for accommodation where it applies), taxe de promotion touristique and taxe de séjour by category. Small unclassified properties that do not charge these levies set them to zero. The system calculates your bill correctly either way |
| Paid add-on | Channel manager that syncs availability and rates to Booking.com, Airbnb and other OTAs. Pricing on WhatsApp |
| Runs on | Any web browser on a phone, tablet or laptop. Nothing to install |
| How to start | Sign up online, or message us on WhatsApp for guided setup |
One calendar for every booking source
You run a riad in the Marrakech medina. A Booking.com reservation arrives for the green room on Friday night. Ten minutes later, a WhatsApp message comes in from a tour driver: his client wants the same room, same night. You look at your notebook. You look at Booking.com on your phone. You are not certain which is more current.
That is the problem the OnlineHotelier calendar solves. Every booking lives in one place, whatever its source:
- Booking.com and Airbnb (via the channel manager add-on, or entered manually)
- WhatsApp messages from guests who found you directly
- WhatsApp from tour operators and drivers arranging stays for their clients
- Phone calls and walk-ins (entered at the front desk)
- Any other source you use to take reservations
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 Airbnb and your other connected OTAs automatically.
WhatsApp as a booking channel in Morocco: Riads in Marrakech, Fes, Essaouira and Chefchaouen receive bookings on WhatsApp from guests, tour operators, local guides and drivers. Keeping those alongside your Booking.com and Airbnb reservations in one calendar is how you avoid a double booking without 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 or identity document 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. Review the bill, apply the charges that apply to your property, and share it 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.
Morocco taxes, levies and the police form
The PMS can be configured for Morocco. You set your property's charges once, and the bill calculates correctly every time.
TVA (Value Added Tax)
TVA (taxe sur la valeur ajoutee, Morocco's VAT) applies to hotel accommodation at a reduced rate of 10%, following a 2024 Finance Law reform that left two rates: 20% standard and 10% reduced. Accommodation and catering both fall under the 10% rate.
Whether TVA applies to your property depends on your annual turnover. The registration threshold for service activities has been cited by consultancies in the range of 500,000 to 2,000,000 MAD depending on activity type. Confirm the exact figure for your situation with a local accountant or at dgi.gov.ma. Most small riads with a few rooms are likely to fall below any threshold. If you are registered, the PMS adds TVA automatically once you set the rate in settings; if not, set it to zero and it does not appear on the bill.
Taxe de Promotion Touristique (TPT)
The taxe de promotion touristique (TPT) is a levy paid by classified tourist establishments to the national government. It is charged per person per night and varies by your property's official category.
| Property category | TPT rate (MAD per person per night) |
|---|---|
| Luxury hotels | 15 MAD |
| 5-star hotels and first-category maisons d'hôtes | 11 MAD |
| 4-star hotels and second-category maisons d'hôtes | 8 MAD |
| 3-star hotels and similar | 5 MAD |
| 2-star hotels | 4 MAD |
| 1-star hotels | 2 MAD |
The TPT is a business levy collected by your property and remitted to the government. Confirm your classification and the correct rate with your accountant.
Taxe de séjour (communal stay tax)
The taxe de séjour is set by each municipality. For classified maisons d'hôtes and luxury establishments, sources indicate a range of roughly 15 to 30 MAD per person per night, with the exact figure fixed by the municipal council. Unclassified riads are generally not subject to this charge, but confirm with your commune or accountant, since rates vary by city and classification.
Sample bills
Here are two sample bills to show how the charges work in practice. These are for illustration only. Confirm the charges that apply to your property before billing guests.
Classified riad (1st category maison d'hôtes, Marrakech): MAD 900 room, 2 guests, 1 night
| Room rate (1 night) | MAD 900 |
| TVA (10%) | MAD 90 |
| Taxe de promotion touristique (11 MAD x 2 guests) | MAD 22 |
| Taxe de séjour (illustrative: 15 MAD x 2 guests) | MAD 30 |
| Total payable | MAD 1,042 |
Small unclassified riad or maison d'hôtes (not registered for TVA, no levies):
| Room rate (1 night) | MAD 900 |
| Total payable | MAD 900 |
Which charges apply to you? Whether you charge TVA, TPT and the taxe de séjour depends on your classification status, your annual turnover and your commune. A local accountant familiar with Moroccan tourism tax can confirm this for your property in a short meeting. Do not guess: the rules are different for a classified riad, an unclassified riad and a fully licensed hotel.
Police registration form (fiche de police)
Hotels and tourist establishments in Morocco must complete a fiche de police (police registration bulletin) for every guest. The bulletin records the guest's name, nationality, passport or document number, and dates of stay. It is submitted to the local police or gendarmerie.
The PMS records each guest's details at check-in. A guest-details export is available on request. Message us on WhatsApp to have it set up. For the current submission process and the exact rules for your property type, check with your local police station or the DGSN (Direction Generale de la Surete Nationale). Requirements can change, and the PMS stores the data you need without making any submission on your behalf.
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.
Property types across Morocco
The system is built for very small properties. Wherever you are in Morocco, if your main job is keeping track of who is in which room on which night, this covers it.
Medina riads and maisons d'hôtes
Riads in the medinas of Marrakech, Fes, Essaouira and Chefchaouen handle a mix of Booking.com reservations and direct WhatsApp bookings from foreign guests. One calendar keeps both in order without a second register.
Desert camps and kasbahs
Small camps and kasbahs near Merzouga, Zagora and in the Draa and Dades valleys often book up through tour operators and drivers who confirm by WhatsApp. Getting all those bookings into one calendar is the single most useful thing the system does.
Surf guesthouses
Properties in Taghazout and along the Atlantic coast juggle Booking.com, Airbnb and direct social-media messages at the same time. A double booking at peak surf season is expensive. The calendar prevents it.
Small hotels and gites
A family-run property 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 step up from a notebook and a shared WhatsApp group.
Channel manager: for when you are on more than one OTA
If you are on one OTA and you update availability yourself after each booking, the free PMS is enough. The channel manager add-on becomes useful when you are on Booking.com and Airbnb at the same time: a booking on one platform closes the room on the other automatically, which prevents the double bookings that a manual update can miss. 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.