Integration
Estevano does not replace your PMS
Your PMS still owns the booking and the folio, and Estevano looks after everything that happens during the stay.
It is one of the first questions in any meeting with a hotel's management team: "Does this replace our PMS?" The short answer is no. Estevano does not compete with your PMS. It sits next to it. The PMS still owns the reservation, the rate and the folio. Estevano looks after the conversation with the guest and the requests your team handles. Each does its own job.
This guide covers what a PMS does and does not do, why guest software makes sense alongside it rather than on top of it, how the two connect today, and what to ask any provider before you sign.
What a PMS does, and what it doesn't
The PMS (property management system) is the commercial and administrative backbone of the hotel. It handles:
- Reservations: new bookings, changes, cancellations and room moves.
- Rates and availability: what each night costs and what is free.
- Billing: the guest folio, charges, payments and taxes.
- Room status: clean, occupied or out of order.
- Distribution: the channel manager and the online travel agencies.
What a PMS does not do well is everything between check-in and checkout: the conversation with the guest in their own language, requests, room service, restaurant and spa bookings, and calls to maintenance. That part has always run on phones, sticky notes and walkie-talkies. That is where Estevano comes in.
Why Estevano doesn't replace your PMS
Changing PMS is a project: retraining staff, reconnecting the channel manager, migrating history and rethinking billing. It is one of the most expensive decisions a hotel makes, and guests hardly ever notice it.
Estevano was designed the other way round: touch as little of the PMS as possible and build the guest and operations layer alongside it. The PMS stays the source of truth for the booking: who is staying, in which room, on which nights. Estevano is the source of truth for the conversation and operations: what the guest asked for, where it stands and who on the team is handling it.
That split has a practical upside: you can go live with Estevano without changing anything in your PMS.
How they connect today
- With Oracle OPERA Cloud. Estevano reads in-house reservations and guest profiles from your PMS via OHIP and refreshes them every few minutes, so each request is tied to a real room and booking.
- Read-only. Estevano never writes to your PMS: no changes to reservations, rates, folios or the channel manager. You can revoke access at any time.
- Not on OPERA? Start without integration and check guests in from the console. The front desk adds the guest, the guest gets a PIN and opens the app with the room's QR code.
- Other PMSs. Talk to us. On Enterprise, the PMS integration is built to fit.
How they work side by side
A day with both systems running:
- Booking. The guest books through an agency, the hotel website or by phone. The booking lives in the PMS.
- Arrival. The front desk checks the guest in on the PMS. With OPERA connected, Estevano picks it up on the next refresh; without an integration, the front desk adds the guest in the console. The guest gets a PIN and opens the app with the QR code.
- Stay. Everything that happens inside the hotel (chat, requests, room service, restaurant and spa bookings) happens in Estevano. Estevano is the team's console.
- Charges. If a room service order needs to go on the folio, the front desk posts it in the PMS, as it does today. Estevano stays out of billing.
- Checkout. The PMS bills and closes the stay. The guest's conversation and tickets stay on record in Estevano.
The PMS does not change. What changes is that internal operations and the guest experience move to a platform built for them.
When connecting the PMS pays off
Connecting OPERA is most useful when:
- You want in-house guests to appear in Estevano on their own, without adding them by hand.
- You want every request to arrive with the right room and booking, without anyone typing them in.
- The front desk needs to see at a glance who checks out today and which rooms have a PIN.
If you run a different PMS, or need a different kind of integration, we look at it case by case.
Five integration questions to ask before you sign
- Can I start without touching my PMS? If the answer is no, go-live will take months.
- How do guests get in and out of the system? Check-in from the console, reading from the PMS or a custom integration. Ask for specifics.
- What does it read from my PMS, and what does it write? Get it in writing. Don't let anyone sell you "already integrated" when it is still being scoped.
- Who pays for the integration? The plan, the setup cost and who maintains the connector.
- Which system is the source of truth for the booking? It has to be the PMS. If the guest platform also wants to be your PMS, be wary.
The bottom line
Good guest software does not want to be your PMS. It sits next to it, respects its role and covers what the PMS was never good at: talking to guests in their own language and handling day-to-day requests. Estevano was built that way from day one, which is why it goes live in days.
For the details, see the product or how it works. If you want your own brand in the app, have a look at white label.