Why our night auditors master every PMS and bring our own PMS support with them!
Hotels commit to one PMS – but we at wilkon work with (almost) all of them. Which raises the question: how well do front office and night audit staff cope with the different PMS solutions? How intuitive are the systems? How much training do they take? Where does the end-of-day closing get stuck, or any of the other tasks during a night shift? We spoke with two colleagues from Vienna: Flavio Cuoni, team leader for Austria, Swiss-born and Viennese by choice, and Franz Haider, who as a Night Audit Instructor (NAI) is responsible for training new colleagues right at the front desk.
At a Glance
- Usability: newer, innovative solutions (Mews, apaleo, OPERA Cloud) guide you through the end-of-day closing, while more traditional systems (SIHOT, protel, OPERA 5, Suite8) demand more know-how from the front office staff – what matters is whether the people at the front office understand the logic behind the systems.
- Pitfalls: unclear no-show status, open deposit and payment discrepancies, faulty interfaces. Anyone who knows them in one system will find them in any other.
- Our own PMS support instead of a ticket with the PMS vendor: Every night, experienced wilkon staff are available, our NAIs among them. Our in-house support knows the common systems and resolves most issues together with the night auditor at the front desk. That shortens the downtime.
- Systematic staff onboarding before the first independent shifts: During onboarding we also show career changers what to watch out for in the end-of-day closing – entirely independent of the software. Once the fundamentals are clear, learning the individual PMS is considerably easier.
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Which PMS solutions wilkon works with
Flavio, as team leader you look back on hundreds of night shifts in Austria. Which systems are running at the front desks wilkon looks after?
The Interviewees
Flavio Cuoni is Night Audit Team Leader for Austria at wilkon in Vienna. Swiss-born and Viennese by choice, he is responsible for scheduling and client relations for the Austrian hotels.
Franz Haider is a Night Audit Instructor (NAI) at wilkon in Vienna. He trains new night auditors directly at the front desks of client hotels and is part of the internal support network for system questions at night.
Flavio Cuoni: Among our clients the picture is clear: Oracle OPERA runs in an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the properties we serve – increasingly as OPERA Cloud, though in many houses still as a classic on-prem installation, OPERA 5 for example. That comes down to our focus: we work predominantly for chain hotels, and there OPERA has been the standard for years. In Vienna in particular, with its high density of international chains, we see that clearly.
The overall market looks different. In 2025 the Austrian Hotel Association (ÖHV) surveyed its member businesses: Casablanca and protel lead with 19 percent each, OPERA comes in at 16 percent. That is not a contradiction – the association’s members are predominantly privately run city and resort hotels, and in that segment the Austrian and German vendors have their strength. In chain hotels, by contrast, headquarters decides, and headquarters currently opts almost exclusively for OPERA Cloud: Accor, IHG, Hyatt, Marriott and most recently Motel One have migrated their properties worldwide or across Europe.
And behind OPERA?
Flavio Cuoni: Mews is currently gaining ground fast, especially in properties that have opened or switched systems in recent years. At the same time we work every night with the established systems from the German-speaking market: SIHOT and protel, which today belongs to Planet. Add to that apaleo, Cloudbeds and older versions of systems such as Suite8, which many still know under the name Fidelio – no longer a focus for the vendor, but still in use in some houses. And then there are in-house developments by individual chains: Radisson, for instance, runs EMMA, its own platform built on SAP, and the Leonardo Hotels work with Optima from Silverbyte.
That sounds like quite a variety.
Flavio Cuoni: Yes, it does. And that is what sets the wilkon team apart from a hotel’s own front desk staff: a hotel team works in one system. Our night auditors work in three or four in the same week. Which PMS a hotel uses depends on many factors: what is mandated within a given chain? How large is the property? Which interfaces are needed, and much more. Our standard is that the end-of-day closing is clean in every one of these systems by morning.
How do OPERA, Mews and other PMS systems fare in day-to-day use – especially at night?
Franz, as a Night Audit Instructor you stand at a different front desk almost every week. How do the wilkon night auditors experience this mix of software?
Franz Haider: Every system has its own character, and for our people the work differs noticeably. The newer generation of systems – Mews, apaleo, and OPERA Cloud too – is very accessible to operate. The interfaces are simple and clearly laid out, warnings are visible, workflows are guided. New colleagues find their way around quickly. The established systems and older generations – SIHOT, protel, OPERA 5, Suite8 – are enormously deep in functionality, but they demand more system knowledge. You have to know which checkbox blocks the end-of-day closing and which log will show you the cause. That is not a disadvantage of these systems; many properties have worked with them very happily for years. It is a question of experience – and that is exactly what we bring.
What makes a PMS easy to work with at two in the morning?
Franz Haider: That it tells you what is still open before you start the closing. The newer systems do this with a checklist or with warnings that are easy to understand. Mews goes one step further, because the classic night run barely exists there any more: the system handles it automatically and reports anything that still needs clarifying afterwards, without the procedure getting stuck. That way the open items can be worked through systematically without any downtime arising. With the older systems you first have to work out why the night run will not start or breaks off: open cash drawers, departures that were never checked out, bookings without a payment method. If you know that, there are no surprises in either world. If you don’t, you start the closing, the system aborts, and then the troubleshooting begins in the middle of the night.
PMS systems compared
| Feature | Newer system generation (e.g. Mews, apaleo, OPERA Cloud) | Established systems and older generations (e.g. SIHOT, protel, OPERA 5, Suite8) |
|---|---|---|
| User guidance | graphical, guided workflows, few clicks | menu- and form-based, high functional density |
| Error detection in the end-of-day closing | visible warnings, cause usually apparent right away | cause often has to be traced through logs and reports |
| Training new night auditors | short, intuitive | somewhat longer, requires system routine |
| Strength in night operations | clarity, speed | depth in billing, rates and interfaces |
| Demands on the night auditor | process understanding | process understanding plus system routine |
Where does the end-of-day closing get stuck – no matter which system?
Franz Haider: In the night audit, everything at night revolves around a correct end-of-day closing. The typical stumbling blocks are – regardless of the system – almost always the same:
- No-show bookings: unclear cancellation or arrival status before the system cut-off. If a booking is not processed cleanly as a no-show, the occupancy is wrong in the morning and fees are not charged, or charged incorrectly.
- Deposit and payment discrepancies: deposits posted to the wrong account, rates that were not posted cleanly, credit card authorizations that do not match the invoice amount.
- Interface errors: when revenue from the bar or the restaurant, from the payment terminal, from the car park or from other connected systems is not transferred into the PMS correctly.
If you make a mistake at one of these points, the closing routine aborts or runs through with the wrong figures. With the newer systems you usually see the cause immediately, with older ones you have to go looking. A faulty end-of-day closing can cost the team hours the next morning – invoices have to be corrected, the occupancy is wrong, accounting is waiting for clean figures. That is why we at wilkon put so much emphasis on clean processes.
Why do we rarely need the vendor's support?
Let’s stay with that moment: three in the morning, the end-of-day closing will not go through. What happens then?
Franz Haider: First of all: it happens. In every system, in every property, at some point. Without wilkon’s own support things can get interesting. But it is not necessarily down to the software, it is down to something many hotels underestimate. Some properties book a 24/7 telephone support package with their PMS vendor; in other houses all you can do at night is send the vendor a ticket that is not picked up until the next morning. Write a ticket at three in the morning and you get an answer at nine. But the end-of-day closing has to be done before the first departures. The downtime must not get too long.
Flavio Cuoni: And that is exactly where a night auditor standing alone at the front desk differs from a night auditor who has a structure like wilkon’s behind them. With us, nobody stands alone at night. Our team is reachable around the clock, knows the common systems and has seen the typical error patterns dozens of times. As a rule we narrow the problem down together with the colleague at the front desk and resolve it during the night – the hotel’s vendor support is then the second line, not the first.
How often do you actually fall back on the vendor?
Flavio Cuoni: With well-maintained systems, very rarely. The vast majority of aborts in the end-of-day closing are not software faults but open items that the system rightly flags – and we know those. We really only need a ticket with the vendor when something technical in the system is genuinely broken: an interface that no longer responds, an update that changed something overnight. That happens, but it is the exception. We effectively bring our own PMS support with us.
Franz Haider: That is not a given in our industry. A night porter on a hotel’s own payroll has nobody to call at three in the morning. And building up system expertise across all the common PMS platforms and keeping it available at night takes effort – you cannot achieve that with a single property, you achieve it only with a structure that works in many houses and many systems every night. For the hotelier that means: the end-of-day closing is done by morning, whatever support package they booked with the vendor.
How do new colleagues get up to speed on a PMS they do not know yet?
When a hotel comes to wilkon, one of management’s first remarks is almost always: “But your team doesn’t know our system at all.” How do you answer that?
Flavio Cuoni: That the concern is understandable – and that it resolves itself in the first few shifts. We don’t throw anyone in at the deep end. We don’t teach our people which buttons to press, but how the processes work: how an end-of-day closing is structured, in which order the steps run, which checks belong to it, what has to be clean beforehand. Once you have understood that, you recognize the same logic in every PMS – the interface is then just different packaging.
Franz Haider: Exactly. On top of that come our internal job descriptions and the onboarding directly at the property’s front desk, delivered by a Night Audit Instructor or by other experienced people on the team. That is why the actual time our staff need for a new PMS is usually just a few shifts. Even career changers who have internalized the underlying system logic through our onboarding operate OPERA Cloud or SIHOT confidently after a short time – not because they know the system by heart, but because they know what has to happen in an end-of-day closing.
What does a first shift with a new PMS actually look like?
Franz Haider: That depends on how much the newcomer already knows, of course. If someone is still very unsure, I will do the closing myself on the first night, for example, with the colleague sitting next to me, and we go through every step: which reports we pull beforehand, what we check, where things sit in the system. By the second night we swap it around – the new colleague does it, I watch and only step in where it is needed. But even in their first shifts on their own responsibility, the new colleagues may be alone at the front desk, yet they are not left on their own. Because we are always reachable and can provide support. That is why we can say: a few shifts, in any system.
What does this mean for hotels that outsource their night shift?
Flavio Cuoni: That the PMS plays no part in the decision for an external night service. The choice of system is a strategic decision for the hotel or its chain. Our job as an outsourcing partner for the hotel industry is to deliver the same quality in every system.
Frequently Asked Questions about Night Audit and PMS
Does our hotel have to train the wilkon staff in our PMS?
No. wilkon takes care of the system training. The hotel makes sure our team is provided with the relevant access credentials. We document all relevant processes during the new-client onboarding, following proven standards.
Does wilkon also work with our system if it is not listed here?
As a rule, yes. The systems named here are the most common ones, but not the only ones we already have experience with.
Does our hotel need a larger support package from the PMS vendor for wilkon?
Not necessarily. The first point of contact for our night auditors at night is wilkon’s own support. Vendor support can still make sense if downtime is to be kept as short as possible even when there is a genuine technical problem.
How long does it take a night auditor to learn a new PMS?
For staff who already perform night audit in another system, usually a few shifts. New employees and career changers are trained thoroughly and hands-on as part of our staff onboarding.
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Sources
- Austrian Hotel Association (ÖHV): Technology Survey 2025 – survey of 249 member businesses, summer 2025; PMS shares Casablanca 19 %, protel 19 %, Oracle OPERA 16 %, Gastrodat 10 % (sample of ÖHV members, not market shares for the overall market). Published 23 September 2025.
- Oracle: Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud Selected by Accor for Global PMS – 4 September 2025.
- Enterprise Times: IHG approved Oracle OPERA for its hotels across EMEA and the Americas – 30 January 2026.
- Hotel Management: Motel One migrates entire portfolio to Oracle Opera Cloud PMS – 9 March 2026 – more than 100 properties in 13 countries, among them Germany and Austria.
- Skift: Oracle Hospitality Wants to Bring More Hotels Into the Cloud – 28 March 2023 – “more than 40,000 properties” on some version of OPERA, the majority still on-prem.
- Mews: Mews reaches 15 % market penetration in the DACH region – 17 June 2025 – vendor’s own figure, based on rooms, more than 6,000 customers in the DACH region.
- Hotel Management: Radisson reveals unified technology solution named ‘Emma’ – 2018 – platform including property management, partners SAP and Indra.
- Oracle: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Hospitality Property Management Systems 2025 – Oracle rated a “Leader”.