Hotel Management Software UK 2026: Top PMS Picks and Costs
Founder & Lead Developer, Codingclave · 200+ projects since 2017
What UK hotels actually pay for hotel management software in 2026
A UK hotel, guesthouse or B&B pays anywhere from £23 a month to more than £2,000 a month for hotel management software in 2026, depending on room count and vendor. Jelly's 2026 UK buyer's guide puts the typical range at £40 to £150 a month for a 1 to 10 room property and £150 to £500 for 10 to 30 rooms. eviivo's UK pricing page lists single properties from £35 a month excluding VAT; Little Hotelier, Mews, Cloudbeds, Guestline and RoomRaccoon quote per property, with third-party trackers putting Little Hotelier's Basics plan at $39 a month. Our own PMS is £23 a month, £209 a year, or £949 once for a self-hosted licence you own outright.
I'm Ashish Sharma, founder of Codingclave. We have built hospitality software since 2017 from Lucknow, with 200+ projects delivered and UK operators served remotely over Zoom and WhatsApp. This guide is for the person who stands at reception: what a PMS must do for a UK property, what the named vendors cost, how the OTA mix and commission really work, what HMRC, the ICO and the PCI council expect of your billing and card handling, and the decision that matters most, a cloud subscription versus a one-time licence.
Quick answer
For most independent UK properties the right setup is a cloud PMS with a built-in two-way OTA channel manager, a commission-free booking engine on your own website, 20% VAT invoicing that exports to MTD-compatible accounting software, and card handling that keeps card numbers out of the PMS entirely. Under 15 rooms, eviivo and Little Hotelier are the usual shortlist; 15 to 60 rooms, Mews, Cloudbeds, RoomRaccoon or Guestline. If you would rather own the software than rent it, our edition is £23 a month hosted, or £949 once with source code. Every edition includes every module. Try the live demo and run the 15 tests in our demo checklist before you decide.
How much does hotel management software cost in the UK?
The vendors that rank for this query mostly hide pricing behind a "get a quote" button, which is why the ranges below matter. Figures are public list prices checked in October 2026; where a vendor only quotes, I say so.
| Vendor | Public price (Oct 2026) | Pricing model | Typical fit | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eviivo (UK) | From £35/month single property; from £95/month multi-property; add-ons £2/room (£1/room Payment Manager); $0.50 per confirmed booking on payment and messaging services; excl. VAT | Per property, scaled by bedrooms; volume pricing above 10 rooms | B&Bs, guesthouses, small inns | eviivo UK pricing page |
| Little Hotelier (SiteMinder) | Quote only on littlehotelier.com; third-party tracker CostBench logs Basics at $39/month and Pro at $179/month (USD) after an August 2026 change | Flat monthly by room count; Pro adds rate intelligence and payments | Properties under 30 rooms | littlehotelier.com; CostBench pricing log |
| Mews | Quote only; Core, Pro and Enterprise tiers, indicative pricing shown for a 10-room property | Per room per month; payment processing billed separately | Boutique and lifestyle hotels, 15 to 60 rooms | mews.com/pricing |
| Cloudbeds | Quote only across its Flex, One, Experience and Enterprise plans; roommaster's 2026 UK comparison cites about $200/month entry | Subscription tiered by property size | Independent hotels wanting broad OTA reach | cloudbeds.com/pricing, roommaster UK guide |
| Guestline (UK) | Quote only | Subscription | UK independents, country inns, pub groups | roommaster UK guide |
| RoomRaccoon | Quote only; four tiers (Entry, Essentials, Premium, Pro) | Monthly, no long lock-in | Small to mid boutique hotels | RoomRaccoon, CostBench |
| Hotelogix | Per-room pricing, quoted at roughly $4 to $18 per room per month in 2026 guides | Per room | Budget-conscious small hotels | roommaster UK guide |
| Codingclave (us) | £23/month, £209/year, or £949 one-time with source code | Flat, all modules; GBP figures are conversions of our INR list price | 3 to 300 rooms, single sites and groups | Product page |
What the quote-only vendors end up charging is best read from the market ranges. Jelly's 2026 UK hospitality software guide, which draws on operator invoices rather than list prices, gives these bands:
| Property type | Rooms | Typical cloud PMS cost per month |
|---|---|---|
| B&B or guesthouse | 1 to 10 | £40 to £150 |
| Small independent | 10 to 30 | £150 to £500 |
| Mid-size hotel | 30 to 80 | £500 to £1,200 |
| Larger hotel or small group | 80+ | £1,200 to £2,000+ |
The same guide lists the costs that do not appear on the pricing page: setup and onboarding at £200 to £1,500 one-off, card processing at 1.4% to 2.9% plus a fixed pence amount per transaction, and separate charges for channel manager, booking engine or revenue management modules on some platforms. Annual contracts typically cut 10% to 20% off monthly billing, and properties over 50 rooms often negotiate a further 10% to 20% off list.
Two practical rules follow. First, ask every vendor for the all-in annual figure for your exact room count, with setup, payments and every module you will actually use. Second, compare that figure to the commission you pay OTAs, because the cheapest PMS that loses you direct bookings is the most expensive one you can buy.
What a hotel PMS has to do for a UK property
Strip away the marketing and a property management system does six jobs. It has to do all six without anyone re-keying anything.
- Reservations. Every booking from every source (direct, phone, walk-in, OTA) lands in one calendar, with deposits and advance payments recorded against the stay.
- Front desk and room rack. A visual grid of every room by date, colour-coded by status, with one-click check-in and check-out so a queue does not build on a Friday evening.
- Housekeeping. Live clean, dirty and inspected status that syncs with the desk, so nobody hands over a key to a room that has not been turned.
- Billing and folios. Itemised folios at 20% VAT, split folios (room to the company card, bar to the guest), deposits, and invoices that match what your accountant files.
- Direct booking engine. A booking widget on your own site so a share of your rooms sell without commission.
- Night audit. One action closes the trading day, posts room charges, rolls balances forward and produces the day's numbers.
Miss one, usually the sync between desk, housekeeping and OTAs, and the day falls apart in small, expensive ways.
The room rack is the screen your team will live on
Ask an experienced UK receptionist what they need and it is not a dashboard, it is a clear room rack. Ours shows every room across a date range, colour-coded for vacant, occupied, arriving, departing and out of service, with drag-to-move and one-click check-in. It is the most used screen in the system. Watch it in the walkthrough video above, then open the live demo and move a booking yourself.
How the OTA channel manager and UK commission really work
A UK independent typically sells on Booking.com and Expedia alongside its own website, often with Airbnb and a late-availability channel on top. Without a channel manager each is a separate extranet you update by hand, and the first missed update on a busy weekend is an oversell, a walked guest and a one-star review.
A channel manager is the two-way bridge that keeps availability and rates identical across every channel. Sell a room on Booking.com and inventory drops everywhere else within seconds; change a rate once and it pushes to all channels. Ours connects two-way to Booking.com and Expedia. If you sell on other channels, tell us which before you sign and we confirm the connection in writing rather than promising a logo list.
What UK OTAs charge in 2026
| Channel | Headline commission | What operators actually pay | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking.com | 15% of total booking value, taxes included | 17% to 22% once Genius discounts, Preferred Partner uplift (about +3%, so around 18%) and payment processing are added | HolidayFox 2026 commission breakdown; Preno |
| Expedia Group (Expedia, Hotels.com) | Negotiated per property; guides cite 15% to 22% across brands | Toward the upper end for small independents without volume | HolidayFox 2026 |
| Your own website | 0% commission | Card processing only, 1.4% to 2.9% | Jelly 2026 UK guide |
Here is what that means for a typical regional property. PwC's UK Hotels Forecast (November 2025) projects 2026 regional occupancy at 76.6% and ADR at £93.90. A 20-room guesthouse at those figures sells about 5,590 room nights for roughly £525,000 a year. If 60% of that comes through OTAs at an all-in 17%, commission is about £53,500. Moving 15 percentage points of revenue to direct bookings saves about £13,400 a year. At £35 a month that would pay for eviivo's entry plan for roughly 30 years, and for our monthly plan for close to 50. That is the arithmetic behind "the booking engine pays for the PMS".
What the market looks like right now
The reason sync and rate control matter more in 2026 than they did two years ago is that demand is flat and rate is doing the work.
| Measure | Figure | Period and source |
|---|---|---|
| England hotel occupancy | 86% (down 1.4 points on July 2025); 78% year to date | July 2026, VisitEngland England Occupancy Survey with Amadeus |
| England ADR / RevPAR | £198 / £170 (ADR up 5%, RevPAR up 3%) | July 2026, VisitEngland |
| England excluding London ADR / RevPAR / occupancy | £113 / £96 / 84% | July 2026, VisitEngland |
| London 2026 forecast | Occupancy 81.6%, ADR £193.50, RevPAR £158.80 | PwC UK Hotels Forecast 2025-2026 |
| UK regions 2026 forecast | Occupancy 76.6%, ADR £93.90, RevPAR £72.30 | PwC UK Hotels Forecast 2025-2026 |
With occupancy drifting down and ADR carrying revenue, every pound of commission and every missed rate update shows up in the margin. The PMS job is to protect rate: one rate plan, pushed everywhere, with direct bookings kept at full value.
UK VAT, Making Tax Digital and compliant invoicing
UK hotel accommodation is standard-rated at 20%, and HMRC's guidance extends that to most ancillary charges: food, room service, parking and spa treatments. Your PMS must apply the rate per line and show net, VAT and gross on every folio and invoice.
Three details catch properties out:
- The threshold. For 2026/27 the VAT registration threshold stays at £90,000 of taxable turnover in any rolling 12 months, with deregistration at £88,000. A small B&B under the threshold invoices without VAT, and the PMS must let you switch VAT off cleanly rather than leaving a 20% line in the template.
- Making Tax Digital. MTD for VAT has applied to every VAT-registered business since April 2022: digital records and quarterly returns filed through compatible software, one month and seven days after the period ends. The PMS does not file the return. What it must do is export sales, deposits and refunds cleanly into Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent so the digital link is unbroken. Ask any vendor to show you the export, not describe it.
- Deposits and no-shows. Since HMRC's policy change in Revenue and Customs Brief 13 (2018), effective 1 March 2019, a deposit you keep when a guest does not arrive is treated as payment for a supply and carries VAT. The folio has to post retained deposits as taxable revenue, not as a non-VAT "forfeit". Confirm the treatment with your accountant; the software just has to make it possible.
Our billing engine applies 20% per line, shows net, VAT and gross, supports split folios, deposits and advance payments, and reconciles everything in the night audit so the day's takings, the folios and the ledger agree. One honest note on our own invoice: Codingclave is an Indian company, so a VAT-registered UK business accounts for VAT on our fee under the reverse charge rather than paying it to us. Your accountant will recognise the mechanism; it costs you nothing extra, it just appears on your return.
Visitor levies and local charges your PMS must handle
This is new for 2026 and most software guides skip it. Scotland's Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024 lets councils charge a percentage levy on overnight stays, Wales has a per-person-per-night levy run by the Welsh Revenue Authority, and two English cities charge through hotel-voted Business Improvement Districts. The dates and rates below are from the council schemes as summarised by VisitScotland's industry tracker, GOV.WALES guidance and the BID companies, checked October 2026.
| Place | Charge | Starts | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edinburgh | 5% of accommodation cost | Live since 24 July 2026 | Capped at five consecutive nights; provider keeps 2% of levy collected for admin; VAT applies on top where the provider is registered |
| Glasgow | 5% of accommodation cost | 25 January 2027 | No night cap; applies to advance bookings made from April 2026 for stays after the start date; provider keeps 1.5% of levy collected |
| Aberdeen | 7% of accommodation cost | 1 April 2027 | No night cap; applies to bookings made from 1 October 2026 |
| Stirling | 3% of accommodation cost | 14 June 2027 | Residents exempt; stays over seven nights charged at point of payment with a refund route |
| West Dunbartonshire | 5% of accommodation cost | 1 July 2027 | No night cap; applies to bookings paid from 1 October 2026; provider keeps 1.5% |
| Cardiff | £1.30 per person per night (£0.75 hostels and campsites) | 1 April 2027 | Providers must register with the Welsh Revenue Authority before 31 March 2027 and account for the levy from 28 September 2026; other Welsh councils may opt in |
| Manchester | £1 per room per night | Live since April 2023 | Accommodation BID charge, voted by hotels |
| Liverpool | £2 per room per night | Live since 1 June 2025 | Accommodation BID charge; applies to properties with a rateable value above £45,000 |
| London | Up to 5% proposed | Not confirmed | Mayor's pledged cap; a statutory levy would need legislation |
| Northern Ireland | None | n/a | No levy activity |
Argyll and Bute, Dundee, East Lothian, Falkirk, Highland and Perth and Kinross were consulting in October 2026 and had not fixed rates or dates.
What this means for your software: the levy must be a separate, named line on the folio and the guest invoice, configurable per property and per date, with the night cap enforced automatically and VAT calculated on the levy where it applies. You also need a report of levy collected per return period. If you run properties in Edinburgh and York, the Edinburgh site needs the line and the York site must not have it; if you run Edinburgh and Glasgow, one site caps at five nights and the other does not. Any PMS that handles the levy as a manual "extra charge" will produce errors at scale and arguments at checkout.
UK GDPR and PCI DSS 4.0.1: where guest and card data may live
UK GDPR. You are the data controller for guest data whether the PMS runs in a cloud or on a PC in the back office. The ICO expects a lawful basis for processing, a retention schedule (you do not need a passport scan from 2019), and a process to answer subject access requests. A modern PMS helps by storing only what the booking needs, time-limiting document storage and logging who looked at what. Where the server sits is a separate question, and both answers are legitimate: a managed cloud is patched and backed up for you, and a self-hosted licence keeps the data on infrastructure you control.
PCI DSS 4.0.1. Version 4.0.1 has been the only active version of the card standard since 31 December 2024, and the 51 requirements that were "future-dated" under 4.0 became mandatory on 31 March 2025 with no grace period. Every 2026 assessment checks the full standard. For a hotel the ones that bite are multi-factor authentication for any access to the cardholder data environment, including staff and remote vendor logins, and passwords of at least 12 characters. The practical route for an independent is to keep card numbers out of the PMS entirely: the booking engine and the desk use a tokenising payment provider, the PMS stores only the token, and your self-assessment questionnaire becomes much shorter. Ask any vendor, including us, two questions: "Do you ever store a full card number?" and "Which SAQ does your setup leave me with?"
What our editions cost in GBP
Every plan includes the full system: reservations, front desk and room rack, housekeeping, two-way channel manager, direct booking engine, VAT billing with night audit, restaurant POS with charge-to-room, multi-property and reports. The difference between editions is hosting and support versus ownership, not capability.
| Edition | Price (GBP) | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud SaaS, monthly | £23/month | We host, update, back up and support; cancel any time | Starting this week with nothing to manage |
| Cloud SaaS, yearly | £209/year | Same, at roughly two months' saving over monthly | Committed single-site operators |
| One-time self-hosted licence | £949 once | Full source code, white-label rights, no recurring fee; installation, onboarding and 3 months of support included; updates available as an optional annual plan | Groups and IT-capable owners who want to own it |
GBP figures are conversions of our INR list price, so they move slightly with the exchange rate; the quote we send you is fixed in writing. There are no per-room, per-user or per-booking fees on any edition and no commission on direct bookings.
Cloud subscription or one-time licence: which should a UK hotel choose?
This is the decision that outlasts every feature comparison, so here it is side by side.
| Cloud SaaS subscription | One-time self-hosted licence | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | £23/month or £209/year | £949 once |
| Recurring fees | Ongoing | None after purchase (hosting is yours) |
| Hosting, updates, backups | Done by us | Done by you or your developer |
| Source code | Not included | Full source, yours |
| White-label or resell | No | Yes |
| Guest data location | Our managed infrastructure | Your own infrastructure |
| Cancel | Any time | Not applicable, you own it |
| Suits | B&Bs, guesthouses, single hotels | Groups, IT-capable owners, resellers |
And the arithmetic, software cost only, excluding your own hosting on the self-hosted route:
| Horizon | Cloud monthly (£23) | Cloud yearly (£209) | One-time (£949) | eviivo entry (£35/month, no add-ons) | Little Hotelier Basics ($39/month per CostBench) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | £276 | £209 | £949 | £420 | $468 |
| 3 years | £828 | £627 | £949 | £1,260 | $1,404 |
| 5 years | £1,380 | £1,045 | £949 | £2,100 | $2,340 |
The one-time licence overtakes our own yearly plan between year four and five, and overtakes eviivo's entry plan inside year three. Add a small VPS for self-hosting and the crossover moves out a little; add eviivo's per-room add-ons or Little Hotelier's Pro tier and it moves in. For the full working, including support and upgrade assumptions, read subscription vs one-time licence: the 5-year cost.
Choose cloud if you want to be live this week and never think about servers. Choose the licence if you have or can hire a little IT capability, want the source code, prefer guest data on your own infrastructure, want to white-label, or simply dislike paying rent for a tool. The self-hosted script edition has the licence detail, and the multi-tenant edition adds a super-admin for unlimited properties.
Which setup suits which UK property
Single hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs (3 to 30 rooms). Cloud, almost always. Low upfront cost, we handle everything technical, and you get the same channel manager and booking engine a larger hotel uses. Compare us against eviivo and Little Hotelier on the all-in annual figure and on whether the booking engine and payments are included or extra.
Coaching inns and pubs with rooms. The restaurant and bar usually out-earn the rooms, so charge-to-room matters: a guest signs for dinner, it posts to the folio, and checkout produces one VAT invoice. The POS is included in both our editions; our guide to restaurant and F&B POS for UK hotels covers kitchen printing, tabs and tips.
Small groups and multi-site operators. Two or more properties usually prefer the one-time licence or the multi-tenant edition: one super-admin login, per-property reporting and levy settings, group-wide rates, and ownership of the code. If one of the sites is across the water, the same system runs in euro and Irish VAT; see hotel management software for Ireland.
Owners who want to own it. The £949 licence gives you the source code to host, customise and white-label with no recurring fee. Several of our buyers are agencies and developers who deploy it for their own hotel clients.
What we see in UK projects
A few observations from implementations, with no client names because we do not publish them.
The install is never the slow part. Mapping room types and rate plans to Booking.com and Expedia, and agreeing who owns the rate parity decision, takes longer than configuring the software. Split folios for corporate guests are the first feature a UK desk asks about, ahead of anything to do with reports. And the properties that get the most from the booking engine are the ones who put a "book direct" price promise on their homepage in week one, not the ones who wait for the website redesign. None of that needs a visit; we run UK onboarding over Zoom and WhatsApp, with a shared dashboard for the go-live checklist.
Codingclave is a 5 to 20 person team, which is also a limitation worth stating: we are not a 24/7 call centre. What you get instead is the people who built the system answering your questions, and a one-time licence you can take to any developer if you ever outgrow us.
How do I choose hotel management software in the UK? A ten-point checklist
Run every vendor, including us, through this on a live demo rather than a slide deck.
- Two-way sync with the channels you actually sell on. Named, in writing, not a logo wall.
- A booking engine included in the price, taking deposits and full payment, with the card handled by a tokenising provider.
- 20% VAT per line, VAT-off mode for sub-threshold properties, and retained deposits posted as taxable.
- A clean export to your MTD accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent). Watch the export run.
- Visitor levy and BID charges as configurable folio lines, with the Edinburgh five-night cap and VAT-on-levy handled.
- Split folios and company accounts for corporate and group business.
- A room rack you can read from across the desk, with drag-to-move.
- A night audit that reconciles takings, folios and the ledger in one pass.
- UK GDPR controls: retention settings, access logs, and an answer to "how do I export one guest's data?"
- The all-in annual cost for your room count, including setup, payments, modules and the increase at renewal, and the exit terms: can you take your data, and can you take the code?
If a vendor cannot show you items 1, 4 and 5 live, the quote does not matter.
Switching from your current PMS without losing bookings
Most UK enquiries we get are migrations, not first installs. The two worries that come up in nearly every one of those calls are retraining the desk and moving the data without losing a booking. Both are plannable.
A realistic switch runs eight to ten weeks: four to six weeks of planning and data mapping, a go-live weekend chosen in a quiet period, and two to three weeks of stabilisation. Export future reservations, guest profiles and rate plans from the old system; load them in a test property; run the new channel manager in read-only mode alongside the old one for a week so you can compare availability; then cut over channel by channel, Booking.com last because it carries the most volume. Keep read-only access to the old system for 30 to 90 days for refunds and disputes. Train the desk on the room rack, check-in, a split folio and the night audit, and nothing else until those four are automatic.
We handle the data mapping and the channel cut-over for UK properties as part of onboarding on both editions. If you are also moving the restaurant till, our POS migration guide for hotels covers the F&B side.
Getting started
Open the live demo and click through the room rack, a booking with a deposit, a split folio and a night audit. Then tell us your room count, the channels you sell on, whether you are VAT-registered, and whether you want us to host it or you would rather own the licence. We configure rooms, rates, the 20% VAT profile, any visitor levy line and the channel connections, migrate your future bookings, and train your desk over Zoom.
Book a demo, send your property details for a straight recommendation, or see everything we do for UK operators on the UK services page.
About the author. Ashish Sharma is the founder of Codingclave Development LLP, established in 2017 in Lucknow, India. Codingclave has delivered 200+ projects, holds a 4.9 Google rating from 76 reviews and Top Rated status on Upwork, and works with hospitality operators in the UK, Ireland, the Gulf and India remotely over Zoom, WhatsApp and shared dashboards.
Frequently asked questions
Public list prices in October 2026 start at £35 a month for a single small property on eviivo (excluding VAT); Little Hotelier, Mews, Cloudbeds, Guestline and RoomRaccoon quote per property, with third-party trackers logging Little Hotelier's Basics plan at $39 a month. Jelly's 2026 UK buyer's guide puts typical cloud PMS spend at £40 to £150 a month for a 1 to 10 room B&B, £150 to £500 for 10 to 30 rooms and £500 to £1,200 for 30 to 80 rooms, before setup fees of £200 to £1,500 and card processing at 1.4% to 2.9%. Our own PMS is £23 a month, £209 a year, or £949 once for a self-hosted licence with source code.
For 1 to 15 rooms, the shortlist most UK guides agree on is eviivo and Little Hotelier, both built around a calendar, a booking engine and a channel manager with flat monthly pricing. Between 15 and 60 rooms, Mews, Cloudbeds and RoomRaccoon appear most often, with Guestline as the UK-headquartered option for inns and pub groups. If you want to own the software outright rather than rent it, a one-time licence like ours at £949 is the alternative. Test the room rack, a split folio and a night audit on a live demo before you sign anything.
Yes. Accommodation is standard-rated at 20%, so every folio and invoice must show net, VAT and gross per line. Making Tax Digital for VAT has applied to every VAT-registered business since April 2022, so your PMS must export clean sales data to MTD-compatible accounting software such as Xero, QuickBooks or Sage; the PMS itself does not file the return. The registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover in any rolling 12 months for 2026/27 (deregistration £88,000), and a property under it can invoice without VAT.
Edinburgh has charged a 5% levy on the accommodation cost of overnight stays since 24 July 2026, capped at five consecutive nights, with VAT applied on top where the provider is registered. Glasgow follows at 5% from 25 January 2027 with no night cap, Aberdeen at 7% and Cardiff at £1.30 per person per night from 1 April 2027, Stirling at 3% from 14 June 2027. Your PMS needs the levy as a separate, configurable line on the folio and invoice, a report of levy collected per period for the council return, and the ability to switch it on per property if you run sites in different cities. Manchester (£1 per room per night) and Liverpool (£2) run hotel-voted BID charges that work the same way on the folio.
Choose cloud if you want no server to manage, a start this week and a low monthly cost; on our pricing that is £23 a month or £209 a year, and over three years the yearly plan costs £627. Choose the one-time licence at £949 if you want the source code, guest data on infrastructure you control, white-labelling or no recurring fee; after year three it is the cheaper route even allowing for a small VPS. Both editions include every module, so the decision is about hosting, control and cash flow, not features. Our 5-year cost comparison post works through the numbers.
It can be, and in practice a patched, backed-up cloud platform is usually safer than an unmaintained PC behind reception. Under UK GDPR you remain the data controller, so you still need a lawful basis, a retention schedule and a way to answer subject access requests; the ICO enforces this regardless of where the software runs. For card data, PCI DSS 4.0.1 has been the only active version since 31 December 2024 and its 51 formerly future-dated requirements became mandatory on 31 March 2025, including multi-factor authentication for any access to cardholder data and 12-character passwords. The simplest way to comply is to never store card numbers in the PMS at all and let a tokenising payment provider hold them.