Central reservation system (CRS)

The system that holds a hotel group's rates, availability and restrictions centrally and distributes them outward to booking channels, the GDS and the group's own website.

A CRS sits above the property management system rather than replacing it. The CRS decides what is for sale and at what price across every channel; the PMS runs the stay once a booking lands, handling check-in, housekeeping, charges and billing.

Single independent hotels often manage without one, using the PMS plus a channel manager. Groups tend to adopt a CRS once the same rate has to be built in several places, because one central rate build is faster and less error-prone than maintaining the same plan property by property.

The interface between the CRS and the PMS is where multi-property groups most often lose rate parity, so it is worth knowing which system is authoritative for rates when the two disagree.