Protel

German hotel property management system, now owned and sold by Planet

As of 31 August 2026, Protel's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A long-established European PMS acquired by payments company Planet in 2021 and still sold under the Protel name. Softwr lists it under Travel. Protel is made by Planet (formerly protel hotelsoftware GmbH), available on Web, Windows, iOS, Android.

Visit siteVisit Protel

Overview

What Protel does

Protel is a property management system for hotels, originally built in Dortmund and widely deployed across German-speaking Europe and the Middle East. It exists in an on-premise edition with a long installed base and a cloud edition, covering front desk, reservations, housekeeping, groups, conference and banqueting, night audit and interfaces to the usual hotel systems. It has an unusually deep integration catalogue in Europe because of how long it has been in the market. The fact that should change a buyer evaluation is ownership. Planet, a payments and tax-free shopping company, acquired Protel in December 2021 and has since folded it into a broader hospitality proposition marketed as Planet with the product still named Protel PMS. That means the vendor now earns on the payment flow as well as the subscription, and the commercial conversation tends toward an integrated payments deal where processing economics matter more than the licence line. A hotel with a good existing acquiring relationship should price that comparison carefully, because a modest software saving can be undone by a worse card rate. Buyers are European independents and mid-sized groups, often already on Protel and choosing between staying on the cloud edition or leaving. The trade-off is roadmap uncertainty. Product investment under Planet has been directed partly at the payments-integrated stack, and hotels on the older on-premise edition face a migration decision that is effectively a re-implementation. Anyone evaluating it fresh should ask directly which edition they are being sold and what the support horizon for the older one is.

What people use it for

A German or Austrian hotel needing fiscal and tax compliance handled natively rather than bolted on
A property with substantial conference and banqueting business that a rooms-only PMS cannot handle
An existing Protel on-premise site deciding whether to move to the cloud edition or change vendor
A group wanting PMS and card acquiring from one supplier under a single contract

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Protel.

The vendor is now a payments company, so the economics of a deal run through card processing rates as much as software fees, and a hotel with good existing acquiring terms may lose more on processing than it saves on licence.
The Protel name persists on the product but the corporate identity has moved to Planet, which makes contract, support and roadmap ownership harder to pin down than it looks from the product page.
Hotels on the older on-premise edition face a migration to cloud that is a re-implementation rather than an upgrade, with the data and interface work that implies.
Nothing about pricing is published, so a buyer cannot benchmark against Mews or Cloudbeds without a full sales process.
Strength is concentrated in German-speaking Europe and the Middle East; support depth and partner ecosystem are noticeably thinner in North America and Asia Pacific.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Protel

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Protelvs
Mews
Mews: A cloud-native European alternative with published pricing and no payments-led commercial model
Protelvs
Opera PMS
Opera PMS: The other long-established enterprise option for properties with heavy conference business
Protelvs
Cloudbeds
Cloudbeds: Simpler and cheaper for independents that do not need banqueting or fiscal complexity

Pricing

What Protel costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

protel PMS by Planet

On request

Quoted per property, no published rate card
Cloud and on-premise editions priced differently
Payment processing rates negotiated alongside the software
Implementation and interface fees charged separately
Contract length negotiated, commonly multi-year

Capabilities

Features

Front desk and reservations
Room assignment, folios, group blocks and stay management
Conference and banqueting
Function space booking, event orders and associated billing
Cloud and on-premise editions
Two deployment models with different feature and support positions
Integrated payments
Card acceptance through the parent payments business, tied into the folio
Interface catalogue
Long-standing connections to European hotel systems and door locks
Multi-property operation
Central management across a group with shared profiles
Night audit and reporting
End-of-day processing with European tax and fiscal requirements
Tax-free shopping links
Connections to the parent company retail and refund services

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Can you still buy Protel?

Yes. Planet acquired it in December 2021 and continues to sell it as protel PMS, though the corporate branding is Planet.

Why does the payments ownership matter?

Because the vendor earns on your card volume. Evaluate the processing rate alongside the software price rather than treating them as separate decisions.

Is the on-premise edition still supported?

It remains in the field with a large installed base, but new investment is directed at the cloud edition, so ask for an explicit support horizon in writing.

Where is Protel strongest?

German-speaking Europe and the Middle East, where its interface catalogue and fiscal compliance are deepest.

Keep looking

Where to go from Protel

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Protel, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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