- Product Design Lead · 0→1
- ~6 mo
- Pre-launch
Unified operating system for hotels.
Designing an all-in-one hotel management ecosystem (PMS, Channel Manager and a built-in AI Ads Manager) so an owner can run the whole property from one place.
What I owned
The problem
Hotel operations aren't broken. They're fragmented.
Hotels rely on multiple disconnected systems: manual work, operational mistakes, lost revenue.
- 01Disconnected systemsNo shared data.
- 02Manual operationsOne booking. Entered multiple times.
- 03Inventory sync issuesOne delayed update. One double booking.
- 04Revenue leakageSmall inefficiencies. Big losses.
- 0515–25%of room revenue lost to OTA commissions.
I started with a wall of notes, not a solution.
Everything I heard in the field went up on one board. Then I looked for the pattern, and the same two systems kept separating out.
Field research kept surfacing the same two systems. A PMS runs everything inside the building: front desk, guests, housekeeping, reservations, reports. A channel manager runs distribution outside it: inventory, availability, rates, OTA, pricing. Neither talks to the other, so hotels are forced to run both. ClearHost connects them into one operating system.
Understanding the industry.
Before designing anything
I ran demos and mapped how existing platforms think.
To learn the mental model an owner is asked to adopt, and where each one gives up.
- Top 3 competitor hospitality platforms explored
- Watched workflow demos end to end
- Channex API documentation studied
- Understood hospitality terminologies
Key learnings
- Room types & rate plans
Hotels sell room categories, each carrying multiple pricing strategies.
- Inventory & OTA distribution
Availability has to stay in sync across every booking channel, in real time.
- Hotel operations
Reservations, front desk, housekeeping and guest stays are connected, but serve different jobs.
- Multi-property management
Hotel groups need centralized control, alongside property-specific teams and permissions.
- Revenue management
Pricing, occupancy and booking source directly decide how the business performs.
What it added up to
Five insights, over and over.
- 01
They didn't lack software. They were drowning in it.
Every property already had a PMS, channel manager, spreadsheets and messaging tools. The problem was that every workflow lived somewhere different.
- 02
Every booking channel adds revenue. And another thing to manage.
Hotels sell through OTAs, websites, phones, walk-ins and more. Each channel adds another place to manage rates, availability and reservations.
- 03
An OTA can fill tonight's room and still make tomorrow's booking harder.
OTAs bring valuable demand, but the hotel gives up part of the guest relationship. Building a direct channel means owning more of what comes next.
- 04
In hospitality, simplicity survives churn.
Staff changes constantly, so complex workflows have to be relearned again and again. Hotel software needs to make everyday work easy for whoever joins next.
- 05
Distribution shouldn't mean dependence.
OTAs are essential for reaching guests. But relying too heavily on them leaves hotels with less control over margins, customer relationships and where future bookings come from.
How I design products
From what I found to what I built.
The decisions, artifacts and trade-offs that shaped ClearHost.
How I design products, in twelve artifacts: an opportunity note, the product findings, jobs-to-be-done clusters, an impact-versus-effort prioritisation, a design spec, a user flow, a build plan, design-to-dev handoff, module QA, the pilot release, what I needed to learn, and the next iteration.
Decisions between steps: Opportunity to Product findings, Validated; Jobs to be done to Prioritisation, Worth building; Prioritisation to Design spec, v1 only; User flow to Build plan, Scoped; QA to Launch, Signed off; Learn to Iterate, Need more data.
From what I saw to what we'd build.
Problem statement
India's independent hosts don't need more software. They need their software to stop fighting them, and to help them win back the guest the OTAs took.
The calls we had to make
hover to spread the decktap a card to browseNot another PMS. The operating system that runs the property.
Owner-operated stays need one place to manage the whole business.
Independent hotels are a massive market, but most hotel software serves pieces of it.
PMS vendors stop at the front desk. Channel managers stop at the OTA.
Flat monthly pricing, no commission and no per-booking cut.
The only system that connects the rooms, distribution and direct booking.
01 Not another PMS. The operating system that runs the property.
PositioningHow we say it02 Owner-operated stays need one place to manage the whole business.
ICPWho we build for03 Independent hotels are a massive market, but most hotel software serves pieces of it.
Market sizingHow big it gets04 PMS vendors stop at the front desk. Channel managers stop at the OTA.
BenchmarkingWho we’re up against05 Flat monthly pricing, no commission and no per-booking cut.
PricingWhat it costs06 The only system that connects the rooms, distribution and direct booking.
USPWhy us
Go-to-market · who we launch for
Two-thirds of India's rooms are independent, and travel keeps shifting to offbeat towns where independents are often the only stay.
- 01Who firstOwner-operated stays, 5–40 rooms: homestays, hostels, boutique hotels.
- 02WhereThe regions I researched (the Northeast, Himachal, Rajasthan) where I know owners by name.
- 03HowWarm intros through owner networks; I onboard the first cohort myself.
- 04PricingA flat monthly price in rupees, less than one weekend's OTA commission.
Designing the rules, not just the screens.
Rate plans are where hospitality software usually asks the host to already think like the software. Four moments where I pushed the rule into the interface instead. An invalid configuration is hard to reach, and obvious when you are near one.
A shared dorm is sold per bed, so “per room” pricing removes itself instead of erroring later.
A derived plan needs a base plan to exist first, so the first plan is always standalone: locked, not asked.
Choose the occupancy first; the pricing modes that cannot apply are never offered.
The system never rewrites what the host typed; it flags what is wrong, says why, and leaves the fix to them.
Three modules, one system.
The three surfaces an owner actually lives in: the PMS at the front desk, the channel manager for distribution, the booking engine for direct bookings. Scroll to move through each.
Certified for production. Onboarding real hotels next.
Honest version: the core is built and certified; the market proof is still ahead. Here's exactly what's shipped and what's still in progress.
Distribution, PMS & Money modules
done · shipped to staging
Channex certification
done · passed for production
AI Ads Management
done · built, first model live
Pilot with real hotels
in progress · onboarding first cohort
What we're aiming for
product goals · to be validated- Less tool switchingBring core hotel workflows into one system.
- Zero inventory mismatchesKeep rates and availability aligned across channels.
- More direct bookingsGive hotels a stronger channel they control.
- Less manual workReduce repetitive updates across booking channels.
The bet: own the one thing no incumbent owns end to end, helping India's independent hosts grow direct.
What building this changed in me.
Not tidy takeaways: the places my thinking changed as the product moved from research to certification.
I learned that the interface comes last.
ClearHost taught me that complex products are really systems of rules. I had to understand pricing, taxes, availability, reservations and distribution before I could design the interface properly.
I assumed the API would define how the product should work.
While working through Channex, I found gaps and confusing logic around taxes, dormitory pricing and cancellation policies. I learned to question the integration instead of designing around it blindly.
I wanted to solve every problem I found.
ClearHost had far more possible features than we could build at once. Prioritising the core workflows taught me that good product design is often about deciding what not to build yet.
I thought simplifying a workflow meant removing options.
The dormitory pricing work changed my thinking. The better solution was to understand the underlying rules, remove unnecessary choices and make the system handle the complexity for the user.
ClearHost is certified and onboarding its first hotels.
The owners whose workflows shaped the product get to use it first.