Most accommodation businesses face the same frustrating gap. Marketing spends budget on paid ads, SEO, AEO and campaigns. Guests book through the website or third-party channels. Revenue arrives. But connecting those dots—knowing which marketing activity drove which booking—remains difficult or impossible.
The problem is structural. Property management systems handle reservations, contracts, and payments. CRM platforms manage contacts, track interactions, and measure marketing effectiveness. These systems rarely talk to each other. When they do, the integration is often shallow: basic contact syncing that misses the commercial detail needed for genuine attribution.
We have spent considerable time building integrations between property management systems and HubSpot CRM, working with student accommodation providers, serviced apartments, and hospitality operators. This article explains what becomes possible when these systems are properly connected, what data typically moves between them, and when this level of integration makes sense for your operation.
Consider a typical scenario. A prospective guest lands on your website from a Google Ads campaign. They browse several room types, perhaps download a brochure or sign up for availability alerts. Two weeks later, they return directly and submit an enquiry. A week after that, they complete a booking through your property management system.
Without integration, you see fragments:
But the connection between these events exists only in spreadsheets, manual reconciliation, or not at all.
This matters commercially. When marketing cannot demonstrate ROI at the booking level, budget decisions become guesswork. When operations cannot see which enquiries converted, process improvements stall. When the board asks which channels deliver profitable guests, the data to answer confidently does not exist.
A properly built PMS-to-CRM integration synchronises operational data from your property management system into HubSpot's data model. This typically involves several distinct data objects:
The technical implementation varies by PMS, but the pattern is consistent: scheduled extraction from the PMS API, transformation to match HubSpot's data requirements, and synchronisation via HubSpot's APIs for contacts, deals, associations, and custom objects. (and more!)
When integration is working, HubSpot contains the complete guest journey from first website interaction through to contract completion and beyond.
This connection transforms what you can measure:
For student accommodation specifically, you gain visibility into the full cycle: initial enquiry → viewing or virtual tour → offer made → contract sent → tenant signed → guarantor signed → tenancy completed. Each stage can trigger automation—follow-up sequences, reminder emails, or internal notifications.
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The value of integration extends beyond attribution reporting. With operational data in your CRM, several use cases become straightforward.
Pre-arrival communication can be personalised and automated. When a booking is confirmed in the PMS, the integration creates or updates the deal in HubSpot. This can trigger a workflow sending:
Post-stay engagement follows the same pattern. Contract end dates in HubSpot enable:
Cross-sell and upsell become data-driven. Knowing a guest's booking history, room preferences, and total value enables segmented marketing:
Operational visibility improves when sales and marketing teams can see booking status without accessing the PMS directly. A salesperson following up on an enquiry can see whether that prospect has since booked, what they booked, and their contract status—all within HubSpot.
The specific fields synchronised depend on what your PMS exposes through its API and what your operation needs to track.
For operations with food and beverage or additional services, these can sync as line items when the PMS captures them, enabling total guest value calculations beyond accommodation revenue alone.
This type of integration requires the property management system to provide API access to its data. Several widely-used systems in the European market offer open APIs suitable for CRM integration.
Mews — A cloud-based PMS headquartered in Amsterdam, used across hotels, hostels, and serviced apartments. Mews provides comprehensive open APIs including a Connector API for general data access, supporting two-way synchronisation of guest profiles, reservations, and spending data with CRM platforms.
Apaleo — Takes an API-first approach, built on MACH architecture (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless). Based in Munich, Apaleo positions itself as an open platform specifically designed for integration, with documented APIs for building custom connections to external systems.
Cloudbeds — Offers a global hospitality platform with open API capabilities, enabling custom integrations with CRM systems alongside their native channel management and booking engine features.
Concurrent (StuRents Group) — For student accommodation and build-to-rent specifically, Concurrent provides a Report Builder API that enables extraction of booking, tenancy, and occupancy data. This API can connect to third-party systems including CRM platforms, allowing scheduled data synchronisation.
The availability of API access varies by PMS vendor and sometimes by pricing tier or contract terms. If your current PMS does not offer adequate API access, this becomes a consideration when evaluating system changes.
Building a custom PMS-to-HubSpot integration involves development effort and ongoing maintenance. It makes most sense when:
Volume justifies investment. A single property with twenty rooms has different needs than a portfolio operator managing thousands of beds across multiple cities. The latter benefits more from automated synchronisation; the former might manage adequately with periodic manual data import.
Attribution matters commercially. If your marketing spend is substantial and understanding return at the booking level would change how you allocate budget, integration delivers clear value. If marketing is minimal or attribution is already understood through other means, the business case weakens.
HubSpot is already central to operations. Integration adds most value when HubSpot is genuinely used for marketing automation, sales processes, and reporting. If HubSpot is underutilised, solving that comes before adding more data to it.
Your PMS has usable API access. Without this, integration requires workarounds that add complexity and fragility. Modern cloud-based PMS platforms generally provide better API access than legacy on-premise systems.
Plus Your Business holds HubSpot accreditations for custom integrations and data migration. Our technical team works primarily with the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js), building automated synchronisation solutions that run on scheduled intervals—typically four times daily or more frequently where needed.
We have built integrations connecting various property management systems to HubSpot, handling the technical complexity of:
The work includes designing custom object schemas in HubSpot to properly model accommodation-specific data, configuring deal pipelines that reflect actual booking workflows, and setting up association structures that enable meaningful reporting.
If your property management system offers API access and you want to explore what integration with HubSpot would involve for your specific operation, we are happy to discuss the technical requirements and commercial considerations.
Typically four times daily as a baseline, though this is configurable based on operational requirements. More frequent syncing is possible where near-real-time data matters, though this increases API usage and should be balanced against actual need.
The integration is designed to upsert records—updating existing contacts and deals where they exist (matched by email address or other unique identifiers) and creating new records where they do not. Historical data from the PMS can be loaded as part of initial implementation.
Yes, though bi-directional sync adds complexity. One-directional (PMS to HubSpot) is simpler and covers most use cases. Bi-directional sync makes sense when you want changes made in HubSpot to flow back to the PMS—less common, but technically feasible depending on PMS API capabilities.
The integration moves personal data between systems, so your existing data processing agreements and privacy policies need to cover this. HubSpot's data handling is generally well-documented. The integration itself processes data in transit but does not store it separately. Specific requirements should be reviewed with your data protection arrangements.
A typical implementation runs six weeks from kickoff to production deployment:
Complex requirements or multiple PMS connections extend this timeline.
The systems mentioned are examples with known open APIs. Many other PMS platforms offer API access that would support similar integration. The first step is reviewing your PMS documentation or contacting your vendor to understand what API capabilities exist.