Everything you need to know about using Motel Light.
The core of Motel Light is managing your bookings efficiently. Here's how to handle the reservation lifecycle:
Navigate to the New Booking page. Select the check-in and check-out dates, then choose an available room. Fill in the guest details. If the guest has stayed before, their information will auto-populate as you type their name.
On the Dashboard or Reservations page, find the guest's booking. Click on it to open the details modal and click Check In. This will update the room status to 'Occupied'.
When a guest is ready to leave, open their reservation and click Check Out. The system will calculate the final balance and prompt you to mark the room as 'Dirty' for housekeeping.
You can change dates or rooms by clicking the Edit button within a reservation modal. The system will automatically check for conflicts before allowing the change.
Setting up your location correctly is vital for smooth operations. Follow these steps to get started:
Go to the Rooms page. Here you can add your rooms, specify their types (e.g., King, Double Queen), and set their base prices. You can also list amenities for each room type.
Navigate to the Staff page to invite your team. You can assign different roles:
On the Location page, you can update your motel's contact information, address, and upload a hero image for your public booking portal.
Adding a staff member is a single step — no separate approval is needed once they've been invited.
Go to the Staff page and click Add Staff. Enter their name, email address, and assign a role (Admin, Front Desk, Housekeeping, or Maintenance). They'll immediately appear in your staff list with an Invited status.
Motel Light automatically sends an invitation email to that address with a sign-in link for your location. If they already have a Motel Light account, they just sign in. If they're new, they can create a password right there to sign up — either way, they should use the exact email address you invited.
As soon as they sign in with the invited email, they're automatically granted the role you assigned — there's no admin approval step to complete afterward. Their status on the Staff page updates from Invited to Active once they've logged in.
You can update a staff member's role or remove their access at any time from the Staff page using the edit and remove icons next to their name.
Motel Light provides a public-facing portal where guests can browse available rooms and make their own reservations.
Your Location Slug is a unique identifier for your motel. It must contain alphanumeric characters only (no hyphens or special characters). It is used to generate your public booking URL. For example, if your slug is sunsetmotel, your public portal URL will be /portal/sunsetmotel. You can share this link on your website, social media, or business cards.
If you prefer a custom URL (e.g., bookings.yourmotel.com) forwarded to your Motel Light portal, we offer this as a premium service. Please contact our support team at support@motellight.com for setup and pricing details.
When a guest makes a reservation through the public portal, it is created with a Pending status. This allows you to review the booking, verify details, and ensure room availability before officially confirming it. You can manage these in the Reservations page.
The system automatically handles communication during the booking process:
Motel Light allows you to configure customizable base room rates, seasonal pricing, and transaction taxes/fees.
On the Rates & Pricing page, under the Taxes & Additional Fees section, you can configure your motel's Stay Tax rate. This percentage is automatically applied to the base stay subtotal of all reservations. This rate is permanent and cannot be deleted, but it can be set to 0% if tax is not required.
You can create additional fees for things like cleaning charges, pet fees, or guest amenities. Click Add Custom Fee and configure:
When booking from the front-desk console, the final step shows a breakdown. You can toggle optional custom fees (like pet fees) on or off depending on the guest's needs. On the public booking portal, all "Always" fees and the stay tax are automatically calculated and added to the guest's reservation request.
Motel Light includes a centralized public discovery directory (/find) designed to help travelers discover and book authentic independent motels directly with 0% intermediary booking fees.
Guests can explore motels across Florida using instant region chips (Florida Keys & Islands, Atlantic Coast, Gulf Coast, Central Springs) or search by city, zip code, or property name.
Travelers can filter properties by popular amenities such as Swimming Pool, Oceanfront Pool, Free WiFi, Free Parking, Kitchenette, and Pet Friendly.
As a motel operator, you can toggle your property's visibility in the directory under your Location settings. Seeded directory listings are visible to travelers immediately.
If your motel is already listed in the Motel Light Directory as an unmanaged/seeded property, you can claim ownership in a few simple steps:
Search for your motel in the Directory or visit your property page (/:slug). Unclaimed properties display a prominent "Claim This Property" banner.
Click Claim Listing and enter your name, official business email, phone number, and owner role. If you are new to Motel Light, you will create a secure password to initialize your Admin account.
Once claimed, you immediately gain access to your private Admin Console to manage room inventory, adjust rates, upload new photos, and accept direct reservations with zero commission fees.
Motel Light features an Airbnb / Booking.com style 5-photo mosaic header and interactive fullscreen lightbox for every property.
The property header showcases a large left hero photo paired with a 2x2 grid of detail photos. If fewer than 5 photos are available, the layout intelligently adapts to single or split-screen views.
Guests can click any photo or the "View all photos" button to launch a distraction-free fullscreen viewer with next/previous controls, thumbnail strip, and keyboard arrow navigation.
For best appearance, upload horizontal landscape images (minimum 1920x1080 resolution) showcasing your exterior sign/building, pool area, guest rooms, and unique property amenities.
Welcome to the first public release of Motel Light! We are thrilled to have you as a beta partner.
Since this is our first release, you may encounter minor issues or find areas we can improve. If you are a logged-in user, please report any bugs or requests by creating a support ticket in your Admin Console under the Help & Support page. Otherwise, please reach out to us directly via email at support@motellight.com.
Your hands-on feedback is extremely valuable to us as we prepare for our general production release. Thank you for helping build a better, simpler management system for independent motels everywhere!