Engineering
Building the rails.
TypeScript, edge-deployed services, and a lot of care about what happens on a slow line. The engineers behind Hoyo come from Africa's most demanding software environments: fintech, logistics, healthtech.
Who we are
A continent-wide
teambehind one PMS.
Hoyo is a property management system born from a real lodge in Vilankulo, Mozambique, and shaped by the conviction that every African lodge deserves world-class technology.
Engineered across Africa.
The story
From a lodge that needed it to a product that ships it.
For ten years, a lodge on the Mozambican coast ran on the same patchwork most African properties still do: Excel, WhatsApp, hand-written folios, and the kind of institutional memory that lives in one manager's head. It worked, until it didn't.
The off-the-shelf PMS options didn't fit. Built for European hotels, they assumed always-on internet, single currencies, and guests who never asked to pay in three different ones. They charged like enterprise software and felt like 2008.
So the team started writing one. Hoyo is what came out of that: a PMS that begins with the assumption that the connection will drop, the metical will swing, and the guest will arrive without a passport scan.
Today Hoyo runs the front desk of a working lodge. Tomorrow, it runs the continent's best.
Milestones
How we got here.
2014
The first lodge opens its doors
On the Mozambican coast, ten rooms, one spreadsheet, a lot of WhatsApp. The reality that would become Hoyo's foundation begins.
2024
The spreadsheet breaks
After a decade of growth, the duct-taped mix of Excel, paper folios and goodwill that powered the lodge can no longer keep up. Something has to give.
2025
Engineering begins
The team starts writing the system the lodge actually needs. Reservations first. Then guests, finance, staff, agencies, module by module.
2026
Hoyo runs the lodge
The front desk moves onto Hoyo in September. We open it up to other African lodges who recognise the same problems.
What we believe
Four principles. Every line of code.
I.
Born local.
Hoyo is built from the floor up at a real working lodge, not retrofitted from a European product. The texture of African hospitality is in the foundations.
II.
Honest about money.
African lodges juggle several currencies, tourism taxes and agency commissions. Hoyo treats all of it as first-class, and we confirm in writing how payments settle for your property before you take one.
III.
Built for a patchy line.
Connectivity is a luxury, not a guarantee. Hoyo keeps the pages light and the day printable, so the desk can keep working while the line is down and key the day in when it comes back.
IV.
World-class for everyone.
A six-room camp deserves the same software quality as a global hotel chain. Hoyo doesn't water down for the African market, it raises the bar in it.
The team
Hoteliers, engineers, designers.Across the continent.
Hoyo is built by a small team of software engineers and designers working next to the people who run the lodge it was built for. We work where our customers are.
Hospitality operations
On the floor, every day.
Every workflow is shaped with the manager and the desk team at Vilanculos Beach Lodge. If a feature doesn't survive a Saturday-night turnover, it doesn't ship.
Product design
Software you can read.
Designers obsessed with print clarity: folios, statements, agency reports. Hoyo's reports look like documents your accountant would print and frame.
Customer success
On the line in CAT.
Real humans, in your time zone, who have worked behind a hospitality desk. Not a ticketing tree. Onboarding, training and ongoing support, included.
Trust and compliance
Tax codes are interesting.
We track exchange rates, IVA regimes and tourism levies in the markets we serve, and we leave invoicing to the certified systems that issue the documents.
Rollout and training
On site when it counts.
We set your rooms, rates, staff and reports up with you, and we train the desk in English or Portuguese. Where that needs someone on site, we say so before you sign.
Where we work
Hoyo is built in South Africa and it runs on the Mozambican coast. Support is on the line in your own time zone.
Vilankulo
Inhambane, Mozambique
Where Hoyo runs
South Africa
CAT, UTC+2
Where Hoyo is built