Answer
How much does hotel cybersecurity cost for a small hotel?
Cybersecurity for a 20-80 room independent hotel typically costs EUR 200-1,200 per month plus an annual PCI DSS Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) costing EUR 800-2,500. The four essentials are: PCI-compliant payment processing (offloads card data to Stripe or Adyen), business-grade endpoint security on all front-desk and admin machines, network segmentation (guest Wi-Fi separated from operations Wi-Fi), and quarterly password and access reviews. Above that, properties under 80 rooms rarely need enterprise-grade SOC services or 24/7 monitoring.
The four essentials
One: PCI-compliant payment processing via a tokenising processor (Stripe, Adyen, Mews Payments, Cloudbeds Payments). This offloads card-data scope from your network. Two: business-grade endpoint protection (Bitdefender, ESET, Sophos) on every machine that touches PMS or accounting, EUR 35-60 per device per year. Three: network segmentation via the property router or managed switch, separating guest Wi-Fi from operations Wi-Fi at L2/VLAN. Four: quarterly access reviews where every PMS user is audited, ex-employee accounts disabled, and shared passwords reset.
What PCI DSS actually requires
Independent hotels processing cards typically qualify for SAQ A (cards never touch your network) or SAQ A-EP (cards may briefly transit). According to the PCI SSC documentation, SAQ A is achievable for properties using fully outsourced card handling (booking engine and PMS that tokenise on entry). Most cloud PMSes (Cloudbeds, Mews, Apaleo) ship SAQ A-compatible architecture out of the box. Annual SAQ completion plus quarterly ASV scanning typically costs EUR 800-2,500 from a QSA partner.
What is overkill under 80 rooms
Three things vendors will try to sell that most independents under 80 rooms do not need: 24/7 SOC monitoring (EUR 1,500-5,000/month, overkill below 100 rooms unless processing 1000+ cards/day), enterprise EDR with managed response (more than needed; business antivirus suffices), and dedicated penetration testing (the annual SAQ + ASV scans cover the regulatory requirement; pen-testing is for organisations with material attack surface beyond hotel operations).