Staysmart: A Web-Based Hostel Management System for Student Accommodation

Hostel management in educational institutions often relies on manual or semi-digital processes, leading to inefficiency, data inconsistency, and delays in room allocation and complaint handling. This paper presents StaySmart, a web-based hostel management system developed using PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript under a WAMP server environment. The system adopts a three-tier client-server architecture with role-based access control (RBAC) for two user types: students and administrators. Students can submit hostel applications, view room assignment results, report maintenance complaints, and receive in-system notifications. Administrators manage applications, allocate rooms, monitor occupancy across five hostel blocks totalling 2,700 rooms, and resolve complaints through a centralized dashboard. The system incorporates AI-assisted logic using keyword-based classification to automatically categorize maintenance complaints into five issue types and assigns urgency levels (Urgent, Normal, Low) accordingly. System evaluation was conducted through unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and usability assessment with six participants. Testing confirmed accurate room allocation, correct complaint categorization with 93.3% category accuracy and 86.7% priority accuracy, real-time data synchronization, and intuitive user navigation with a 95% task completion rate. The findings demonstrate that StaySmart effectively reduces administrative workload, improves transparency, and enhances the overall efficiency of hostel management operations.