While many off-the-shelf and open source content management solutions may offer specialized modules intended to support the travel and hospitality industries, sometimes a dedicated, customized solution is a better fit.

Looking to meet these needs in a fairly competitive marketplace is Galexi, Milestone Internet Marketing's new CMS, which hopes to distinguish itself as an easy-to-use, hosted software as a service solution.

Galexi's main focus is the creation and deployment of multiple sites -- such as the various locations of a chain of restaurants or hotels -- quickly and inexpensively. As you'd expect with multiple similar locations, Galexi supports sharing assets from site to site, such as booking tools and shared media resources like virtual room tours and images of the hotel's amenities. In addition, it supports social networking features such as blogs, and supports easy meta-tagging for improved search engine placement.

Galexi has a handful of customers already, including Best Western Premier Hotels, Hersha Hotels, and Vista Hospitality's brand marketing site.

Galexi is hardly the only game in town, however. The travel and hospitality industry has a number of established players in the content management, brand marketing, and booking space, with Maestro, RoomKey, and the soon to be upgraded TravelClick among the most prominent. Any of these is worth a look if you're evaluating your options.

If you're looking for a less costly solution -- maybe a single location or a small bed and breakfast, perhaps -- a hotel module for the open source Drupal or Joomla may better meet your needs. A quick Google search should point you in the right direction, but caveat emptor -- some of these modules are finicky and unsupported.