With the rising number of tourists who opt for online reservations, specifically through online booking sites such as Booking.com and Expedia, a channel manager will not only help you to operate in the congested market but also increase your occupancy and profits at the same time. A comprehensive guide to hotel channel managers will be provided in this blog post, including their definition, usage, benefits, suppliers, and more topics related to them.
Get to know everything about the channel managers in this manual for hoteliers and hospitality personnel, from their working to what makes specific software suitable for your business.
A Link Manager: What Is It Exactly?
To make it less likely that double bookings will occur, your establishment can utilize a channel manager to simultaneously list room inventories on all booking channels that have been linked together.
As soon as a booking is made, the channel manager will instantaneously make updates regarding the availability across all websites, including a direct booking website, in real time. This real-time automation also happens when a room is closed for booking or when the hotel inventory is changed in bulk.
What Is the Definition of “Channel Management”?
Channel management is, in a nutshell, controlling the channels where you want to sell your products, studying the top-performing channels, and fostering your relationships to bring in more sales for your business.
It will be the method in which you make your inventory available through global online distribution channels. Examples of these channels include OTAs (Expedia), retail travel agencies, metasearch engines (Google), global distribution systems (GDS), and direct channels (your website and social media).
What is the Role of a Channel Manager?
In a nutshell, the Channel Manager is going to be the one who takes care of updating the distribution data of your property in real-time across all of the channels that you are connected to. If you make a change to your central calendar or your nightly rate in your channel management dashboard or integrated system (PMS, CRS, etc.), all of your linked booking websites will instantly get updated. Moreover, a new booking from an OTA will show up in your Channel Manager (and also in PMS/CRS), and the room for such a booking will automatically be marked as unavailable across all distribution channels. Cancellation has the same effect.
From a more technical perspective, the channel manager makes a connection to each channel’s extranet using two-way XML synchronization. It then transmits the ARI updates to that particular channel and receives the bookings and cancellations into your Channel Manager, PMS, and/or CRS dashboard for two-way synchronization. This is a seamless, automated two-way flow that keeps everything aligned and practically eliminates the chance of errors like wrong pricing or overbookings.
In the event of a one-way sync, there will be no reservations or cancellations that will be imported. The update is very quick due to the advanced channel management links. For instance, the Cloudbeds channel manager gets the average new Expedia booking within seconds.
Examples and Solutions for Channel Management
If you are thinking about investing in it, there are countless channel management solutions available for all types of hotel businesses.
There exists a perfect channel manager for all kinds of businesses, from tiny accommodation facilities to independent hotels of medium to large size, and even entire groups.
However, there are a few factors you should bear in mind, which will directly influence your decision.
Normal Hotel Channel Management Companies
When choosing a channel manager, the size and layout of your hotel can indeed influence your decision. To illustrate:
- What is the capacity of your hotel?
- What different room types are there?
- Which distribution channels do you consider opening?
- Who is your ideal guest?
The integration of other systems, like your property management system or booking engine, that you are already using
Among the best channel management companies in the world, SiteMinder is equally suitable for a large hotel chain operating in one location and a group of independent hotels with a total of 20 rooms or more.
The company is known as the most interconnected channel manager in the industry, as it has more than 250 property management systems and more than 450 booking channels integrated with it.
Channel Management Technique: Hotel Best Practices
The creation of a strong channel management strategy requires distribution knowledge and the ability to work with OTAs and other online channels to maximize success.
OTAs are one of the most common online hotel distribution channels, which means that a hotel room will pass through a number of intermediaries before being finally sold to a guest. Your website is considered a channel too, even though it is a very short one, because it has a direct sale to the traveler. Rooms sold through wholesalers, metasearch, or retail travel brokers who may use GDS are instances of channels that are quite lengthy.
Here are just a few more details about some of these:
Internet-based travel agencies
A few examples are Booking.com, Expedia, and Hotels.com. They are not only the most efficient among the channels but also the ones that the hotels have to pay the most to be part of. However, they do bring the hotel not only to tourists but also to the people who might have never known about the hotel.
Distributors
Hotels will formalize contracts with wholesalers who will buy the hotel rooms, and then they will sell the rooms to travel agents. They are, in a way, a middleman as well.
Metasearch
A traveler can use a metasearch engine or website to view the price of hotel rooms from different OTAs and booking sites at once. Kayak, Trivago, Tripadvisor, and Google Hotel Ads are some of the best-known examples of metasearch.
Worldwide Distribution System
A GDS acts as a global link between suppliers, such as hotels and other accommodations, and travel agents. It allows for automatic transactions and forwards real-time product, pricing, and availability information to the online booking engines and travel agents.
To utilize these numerous channels for new customer acquisition and booking expansion, a significant amount of planning and management is required.
You will have to decide :
- The best channel strategy for you
- The total number of channels you want to work with
- The most effective way to set up your profile
- The frequency of price changes you want to implement
- The types of promotions you want to offer
- You give away extras on your direct channels.
- How do you overcome your competitors?
The Best Five Worldwide Channel Management Programs
The profitability of the hotel industry is directly linked to effective internet distribution. Therefore, don’t let your employees perform manual updates that overwhelm them and put your property at risk of overbooking. If your channel manager isn’t delivering the desired ROI, it might be time to switch.
The best software will not only save time but also help you to achieve your financial goals consistently. If you require assistance choosing a service, just check the online rankings on sites like Hotel Tech Report, SoftwareAdvice, G2, Capterra, and others.
Which Channel Manager is the Best?
We have pointed out these five top global providers:
- Cloudbeds Channel Manager: myallocator
- SiteMinder
- RateGain
- STAAH
- Omnibees
Conclusion
Ultimately, a channel manager proves to be an essential tactical tool for surviving in today’s fierce and fast-paced market, at least. This guide has hopefully given you a thorough understanding of channel managers and their function.
This is not just software but a technology that mainly operates to keep your online presence automated and centralized, thereby eliminating overbooking and ensuring accuracy of inventory throughout the day. A hotel or a vacation rental with more than one listing will not be complete without a channel manager since it not only minimizes the operational hassles but also increases the profits and gives you the comfort of focusing on the most important thing, that is, delighting your customers with an impeccable service.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Q: What is a channel manager?
Ans: A channel manager is someone who creates and executes the strategies to sell the products through various marketing ‘channels’ like distributors, retailers, or online stores.
Q: What’s 2-way sync?
Ans: Two-way synchronization means that there is a link between channel management software and a booking platform (OTA, GDS, metasearch, etc.) through which your availability, rates, inventory, and often property content get updated. This is also how the Channel Manager syncs bookings and cancellations between the different channels.
Q; What’s allotment?
Ans: Allotments are groups of rooms that have been pre-negotiated and are bought by another party, like a wholesaler, tour operator, hotel consolidator, travel agent, online travel agency, or event planner. You can control the allotments through a partner’s extranet or through a centralized channel manager.
Q: What is the channel manager in Amadeus?
Ans: The channel manager is a resource to create the online booking of your hotel.
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