What is channel management?

Effective hotel distribution is key to a profitable hospitality business. Whether you manage an independent hotel, B&B, vacation rental, or hostel, it’s critical to get your inventory in front of potential guests at all times. After all, travelers can’t book something they don’t find!

This is only one of the many reasons why Channel Management is a must for hotels. Read on to learn more about what channel management is and technology to support your strategy. 

So how do property owners pick the right booking channels? And how do they find time to manage inventory, update rates, and keep content consistent across the many different channels — each with its own login credentials and user interface?

The answer lies with automation via channel management software built to solve this very problem.

Who needs channel management technology?

It’s not just hotels. All hospitality industry properties and hoteliers, from luxury boutique hotels to small guest houses and short-term rentals, can benefit from a good channel manager. If your property distributes inventory to more than one online travel agent, then you should definitely consider a channel manager for online distribution. It will pay off in time saved, bookings gained, double bookings prevented, and sanity preserved. 

What is a channel manager software?

A channel manager is advanced software that automates tasks when advertising hotels on online booking channels: from updating rates and availability in real-time to managing different rate types and centralizing reservations into one dashboard. Specifically designed to address hotel business needs, a channel manager provides one interface to easily manage all channel partners.

How does it work?

Your Channel Management software should connect directly to your PMS or reservation system. It performs real-time updates of room types, rates, and availability between your PMS and connected channels.

The best channel managers are cloud-based and integrate with your existing property management technology without sacrificing functionality or speed. They use an API connection to pull from a pooled inventory that maps to existing rooms to provide real-time availability updates from/to the PMS. Each new reservation or cancellation is delivered right into the property management system without any manual intervention.

Why use a hotel channel manager?

It’s all about consistency, efficiency, and revenue optimization. This trifecta can have a tremendous influence on the profitability of both large and small properties. Here’s why:

Consistency

Each distribution channel has its own user experience. It can take up a lot of time to become familiar with each tool, which takes up precious minutes from management and increases training costs for new staff.

With a channel manager, there’s a single portal for all channel management activities. Update rates and room availability once, and distribute any changes everywhere. This consistency reduces channel conflict and the risk of overbooking; it also incentivizes guests to book in their preferred channel. When consumers see consistent fares, they feel comfortable booking at the fair and current rate. A win for the guest experience!

Efficiency

The user-friendly interface on the hotel side saves time and frees up staff resources for higher-value tasks. That consistency is also great for potential guests, who see accurate availability and rates. There’s no disappointment or consternation at mismatched rates on different channels, which is one of the human error risks of optimizing your channel mix manually. Also, since your availability and rates are always in sync, you’ll never waste staff time navigating the tricky waters of overbookings.

Revenue optimization

The final, most vital reason to use a channel manager is that it can help with day-to-day revenue management. Fewer overbookings mean fewer related costs, to both a hotel’s reputation vis-a-vis bad reviews and paying to accommodate guests elsewhere. In addition, the best hotel channel manager connects your property with new guests.

When doing rate and inventory management manually, it’s impossible to be everywhere you’d like. There’s just not enough time to research new online sales channels and then manage rates and availability across yet another platform. A channel manager offers new opportunities for exposure, which will increase occupancy, give you more pricing control and help with rate parity if such a policy applies to your property.

What makes a software provider great?

There are 4 must-haves when selecting the best channel manager for your hotel. If you’re looking for in-depth analysis, check out this complete guide to channel management technology.

Cost

The budget is always top-of-mind. Each technology must serve a clear purpose with a compelling return on investment. Most providers today charge a fixed monthly fee based on the property inventory. Commission-based or channel-based pricing gets complicated and costly. On the flip side, a “too good to be true” price is a warning sign that the channel manager may not be stable.

Access

The channel manager should support your distribution strategy, your existing online channels, and other top performing channels you haven’t used before. The goal is to have your inventory accessible to all audiences across mainstream OTAs, metasearch, marketplaces, and niche OTAs. If you can easily test out new distribution channels with easy activation with a low time investment, even better!

Integration types

Be sure that your channel manager has two-way integration and API partnerships with all existing (and future!) channels and other hotel technology. For example, when a channel manager is directly integrated into a PMS (such as the Cloudbeds’ channel management system) your inventory is updated on your hotel website too. Other integrations with payment processing tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and booking engines can ensure that your tech works in tandem, pushing out proper rates and promotions to indirect and direct booking channels. 

Multi-currency support

Quality channel managers allow you to take control of your currency policy and distribute it to OTAs in whatever currency you desire. Booking.com in dollars, Expedia in Euros, and your own website in Kuwaiti Dinar? No problem – leading channel managers, like Cloudbeds, have this key feature that handles it all AND automatically updates rates multiple times per day and all conversions, so your accounting is not affected.

The best hotel channel management software 

1. Cloudbeds 
2. SiteMinder
3. Staah
4. Omnibees
5. RateGain
6. HotelRunner
7. RateTiger
8. Beds24
9. RoomCloud
10. D-edge