A Channel Manager is a tool that enables you to connect to online booking sites and Online Travel Agents (OTAs).
This tool enables you manage your hotel’s room inventory and rates and allocate availability based on your preference. Our online booking engine Reserveport comes with an integrated Channel Manager and earlier, we had looked into what you need to consider when choosing one that works for you and your hotel.
In today’s article we discuss five ways in which a channel manager can help your hotel manage the online booking process more seamlessly.
Live Update of Inventory
By managing your room inventory, a channel manager ensures that rooms are made available for bookings as soon as they are ready. With the click of a button from your Property Management System(PMS), a channel manager should update your inventory and rates across all your Online Travel Agents(OTA’s). All reservations made on any OTA will then reflect on your PMS in real-time, making sure that there is no inconsistency on availability of rooms on the various channels. This channel manager should also:
- Update room reservations or cancellations instantly across all your sales’ platforms
- Simplify rate distribution across all your hotel OTA’s
- Save all your reservation details automatically
If your hotel PMS is integrated with a channel manager, all your bookings get automatically pushed to your frontdesk.
Leverage on Pooled Inventory System
An allocated inventory system is now a thing of the past. It once involved intense manual effort which was time consuming, unreliable and difficult. A pooled inventory system allows you to put your inventory into one bucket for all the OTA’s to make use of it. This inventory is used to communicate between your hotel OTA channels and your PMS in real-time. Such real-time integrations keep everything in sync and lower your cost of acquisition. Reserveport’s real-time connectivity with channel manager ensures all your rooms are up for booking, every single time.
Avoid Manual Errors
Manual processes are often exhausting and unreliable. Investing in a channel manager can help you:
- Avoid overbookings by automating the process of updating the dashboards and OTAs simultaneously
- Save man hours by eliminating manual updates of bookings and rates across all the OTAs
- Improve the online booking process by providing your digital prospects with accurate booking and rate-related information
A comprehensive hotel management software like Reserveport is the solution for the overbookings and double booking issues.
Increase Global Visibility
Study suggests that around 57% of travel reservations are made online. A connection with the Online Travel Agents enables you to connect to a global market something the traditional methods will not do. It gives you the opportunity to identify specific regions that you wish to target and connect you with popular OTA channels from there. In the end it helps you to build a stronger online brand image for your hotel and earn credibility with your prospective markets.
Boosts Direct Bookings
Many times your guests may research various hotel options on an OTA site but once they are impressed with your brand, they will head to your website in order to finalise their booking. This will lead to more brand awareness for your hotel and an increase in direct bookings off your website. In layman’s language this is referred to as ‘The Billboard Effect’.
At Pesapal, the Channel Manager is a complementary tool that is set up when you use our Reserveport booking engine and integrate into your website.