What is Channel Manager in 6 questions

1. What is Channel Manager software?
2. How does Channel Manager work?
3. Do you need Channel Manager? Why?
4. What makes a good Channel Manager?
5. What affects the Channel Manager upd ate speed?
6. What does an OTA premier partner status mean?

What is Channel Manager software?

This is a tool that allows hotels and apartments to simultaneously update price rates, reservations, and availability across multiple OTA channels. This means that if someone books a room on a channel like Expedia, the number of available rooms will automatically change on all the channels you are connected to.

How does Channel Manager work?

Channel Manager saves you from logging into each sales platform separately to update availability every time someone makes a booking. Instead, hotels have a single system that connects your booking engine and PMS directly to OTA channels. All the changes made in one of these are automatically synchronized across others.

Do you need Channel Manager? Why?

Tick if statements are true. In case they are positive, Channel Manager will benefit your business.

Are you listed on more than two platforms, or are you considering doing so?

Are you looking for ways to optimize managing online channels?

Do OTA channels take too much of your staff’s time?

Have you ever canceled on guests because of overbooking?

Not convinced? Here are some more reasons:

• Channel Manager allows your property to get more online presence on multiple channels. Traditional “by-hand” management makes it almost impossible.
• It eliminates the possibility of human errors, as information is updated once in a centralized platform.
• Some software provides sales statistics. For example, TravelLine Channel Manager has reports on channels performance that helps to estimate their cost-efficiency and fix the hotel’s distribution strategy.

What makes a good Channel Manager?

There is no one-size-fits-all Channel Manager but there are a few things to consider before deciding on one of them:

• A reliable connection to the top OTA: Channel Managers measure the quality of connection in percent. For example, the connection quality of our Channel Manager and Booking.com is currently 100%.
• Your target market: Find out who stays at your property the most often and what platforms they prefer to book. Your Channel Manager must provide connection not only to the top OTAs but to the most popular ones among your target market.
• Tech support: Choose a channel manager that offers you someone to contact in case there are any bugs or glitches. This is the quickest way to get to the development team and fix a problem.
• One-way or two-way integration: If you do not use or plan to use a PMS, one-way integration will be enough. In case you do, you need to look for a channel manager that would connect your PMS and OTAs.
• The functionality you expect to have: It depends on whether you want to simply distribute rooms, set rate restrictions like a minimum length of stay, or find out what OTA performs best for you.
• Updates and possibility to request an update: The more updates there are, the more are the chances any problem you have will be quickly fixed. For example, TravelLine Channel Manager is updated at least twice a month and there is a request form if you want to suggest something.

What affects the Channel Manager update speed?

There are two factors: reliability of the connection and how fast an OTA channel receives data. The latter may take seconds or minutes and does not depend on a Channel Manager.

What does an OTA premier partner status mean?

This is a way for an OTA channel to highlight Channel Managers that have the best connection quality. So if your target market prefers one booking platform over others, select a channel manager from its premier partner list.

No matter what platforms guests use to book, your property should be there — this increases the chances they will not book competitor hotels. We will take care of the rest by making Channel Manager better.