Channel manager for hotels

What is channel management? — Explanation

With channel management, the organization and control of distribution channels, or even sales channels. For hotels, these are primarily OTA's and META search engines. A hotel must ensure that the correct availability and prices are displayed at all times and on every channel.

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The presentation of the services and rooms offered with correct descriptions, pictures and booking conditions, such as cancellation conditions, must also be constantly checked and updated. This is the only way a hotel can appear consistently and professionally.

How does channel management software/channel manager work?

The channel manager is an essential tool for hoteliers today. It is a softwares, which transfers internal data from the PMS to the OTAs. The data to be checked is relevant to represent availabilities and to be bookable online. This includes room information, availability, prices and booking conditions. These are synchronized with all channels in real time. This ensures that the correct prices and availability are always displayed. For a channel manager to work properly, the default settings must be made with great care. All room categories in all OTAs must be created once. These are assigned to the data in the PMS using the channel manager. This is called “mapping.”

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These are the best channel managers

The most well-known and biggest channel managers are currently DIRS21 and HotelNetSolutions. But are they also the best?

The Channel Manager Award 2024 from HotelTechReport, has SiteMinder fetched.

Other well-known channel managers include

• Hotel Spider
• VIOMA
• Hotel Connect

Find out which channel managers happyhotel has an interface with here.

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This is how you find the right channel manager for your hotel!

Which channel manager is right for you depends on which features you need.

Channel managers differ primarily in terms of pricing, feature set, costs, and level of support. Pricing is either commission-based, depending on the number of channels, or based on a flat monthly fee.

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Most channel managers offer a free trial. So be sure to check out several channel managers and test them out! This is the best way to find out which channel manager is right for you.

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What you need to know — features and benefits

Here you can see which functions channel managers can typically bring with you.

On review platforms such as Hotel Tech Report Find out which system has the functions you need. You can also compare different software solutions there.

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Many channel managers offer their own booking engines for your homepage. Many do this too PMS systems. So choose the best one for you. Keep in mind that there can certainly be advantages if the booking engine and channel manager come from a single source. But don't cut corners on your booking engine because of this! The booking engine is your most important sales tool and should definitely not be neglected.

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Many channel managers also offer other products, such as a yield management module. Be critical and always remember the saying “Shoemaker stick to your last”!

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Basically, be careful about taking too many services from one source. This often leads to unpleasant addictions, which can lead to difficulties when switching. Systems that “offer everything” often lose focus on the essentials and are therefore unable to further develop their individual services.

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No matter what kind of system you're looking for, always make sure that the systems have an open interface philosophy. Because only when your systems work together with other systems are you able to pick out the best for, try it out and switch when the situation requires it.

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