What is a Channel Manager? Do I Need One? - YouTube

What is a channel manager and do I need one?

Channel managers simply are tools that enable hoteliers to update multiple

booking channels from one location.

A hotel working with a number of online booking sites,

will save a lot of time using a channel manager.

Let's assume that we are selling our rooms on three different channels.

If we have three different room types which have two rates for single and double occupancy,

that would make 6570 prices to maintain in one year.

But that is not all, we also have to maintain availabilities,

that is when we sell a room in one channel,

we have one less room available for the others,

which means that we have to go to the admin page

of each channel, login, and reduce availabilities one by one.

That is to be repeated each and every time a new booking is received.

If you consider this all year round, that is a lot of work.

Channel managers come to our rescue at this point,

and take a substantial part of this workload from us.

They do this firstly by providing us with a single panel,

where we can reach all the booking sites,

without having to log into each of them.

All the data is collected and neatly organized in one panel,

so that we don't get lost in different websites,

searching for reservations and other information.

Secondly, they enable us to update all prices and availibilities

in different channels with a single click.

In the case of availability, they even automate those updates.

When we receive a booking from one channel,

the availability of other channels is reduced automatically.

This becomes very critical when the hotel has a limited number of rooms.

Suppose for example that we have only one room available for one day in our hotel,

and receive a booking from the website.

This would make the hotel fully booked.

But before we find time to update availabilities in other booking partners,

we receive a new booking from one of the booking sites.

This means an overbooking, always a troublesome situation for the hotel.

And the only way of avoiding it, would be staying on alert all the time,

watching for bookings and updating all the other channels immediately,

each and every time a booking takes place in one of the channels.

This is a lot of hassle.

When prices in all channels are identical,

it is straightforward to imagine,

how a channel manager can update

all of them with a single click.

But this is not all. When prices are not identical,

but have a particular relation to each other,

this can be programmed into the channel manager,

and in this way updated by a single click again.

In this hotel for example, the website price is

programmed to be 10% lower than other prices.

Moreover, channel managers can also talk to property management systems.

In this way, when we receive a booking by phone for example,

and register it in the PMS,

the channel manager is informed about the situation,

and updates all availabilities in connected channels accordingly.

And when a booking site delivers a reservation,

the channel manager this time conveys this information to all the channels,

and the PMS, and the availabilities are reduced by one.

These kind of automations that channel managers provide,

Increase efficiency in the workplace and reduce workload.

In a nutshell,

if a substantial sales volume of the hotel takes place online,

or if a multitude of online booking sites are used for this,

and keeping availability up-to-date at any moment of the day is critical,

then a channel manager becomes necessary or a must-have.

Reseliva is an easy-to-use flexible and powerful channel manager,

which can coordinate all kinds of

different rates and prices in multiple

booking channels smoothly and efficiently.

There is no commission charge, or contract to use Reseliva Channel Manager,

only a fixed monthly rate.

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