Channel Manager to increase your online presence

With the use of a channel manager, you can increase the online presence of your website. As it helps to grow new markets with several channels of connectivity.

It removes the manual process, reduces the risk of double bookings, and gives you the ability to accept more bookings than before.

Adopting a channel manager is necessary to avoid overbooking or underbooking rooms. As managing it manually is not feasible.

Thus, the channel manager is an innovative invention to reshape the way hoteliers handle their entire delivery of digital inventories.

Let’s first understand what a channel manager is. Then we will understand how the Channel manager increases the online presence of your website.

When you are promoting your hotel rooms through multiple online channels and finding this task tough to handle. Then the channel manager will solve your problem.

A channel manager is an online cloud-based technology solution.

So, you don’t need to install any technology on your computer. You can manage it through a website.

It is a device that helps you to simultaneously sell all of your rooms on all of the linked booking sites.

It will automatically update your availability on all sites in real time when you make a reservation, when you close a room to sell, or when you want to make bulk changes to your inventory.

The missing link between your Property Management System dashboard and all the Online Travel Agencies you are linked to is a Channel Manager.

This link helps you to focus more on other administrative tasks as you will be saving time on unnecessary work like updating information in Online Travel Agencies and your excel sheet.

You can easily manage multiple sales channels with a single click from the dashboard.

Automatically adapt inventories to real-time. Hence, avoid overbookings and underbooking.

Prevents human errors by automating recurring tasks. It is also useful in monitoring your tasks, getting statistics, and adjusting your actions.

Increasing your average occupancy and prices by:

By using the basic technique of revenue management, you can easily adopt a dynamic pricing strategy and you can check the length of stay restrictions at various prices.

Increase your online visibility and gain from the Billboard Effect: sell more rooms by linking to new websites of Online Travel Agencies.

Due to automatically update of room rates and availability of rooms, there is very less additional work left to complete.

You have to pay less commission, as it allows guests to book directly through your hotel website.

You don’t need to sign in to every single Online Travel Agencies extranet one by one. It easily updates rates and inventories in just one click on all channels and even automates it.

Time is also saved in replying to future and past guests through emails as they can easily check availability and rates by themselves on your website.

When you link your channel manager to the property management system then you don’t need to copy guests’ booking information.

The delegated network of inventories is now gone. Because it involves immense manual efforts which is time-consuming and unreliable.

The Pooled Inventory program enables you to bring the inventory into one bucket for use by all OTAs.

The Channel Manager uses this pooled inventory to communicate in real-time between your hotel’s Online Travel Agencies channels and your Property Management System.

Manual procedures can be time-consuming, frustrating, and, most significantly, unreliable. Investing in a Hotel channel manager can solve manual error problems.

This way you can also avoid overbooking by automating the process of updating your dashboard and Online Travel Agencies simultaneously.

It also improves online bookings by giving accurate booking and tariff-related information to your digital prospects.

As per the study, more than 50% of travel reservations are made online. A channel manager helps you connect with as many channel managers as possible.

This will not only invite local travelers but also open the door for global travelers. This way channel manager increases the online presence of your website.

Going digital helps you connect with travelers from all over the world, something traditional methods do not permit.

Identify different regions from which you wish to target and link to famous hotel OTA channels. Build a stronger online brand identity for your hotel and more reputation thereafter.

Different types of property have different needs and the price depends on the complexity of the channel manager.

So, prepare a budget before choosing a channel manager as their functionalities vary according to their prices.

Choose a channel manager that offers a two-way connection. And can be synchronized with the Property Management System.

This way you don’t have to manually fill in the details.

If you are already using a Property Management System then you can ask your PMS provider for the list of channel managers they are compatible with.

The different websites your travelers are able to book rooms are your channels.

It can be a direct or indirect channel. The direct channel is your website and the indirect channels are Online Travel Agencies, wholesalers, and Global Distribution Systems.

You must consider the following questions before selecting indirect channels.

• Which OTA will you be connecting to your Channel Manager? 
• Can you link the channel manager to the OTAs you need? 
• Do you sell the rooms to wholesalers or GDS as well?

With the use of the pooled inventory method, you can show your rooms across all channels at the same time.

Hence, there is no risk of overbooking as when the channel manager receives the booking information then it communicates it to other channels.

Check if any payment system is connecting to the Channel Manager and how they manage the Credit & Debit Card data.

We can say that a channel manager provides connectivity with various channels whether direct or indirect.

Eventually, the channel manager increases the online presence of your website

And eliminates the chances of overbooking and underbooking inventories.

Please share views in the comment box.

If you want to learn about the functionality of QloApps then you can visit this link: QLO Reservation System – Free Open-Source Hotel Booking & Reservation System

In case of any query, issue, or requirement please feel free to raise it on QloApps Forum