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With the growing competition in the hospitality industry, hotels are gradually finding it essential and imperative to incorporate technology in managing their distribution channels, expanding their segment’s market reach and also in streamlining internal processes. A fascinating piece of technology that has made it easier for hotels, particularly independent and small chains, to manage their online selling and marketing is something called a Channel Manager. The best channel management software has become a crucial tool for hotels in this digital age. This article focuses on explaining why the role of Channel Managers has evolved into an essential instrument in the hands of hotels operating in the modern day’s digital landscape.
1. Benefits of Automation
A Channel Manager can be defined as a buffer, which links the hotel’s distribution system that includes its B2B website and reservation platform to the third-party providers, which include OTAs . It equally provides real time control of rates and availability of the hotel rooms across all these linked forums. This eradicates the need for the hotel to update manually, thereby reducing time and effort while at the same time reducing scenarios where overbooking happens or rate parity problems occur across distribution channels.
The Channel Manager is effective as it means that rates are adjusted and inventory is also updated at the same time and so it helps in maintaining rate parity. This results in a sustained reservation experience for the guests and at the same time, the hotels can profit from systematic control of the price and availability without falling into the overbooking problem. Another advantage in centralizing the distribution process is that it becomes easier for hotels to adjust rates as well as distribute the available and more popular room types to get the most revenue possible.
2. Broader Distribution Reach
The third ability is that Channel Managers help the hotels, especially the independent ones, to massively diversify their distribution channels since their inventory gets posted on hundreds of OTAs and other travel sites worldwide. A hotel can greatly increase its chances of reaching out to potential guests and attract them to reserve a room across zones and without having to bother about trying to list it on each of the above mentioned websites.
Channel Managers thus allow for managing and distributing to a number of channels all from one location, allowing small hotels, for instance, to access international reservation channels which would otherwise be too expensive, hence increasing direct bookings. With a broader coverage hotels have the ability to get in touch with many other potential guests, new areas and greater possibilities of converting the potential guests thereby making more revenues.
3. Operational Efficiency
Overall, it is quite challenging and time-consuming to provide correct inventory and rates for multiple platforms. This often leads to outcompeting in rates and often confusing the guests thus leading to revenue leakages. The frequent changes of general availability, restrictions, and minimum stay requirements for certain dates across different channels lead to increased difficulties, such as overbooking and reservation cancellations which can have negative consequences for the establishment’s reputation and revenue.
Channel Managers also ensure that the inventory and rates are fully automated through closed and open APIs and vice versa. Hotels get full centralized control over the inventory that is made available and/or rates that are published across channels thus eliminating cases of disparity or cases of overselling. This, in turn, raises guest satisfaction levels and fosters greater operational efficiency and improved yield management. Accounting also helps in critical reporting insights to enhance proper business decisions.
4. Guest Data Access and Insights
The absence of guest and booking information make independent hotels operate at a disadvantage to their direct competitor, chained hotels. Channel Managers help smaller hotels to perform this function through capturing of guest booking information through integrated channels hence acquiring imperative information on booking volume, length of stay, nationalities and channel performance among others.
The analysis of such data enables enhanced comprehension of Source markets, marketing, and sales attributions and guest actions to support specific Marketing campaigns. Detailed performance also allows for evaluations for the most lucrative channels when compared to others. Channel Managers in essence foster the operations of independent hotels by providing them with all the necessary analytical information required in developing business models for enhanced revenues.
5. Enhanced Guest Experience
Therefore, design and optimization of online booking systems are central to guest satisfaction and retention. Channel Managers enable hotels to have control over rooms, rates and rate plans, minimum stay and cancellation policies, weekend factors etc. for different sales channels. This provides an opportunity to flex the limitation, offer packages or promotion across the touch points addressing specific source markets.
Another advantage is that Channel Manager also enables policies and restrictions to be updated and applied from the central point, thus rate or availability disparities are eliminated across channels. This leads to the provision of standard lodging experiences and minimizes complexities that boost conversion probabilities. It has been seen that having a more efficient and smooth booking process helps the guests and also enhances the brand image.
Channel Managers also ensure that they can be easily integrated with revenue management systems, updating dynamic pricing strategies off a live feed of market data. By seamlessly connecting RateTiger and eRevMax solutions, hotels allow complete optimization of revenue management decisions on a single platform while updating pricing real-time based on demand level variances in the market supply. The centralized nature of Channel Managers also enhances operational efficiency, assuring cut down in the required effort from staff and significantly reducing human errors around managing multiple channels.
Conclusion
Channel Managers and hotel management systems, despite being one distribution model, ease the otherwise overwhelming task of managing availability and rates across these platforms. Owning to process automation, the Channel Managers and hotel management system add other outlets and guests’ groups to the hotel’s distribution network. Hence, by consolidating this distribution process, the Channel Managers and hotel management systems help small hotels to gain the needed online exposure at low cost.
