Basically, it was way more complicated to reach guests.

Fast forward to today, guests can browse between hundreds of websites and travel agencies that feature property details and hotel availability. Despite the internet making hoteliers’ lives easier – it’s easy to get lost as hotel distribution strategy grows more complex. 

What’s the best way to decide which channel to use? Should your hotel work with all of them, or is one enough? 

This article will help you find answers to these questions as we cover the essential elements that go into building a profitable hotel distribution strategy.

What is a Hotel Distribution Strategy?

Hotel distribution strategy refers to the mix of channels through which you sell hotel rooms. Often, this strategy will be based on the acquisition cost per customer of the various channels through which you can reach your guests.

These channels include:

• Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), like Booking, Expedia, or Agoda;
• Hotel direct channels: website, phone, emails, social media;
• GDS – Global Distribution Systems;
• Wholesalers;
• Metasearch engines like Google, Tripadvisor or Trivago;
• Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO);
• Offline bookings, like walk-ins.

Ultimately, an effective distribution strategy should aim to increase hotel visibility and target the right customer segments for your property. 

Why is building a distribution strategy for hotels is essential?

Simply put, more visibility, more bookings, and better reviews mean more chances for success. 

Creating the right strategy is vital to:

• Increase revenues
• Attract the right customers
• Improve reviews

What are the Types of Hotel Distribution Channels?

The distribution landscape consists of both online and offline channels. Below we’ve described some of the most popular distribution channels in the hotel industry.

Online travel agencies

OTA’s are websites where potential guests can search for accommodations, check prices, and book rooms. There are hundreds of OTAs, from the major ones like Booking.com or Expedia to the niche websites like BringFido (designed for guests seeking pet-friendly accommodations).

To list on OTA’s, hotels pay commissions ranging between 15%-25%, from each booking. The bright side of selling on OTA is the ability to enter markets that would otherwise be harder to reach. 

For example, hoteliers can attract travellers from South America via Despegar or South Korea on Ctrip. 

Despite their reach and convenience, there’s a love and hate relationship between OTA and hotels. This is mainly due to the fact that OTA’s take high commissions for listing and selling hotel inventory. On the other hand, OTA’s give properties more exposure and make them easier to find. 

Plus, have you heard about the billboard effect?

Must Read: Who’s Really Winning The Battle Between OTA and Direct Booking?

The billboard effect

Did you know that up to 35% of direct hotel bookings result from travellers finding the property on a third-party website? 

A significant number of customers will first find a hotel on a website like Expedia and then book directly through the hotel website. That’s the billboard effect – without which you would potentially need to spend more money on advertising and search engine optimization tactics to improve your page ranking on Google.

Direct channel

Direct channels include hotel websites, social media, emails, walk-ins, and phone bookings. You don’t need to pay any commission for direct bookings, but you do need to add the costs of maintaining a website and booking engine.

GDS

A Global Distribution System is a network used by travel agencies for researching and booking flights, hotels, and cars for clients. Examples of GDS’s are Amadeus or Sabre. Any hotel using a GDS will be connected to multiple travel agencies which will then refer guests.

Wholesalers

A wholesaler is essentially a middleman between a hotel and an OTA or travel agency. They purchase rooms for specific dates in bulk at discounted rates, wrap them in a package, and sell them to the OTAs, travel agents, or tour operators.

Metasearch engines

In recent years metasearch engines like Google have become more critical to the hotel distribution landscape. A metasearch scans through OTAs and hotel websites and shows travellers hotel rates on different channels for their chosen dates.

As Google is one of the first places where travellers will hit the search button, it’s no wonder that the search giant now plays a key role in hotel bookings. What’s more, with the ability to list hotel booking links on Google for free, hotels can be more competitive versus OTAs and can increase their direct bookings.

Embracing this growing metasearch trend could play a key role in your property’s distribution strategy. 

DMOs

Destination Marketing Organizations are the organizations in charge of promoting a given city or country. Partnering with them usually includes the ability to feature hotel info on their website and social media as a preferred accommodation partner. 

How to Build a Profitable Hotel Distribution Strategy?

A successful strategy will include a mix of channels. To choose the proper channels for selling  your inventory, you’ll need to take these next points into consideration:

1. Get to know your best guests

When we talk about choosing the right distribution channel in the hotel industry, we mean choosing the one through which your target guests are looking to book. 

But to make sure you get those bookings, you need to know who your guests are first. 

To do that, you can use your Property Management System (PMS), channel manager, and booking engine data. 

For example, if your guests are budget travellers you can include OTAs like Hostelworld in your strategy. But if a large number of your guests are from South Korea, then their most popular channels are Agoda, Ctrip, or Booking.

If you have different types of guests, you can create a range of different value propositions. A family with kids won’t look for the same features in your hotel as a business traveller. Knowing that you need to choose the channels where those different guest types book and offer them what they are looking for.

2. Set business objectives

It’s always a good practice to set clear business goals in order to identify your most profitable channels and include them in the distribution mix. So, what are your objectives?

Is it to fill in the rooms during the low season? To reach more international markets? To diversify your distribution and stop relying on one channel? Or,  do you want to be able to fill last-minute vacancies quickly?

Your property may want to create a specific atmosphere, and not all channels might bring the type of client you want.

Setting clear business goals can be a great help in deciding which channels to include in your strategy.

3. Track customer acquisition costs 

What’s the point of selling rooms on a specific channel if the costs are higher than the profit it brings? 

Sometimes the price for hotels to acquire a guest is more than double the room rate. It’s important to quickly identify and eliminate ineffective channels from your distribution strategy. 

So can you know which are effective and which are not? 

To evaluate channel effectiveness, you will need to understand the costs of guest acquisition. The hotel industry uses the NetRevPAR metric to monitor it. 

If you’re scratching your head right now and wondering what that is, here’s a quick explanation:

NetRevPAR is the revenue per available room after deducting the costs incurred to acquire a guest.

Calculating this metric will tell you how much net revenue you’re receiving from each booking.

The formula for it is as follows:

NetRevPAR= room revenue – distribution costs (e.g.,cost-per-click + marketing + third-party commissions) / available rooms

4. Invest in a direct channel

There’s no doubt that the direct hotel channel should be a priority in any hotel’s online distribution strategy. Neglecting it will undoubtedly result in lost (commission-free) revenue opportunities. Direct channels include hotel websites, booking engines, and social media strategies.

You need an easy-to-navigate and attractive website 

Your website will be a guest’s first contact with your hotel, so make sure it’s aligned with your brand and objectives. 

Importantly, around 70% of travellers did travel research on mobiles. 

Conclusion? Make sure to optimize your website for mobile phones.

Google research has also shown that over 25% of consumers across a  range of markets and industries mention pain points like availability, payment issues, and customer support when they shop online. It’s good to keep this information in mind and facilitate the booking process on your website in order to make it as simple as possible for guests to book a room.

In addition to a great website, you’ll also need a good booking engine, which allows guests to check availability and make reservations with instant confirmation. Want another good idea? Adding a chat function to your website can help potential guests quickly resolve any doubts or questions that arise on their booking journey. 

Don’t forget about socials

Investing in direct channels includes an aligned social media strategy. In fact, digital content inspires 65% of next-gen (millennials and gen Z) travellers to plan a trip. So many travellers these days reference Instagram or Facebook to check out a hotel and decide if it’s the right choice. Don’t neglect social media as you risk losing potential guests who rely on it to inform their decision-making.

5. Review strategy

Once you increase online visibility, reviews are inevitable – and can be extremely valuable. The review strategy you put in place should go hand-in-hand with your hotel’s online distribution strategy and revenue strategy. 

Online reviews can help increase your rankings and popularity and will influence the value of your offer in the eyes of potential customers. Of course, it would be a dream to always receive positive feedback, but you understand the reality as a hotelier. 

There will be some negative reviews, and so you should be prepared for them. Respond to and address every negative opinion, as these can hurt your hotel’s reputation. 

6. Use dynamic rates across all channels

Implementing dynamic pricing across all your channels will significantly increase your competitiveness. 

Dynamic pricing means adapting prices on each booking channel based on availability and demand. When demand and occupancy are high, instead of closing availability on a specific channel out of fear of overbooking, increase your prices. In times of low, reduce your rates to drive more bookings.

7. Maintaining price integrity

When using dynamic pricing in your hotel’s online distribution strategy, remember to maintain price integrity. Avoid colossal price drops to fill your empty rooms. Some customers can see be put off by seeing rock-bottom prices: it makes them wonder if it’s too good to be true. 

What’s more, keeping the price integrity can help you in protecting the customer base. Avoiding unwanted types of guests results in a better hotel atmosphere and happier clients.

Additionally, when you drastically lower rates, you may not turn a profit despite filling your rooms. The cost of attracting a guest and maintaining the room may end up being higher than what the guest actually paid. For that reason, make sure you factor in those other costs to determine if the decision will be profitable or not. 

Hotel Distribution Strategy and Technology

To implement an effective hotel distribution strategy need the right set of tools. These tools can include a channel manager, booking engine, PMS, revenue management system, rate shoppers, and a reputation manager. Of course, it’s not obligatory to have all the tools for hotel distribution management. You might consider starting with the first three mentioned and adding the rest along the way.

Channel manager

A channel manager connects your property to all your chosen distribution channels. It will help you effectively manage your inventory and avoid overbookings. You can adjust room prices from the channel manager, set stay restrictions, and build pricing strategies.

Booking engine

A booking engine connects to your website and channel manager. It allows website visitors to check room availability and make reservations directly with you. What’s more, when the booking engine connects to payment getaways, customers can be charged immediately upon making a reservation.

Property management system (PMS)

A PMS is a system used to manage your property as a whole. You can say it’s like the heart of a hotel– it includes a listing of all rooms and reservations, guest details, as well as housekeeping schedules and property details. It gives hotel managers valuable insights in the form of a range of reports: bookings, occupancy rate, revenues, and availability. Nowadays, most PMS’s are cloud-based, meaning there’s no need to install any system directly on your computers. 

When combined, a PMS, channel manager, and booking engine can greatly improve hotel operations as they work together. 

Revenue management system (RMS)

Hotel distribution strategy should also align with revenue management strategy. In the current competitive environment, it’s essential to use real-time market data to inform your prices across all selling channels. 

Setting your prices manually takes valuable time and can be extremely frustrating. In an environment where demand changes so quickly, you need to react just as fast in order to capture the maximum amount of revenue. Fortunately, technology can be a great help here as well: RMS’s like Pricepoint connect to your channel manager, scan hotel and market data 24/7, and automatically send optimized prices to all your channels in real-time. 

There’s no question that using an RMS can give you and your property a competitive edge. It is without a doubt a must-have hotel distribution management tool. 

An RMS reacts instantly to changes in demand and pushes optimized prices to your OTA’s. Meanwhile, competitors setting prices manually will be left behind – and they’ll leave potential extra revenue behind as well.

Reputation management systems

Reputation management systems help you create an overview of your online reviews across all booking channels. It generates a summary of your overall reputation and enables you to easily identify areas where there is room for improvement.

The post How to Build a Profitable Hotel Distribution Strategy? appeared first on eZee Absolute.

And even today, after the internet has seeped in our lives, we don’t book directly. The only thing that has changed is instead of travel agents, we buy packages right from the online travel agents (OTAs).

Personally, OTAs have made things really simple.

Why would I book individually when I am getting everything in one place? 

On top of that, they get me deals that I mostly don’t find on my own or they are not available on hotel websites.

But lately, I came to know that OTAs and hotels are not getting along well. And as a blogger from the hospitality domain, I know why that is the case.

To be honest, OTAs are not the ones to be blamed for this shaky situation. It’s the balance that hotels fail to strike, the dependency that hotels have on OTAs, and the negligence that hotels have towards other sources.

No, I am not blaming hotels either. But this is something very common in hotels and needs to be addressed.

But before that, let me ask hotels a few questions:

• How many OTAs are you listed on?
• How much commission do you payout for each booking?
• What’s your ratio of OTA bookings to direct hotel bookings?
• Does your hotel website provide a seamless experience to guests just like OTAs?
• How much profit will you make if your OTA bookings are always higher than other sources?

If you can answer these, then I am sure you already get the point. Relying only on OTAs will cost you business.

Even though your occupancy will be high, your profit margin will be low. 

In this blog, I would like to help you understand that OTAs are not the only avenues to generate hotel bookings. There are other available ways that will help you reduce OTA dependency and contribute to your overall revenue.

How Did OTAs Come into the Picture?

Before I jump right into all the burning questions, let’s  look at the onset of online travel agencies.

It all dates back to October 1996, when tech giant Microsoft launched a product called Expedia. And it completely changed how people plan and book travel, including hotel stays.

More and more OTAs came in and started invading the online booking space. They were providing a readily searchable inventory and smooth booking experience to travellers.

For hotels, it was more of a mixed blessing. Though there was a commission involved, OTAs were bringing in more reservations for hotels.

According to a report, even during the 2008-09 recession, OTAs were all out and working. Many hotels lacked the capabilities to conduct business the right way, but OTAs kept on delivering what they promised — business.

The ball was completely in OTAs’ courts.

Then, Why is There a Clash?

OTAs started and still are spending aggressively on advertising and technology. More than half of all travellers use an OTA to plan their travel and stay. Not to mention, more than 80% of online bookings are made by under-30s, with OTAs being their preferred booking platform. 

They are the face of the hotel industry; one so powerful that hotels have no option but to join hands with them. 

And why not? Even during the COVID pandemic, they are helping hotels generate reservations.

But, there still remain a few concerns for hotels that push them to reduce OTA dependency.

To make their grip stronger on the industry, OTAs increased their commissions. Hotels today payout hefty commissions — as much as 20–30% on each booking (which is huge). 

This undoubtedly impairs profitability and can deny properties the growth they need to stand strong in this competitive market. 

This has shaken the relationship between both the parties. 

Not only that, there are other pain points which I will share in the next point.

Why Hotels Should Not Rely on OTAs for Scoring Reservations?

Before I start listing the concerns and tell you why hotels should decrease OTA dependency, let’s understand that OTAs are NOT the evil ones here. They were, are and will be one of the major sources of revenues for hotels. 

Along with the commissions, here are some more reasons for exploring other channels of gaining bookings and reduce OTA dependency:

• Hotel’s relationship with guests is a concern. OTAs remain the primary point of contact for guests, even though they provide hotels with guest details. 
• OTAs always run discounts to bring in more guests. But little do you know that they mostly ask for additional commission from hotels. This results in low profits and even loss.
• It is not an easy task to maintain your inventory on multiple OTAs (until and unless you have a channel manager in place). A single error may lead to double booking, which poorly impacts your brand image.
• Relying solely on OTAs increases your workload. You need more manpower to keep an eye on your OTA listings, optimize them, and do a lot to rank higher.

So, what can be done to make things simpler for hotels? 

Well, if you ask me, I would definitely recommend you to invest your time and resources on other channels as well. 

OTAs are here to stay and they will do everything to mark their territory in the industry. 

BUT, hotels can incorporate strategies to reduce OTA dependency.

Here Are 10 Ways to Reduce OTA Reliance

OTAs have their own set of benefits without a doubt, but one cannot overlook the challenges they present. And hotels must look for ways to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket.

#1 Analyse channel distribution

When strategizing your distribution, you must start with analysis. And it begins with acquiring the right set of data from the right sources. Be it booking patterns, age group, or determining which channels are prime sources of your reservations.

That’s not all. Identify the market (by which I mean, your competitors as well) and try to determine what strategies they are deploying.

You’ll be able to gather accurate data for in-depth analysis and get an idea about your target demographic and demand for your hotel. Hence, you’ll be able to make much more informed decisions and develop a successful channel distribution strategy.

For example: Post-analysis results show that people are booking from OTAs because of the experience they provide. You can take that into consideration and work on your website booking experience. Make it as user-friendly as possible.

#2 Incorporate a strong pricing strategy

I cannot emphasise enough on the importance of having a strong pricing strategy!!

Let me ask you a question. Why would someone book with you directly, if they are getting the same room at a lower price on an OTA?

There are MANY hotels around the world that keep complaining about low conversion rates on their website. But they always fail to notice or maybe they overlook the fact that their rates are lower on OTAs.

DO NOT put up lower rates on OTAs than on your hotel website. If you do this, then you’re going to miss out on a lot of direct bookings.

#3 Work on your website experience

I would never book with a hotel that doesn’t have a website.

The experience that a guest/potential guest gets on your website is pivotal for conversion. The more user-friendly your website is, the more likely you are to drive bookings from it.

The website should:

• load as fast as possible
• be SEO optimized
• have an intriguing interface
• have all the details — high-resolution photos, amenities, and so on.
• be easy-to-use and navigate
• include right Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons at the right places
• have a booking engine in place (more details in next point)

#4 Invest in a booking engine

Someone comes to your website and notices that you have everything — the details, photos, room rates, offers, etc. Now they want to book with you directly but the options they have is a phone number and an email address or maybe a form.

Do you think they will book? I really don’t think so!

I don’t see a point why a hotel SHOULD NOT invest in a booking engine. It has so much to offer.

A booking engine lets you capture and process direct online reservations in a smooth manner. Not to mention, you can also run loyalty programs and rewards.

Word to the wise: When you decide on a booking engine, determine whether the provider is an authorised partner for Google’s Free Hotel Booking Links program. Why? Because this program lets you display your direct booking rates for free on Google hotel search. And hotels can only enrol through authorised partners. 

It is really important that you stay abreast with all the new happenings in the industry. And this program by the search giant is definitely one of the best.

#5 Let your guests book through Facebook

Facebook has become much more business-centric in the past few years.

If you aren’t making the best out of this platform, you are missing out. Big time!

Integrate your booking engine with your hotel’s Facebook page. When you have that in place along with a ‘Book Now’ button, you will be able to secure commission-free bookings from there too.

#6 Retain your direct guests

Before you go about your guest retention strategies, you must have strong reasons for why they should book directly with you.

One of the best ways to do that is by offering incentives and rewards.

Let me give you an example: You have a guest who is checking out. What you can do is, send a ‘Thank you’ note to them. Plus, mention that you are offering them a free night on their next stay. To avail this offer, they just have to go to your website and book their stay.

In the same manner, you can offer them free meal or access to the exclusive areas of your hotel or just a bottle of wine.

Let me help you with some more tips:

• Your guest database is your goldmine. Use that to categorize and prioritize past guests to target the right ones.
• Now gather their past interests/activities. Did they order red wine while they were there at your property? Yes? Great! Drop them a mail, offering free red wine on their next stay.
• Know their purpose of staying at your hotel. Create experiences based on that.
• Train your staff!!!!!! Imagine a past guest calls up and says s/he is getting a cheaper deal on an OTA. And what if your frontdesk staff asks them to go ahead and book from the OTA? That’s a red flag!
• Look at your previous feedbacks. Did you fail to provide a ride to your guest to the airport? Well, let them know you are offering them a free pick up and drop this time.  

Retaining guests is important, and if you do it the right way, they will contribute significantly to your revenue.

You can also read our blog on “How to Create the Best Hotel Loyalty Program for Maximum Customer Retention?”

#7 Communicate with your guests

Communication is one of the keys to establish a strong relationship with your guests. And the stronger the relationship, the higher the chances of landing direct bookings.

When I am saying communicate, I mean keep in touch with them. Email them about exclusive offers, rewards, feedback or just an email wishing them on their birthday or a festival (you already have their data).

Personalised emails are a gem. They can do wonders!

#ProTip: Invest in an automation tool to drop timely emails. The conversation and knowledge sharing needs to be consistent.

#8 Leverage paid advertisements to bring in more direct bookings

Hotels must invest in effective marketing campaigns. It is one of the most important aspects that contribute to your revenue.

But again, you need to take strategic approaches to make the most out of them.

Like I said in the first point, you need data. So, gather and segment your data and look for the guests who are more likely to book directly with you. Once done, target them with your campaigns.

You can use Facebook ads or Google ads to go about it.

We have blogs on both of them. Give them a read to understand the nuts and bolts.

• How to Set Up Facebook Ads for Your Hotel: A Step-by-step Guide
• How to Set Up Google Ads for Your Hotel: A Step-by-step Guide

#ProTip: Try to keep your initial campaigns as a test. It will help you learn what works for what kind of guests.

General social media posting is also a fantastic way to strengthen and promote your brand and build relationships. It might take a bit time to get the traction, but with the right approach, you will be able to gain great benefits and reduce OTA dependency.

To make your job easier, here’s another blog: Excellent Social Media Marketing Strategies For Hotels

Read in and you’ll definitely have a crystal clear idea of social media marketing.

#9 Bet on metasearch engines

I have to say this! If you haven’t bet on metasearch engines yet, then you are definitely letting some of the major opportunities go.

Metasearch engines provide people with multiple results (hotel room rates) from several platforms to compare with. And unlike OTAs, metasearch engines redirect the users to the hotels’ websites.

This presents hotels with an opportunity to generate traffic and increase direct bookings.

#10 Focus on building a strong brand image

While you work on all the above-mentioned strategies, do not overlook this one. Everything else will only work when you have a strong and trusted brand image.

From serving guests at your property to promoting your hotel on the internet, you have to be consistently engaging, authentic, and exciting.

The more you include that empathy quotient, the more you connect with your guests/potential guests.

Brand building is not a cakewalk, but you have to put in your efforts if you want to reap long term benefits.

What’s Next?

So you have finally learned all about how to reduce OTA dependency. But have you thought about the next steps? Where are you going to get reservations from, if not OTAs?

Here are some of the ways you can drive bookings (direct bookings is definitely one of them):

1. Corporate Bookings: Business travel is an important source of revenue for hotels. When you partner with the right companies and provide them with great experiences, you increase your chances of revenue boost. 

2. Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE): Organising events, conferences, exhibitions etc. is a great way to keep the cash flowing in your hotel business. Renting out rooms is certainly the prime job, but putting efforts in MICE gives you a place ahead of your competitors.

3. Offline agents: Offline agents are still in the game. Despite the internet boom, there are many people who tend to plan their travel and stay through an offline or brick and mortar agent. 
   So, you must consider partnering with some. Not to mention, the commission they charge (10-15%) is much lesser than OTAs.

The post Save Big On Commissions: 10 Ways To Reduce OTA Dependency appeared first on eZee Absolute.

Well, for some of your fellow hoteliers; this still might not be a reason powerful enough to invest in a tool called channel manager. If you too are looking for a compelling conviction on why to invest in leading-edge distribution automation technology, read on:

Hotelier and Channel Manager: The connection

Room availability and rates; these are prime factors that govern the ROI of your hotel business. You are well aware that managing an optimum level of rates and occupancy is sheer essentiality, and it falls completely under your span of control. Not to forget that this is a continuous process (a full-time job for those who perform it manually) to be followed day in and day out at any accommodation.

Therefore, it is indispensable to evaluate the number of efforts, time, energy and payroll that are dedicated to maintaining them manually. Just imagine, what if you can automate this process and get rid of manual operations? Wouldn’t it be a giant relief? Hence, for you to get a channel manager and ease up, we have accumulated top “7 reasons as to why hotels need a channel manager”.

1. Easily add new booking channels for your hotel. The more the better!

Multi-channel booking strategy is what works best in any season. A hotelier following this does not have to depend on limited booking sources. The more sources that bring you booking, the better and safer it is for your business. Implementing a channel manager at your property gives you access to hundreds of connected channels. A channel manager bridges your property with all those booking platforms, displays your inventory to crowds of bookers looking for accommodation in your city and brings you paid bookings. Moreover, being connected to online platforms has more advantages such as,

• Higher distribution reach,

• Demand generation,

• Higher ROI,

• Variety of booking sources,
• And, get seen by regional as well as global bookers.

2. Single dashboard for strategic inventory and rate management

Tiresome inventory management becomes hassle free once you deploy a channel manager to do that. Moreover,

• You get a single dashboard that gives you an insightful overview of availability and rates distributed on all connected channels.

• Minimized human intervention with system to push and pull data. You can post and manage precise room rates and inventory allocation with minimum efforts.

• You can send out pooled inventory to channels to acquire maximum bookings from any channel, without worrying about overbookings.

• Your room rates and availability are always in sync and latest to the moment across all channels, so that your staff does not need to sit and pass on inventory refill and updates. 

• You can post restrictions and inclusions; while processing new, modified and cancelled reservations centrally.

• Rates on different OTAs, vacation rental portals, metasearch platforms and even your own website; manage it from one-place.
• You can manage multiple properties too.

Everything automated. Just send a command and system does it for you. Instead of manual operations, you can focus and strategize better distribution.

3. Time saving automation with even 365 days calendar update

Without a software, inventory and rate distribution across channels is a do-it-yourself task for you. You might miss something, and it can cause errors, double bookings, wrong or delayed updates and a lot many unpredictable mistakes. Duh! And then comes correction part, consuming more of your time. You might lose track of updates. You might never realize if your sent update was never executed at OTA end. What a sad life, isn’t it?

Now think of a channel manager that can magically take all this of your pain away. Yes, a channel manager would not make humanly(!) mistakes or errors, maintain update logs, keep control on overbookings, keep inventory and rates always latest and synced, and notify you of updates communicated to OTA. Take a sigh of relief, I know you are getting a Channel Manager for your hotel now.
Moreover, you can update calendar even for an entire year if you want on channels that support it, in just a click. Let the system take care of rate updates and while you sit back and enjoy your time conversing with a guest or two.

4. Quick stop sale and auto-updates. Do more with lesser efforts

Imagine a sticky situation when suddenly a group demands bookings and you need to use up inventory that is currently allocated to and live on a given travel site. I know there remains a sense of fear while stopping the sale manually. So many to-and-fro operations might overwhelm you. This is when a system like channel manager comes to your rescue.

If you are sending room rates and occupancy details too frequently; you might as well need to ask a particular channel to stop selling a certain part of your inventory. Later on you might release inventory. All you have to do is click on stop sale button and system will automatically put a halt to online sale of your inventory on a that channel. Not only saving you repeated efforts, it also prevents revenue loss you might suffer due to this errors.

Just a channel manager and there you go….No more mismatching inventory, no more revenue leakage, no more delay, no more overbooking. All you have is swift and simple distribution with real time updates at remarkably reduced manual efforts!

5. Minimize over bookings and under-bookings. Utilize complete inventory!

A channel manager comes up with several built-in mechanisms that help you effectively prevent overbookings and under-bookings. Sometimes, you might end up receiving more bookings than your physical capacity, and bingo! your inventory is oversold.

On the other hand, due to uneven distribution, possibly you might not be using inventory to the fullest capacity, that is, under-bookings! Without a channel manager when you go out to resolve this, it can prove to be the toughest job ever.

Just some human or technical errors might cost your hotel loss of reputation, decreased customer loyalty and much more. At such times, channel manager keeps on trying in back-end multiple times until a request sent to OTA is not successful in order to save you from overselling. And it notifies you as well with execution status. So, you need to have that channel manager because you know you cannot afford to sit and keep a tab on updates communicated to OTAs and their statuses.

6. Effortless rate parity maintenance

It can be tricky when you see your demand increased and your want to make the most of it. Might as well you want to give out rooms on discounted rates to your guests, which becomes easy as a pie with a distribution tool.

Channel manager systems are developed to automatically maintain efficient rates to ensure that any changes you make on system are unanimously updated across all platforms in real-time, leaving no room for errors. Thus, you can avoid rate disparity and enhance your hotel’s online reputation.

7. Yield Management features for skyrocketing efficiency

More than just a number Best Available Rate (BAR) is a way to achieve optimal revenue. It’s a brainstorming task to set up a dynamic rate plans and derive the most suitable room price of the day.

If you have a channel manager, it can help you sell right room at right price at right time; that too, automatically. Owing to high/low occupancy at your property, system will hike up or slash down room rates to sell each and every room for you. Sounds like a smart idea to increase bookings? That’s the most effective yield management.

Done, there you go! Now that you have assimilated the top reason why you should get a channel manager, there is one more thing you should know about. Before you begin evaluating an online distribution tool for your property, do keep in mind these points.

• Channel manager should give you connection with your already existing booking channels.

• Channel manager provider should be able to quickly connect you with channel of your choice so that you can broaden your reach.

• How about foreign currency conversions in system?
• It should integrate with systems that you use at your property. For example, it should integrate with a hotel PMS or booking engine, so that you operate on a live inventory at any given time.

Final takeaway: The good, The better, the best

Without a channel manager,

• Every morning you rush to update all calendars with live rates and the latest occupancy.

• Keep worrying about overbookings or missed bookings.

• Repeat those same time-consuming tasks every day.
• You might lose that potential revenue you could’ve earned otherwise.

With a channel manager, you can

• Enjoy your morning coffee while interacting with your guests.

• Leave the front desk and take a vacation too. You have a channel manager on mobile to check and update rates if and when you wish to.

• Automate recurring operations to save time and money and master productivity.
• Earn higher ROI with no revenue leakage.

Because you have the tech way to manage it.

Decide now, how do you wish to spend the rest of your life as a hotelier? With or without a channel manager?

The post 7 Ultimate Reasons Why You Should Invest in A Hotel Channel Manager appeared first on eZee Absolute.