It is undeniable that OTA is one of the biggest channels to promote your hotel and contributes significant revenue for hotels. However, having your hotel bookings entirely depends on OTAs is not ideal as you have to pay commissions for each booking they deliver. When it comes to optimizing cost, it is essential to boost revenue from direct bookings.

Direct Bookings count when your guests book directly with you either via your website, phone call, or walk-in, without any other intermediaries.
So how should you boost direct bookings for your hotel? Here are a few tricks.

1. Optimize your hotel’s website

Put yourself in guests’ shoes to understand what drives them to make a booking decision. Guests may first discover your hotel via online channels, but they always at least check out your website, browsing for more information before making a reservation. So make sure your website provides the most accurate and attractive information about rooms and your hotels, and some good reviews would help. Your web doesn’t need to be excellent, over-the-roof, but a clean, simple, and eye-catching one to create a good impression.
The majority of travelers book their stay on mobile, so it’s essential to have a mobile-friendly website.
Next, optimize your website to rank on Google. It is not a one-day task, but you have to keep it up as you don’t want to lose to competitors.

2. Simplify the booking process
Try to narrow your booking process down to 3 steps, make it short & simple to reduce the opt-out rate. And it is best to learn from top online booking sites.

Also, make sure your reservation system supports multiple payment methods, as well as the ability to integrate with PMS.

3. Offer more values for guests
Guest experience is not a myth, and you should take good care of it. Travelers expect more and more from their stays. The loyalty program is one of the best ways to show you care about your guests. Offer loyalty programs when guests book directly with you, where they can earn points and redeem for services discount at your hotels.

4. Increase your hotel’s reputation
Good reviews can influence a traveler’s booking decision in a big way. On the 5-point rating scale, even just a 0.5 point makes a huge impact (for ex. from 3.5 to 4). So, it’s crucial to have a strategy to collect good reviews and smartly display them on your website. Handling bad reviews is also needed to be put on the plan. Wrong ways of handling bad reviews could result in more bad reviews or destroy your reputation.

5. Leverage the power of social media
Young travelers love their social media. Thanks to social media and the internet, traveling memories are sharing across the globe in an instant. And you want your hotel’s brand is in those moments. Have your guests share photos of your hotel rooms or tag your social account on their posts is the best media tactic one could ask for.

Hotel software management – also known as Property Management System (PMS) has imperceptibly become a necessity, the heart of the hospitality business ecosystem. Every hotel owner, from small to boutique, corporation to multinational hotel chain, will eventually come across this conundrum: “To buy or to Build our own PMS?” at least once in their career. Even though it is a simple yes/no question, to come up with an answer will take you countless debates, meetings, discussions, persuasions and sleepless nights. With either choice, the final decision ultimately determines the next stage of your business. It can possibly pave your very first step in the Digital Transformation evolution journey.

To Buy or To Build your own Property Management System – the ultimate question to anyone in the hotel industry

Then which is better? In this blog, let us walk you through the whole process. You might be able to find yours ;).

Buying a Property Management System is quicker and easier

There are two types of hospitality management software out there that have been used popularly: On-Premise PMS software – everything is done internally from implementation to running the solution, maintenance to updates and setting up your servers; and the cloud-based PMS – cloud provider maintains servers, network and software for you, you can access all the information hosted by the vendors on a web browser-based, requiring no active management.

Both options are widely marketed from all the big brands in the hospitality industry software, such as Opera PMS by Oracle, Protel Air by Protel, Hotelogix PMS by Hotelogix, MSI CloudPM by MSI and so on.

Depending on your hotel model and operation needs, you can decide to stick with either On-Premise or Cloud. We shall have a detailed blog on The Cloud Property Management System and On-Premise Property Management System Showdown following up very soon, this might be able to help you figure this out.

Have an off-the-rack hotel management system up and running can be faster and economically efficient for small scales hospitality business

Purchasing a ready-made PMS is convenient. Have all your requirements listed out and match it with the existing PMS that provides those features. Voilà! You can have the system in place within days! It definitely benefits if your hotel model is small to medium size. The value-added from the PMS can be shown in a short period of time right after the installation. This means you can achieve a higher ROI ratio pretty quickly. Plus the initial cost of purchasing an off-a-shelves PMS is rather a fraction of the cost of building one.

The odds of purchasing your own PMS

Although big brands are involved in the making, all the PMSs still have their own limitations. Here are the few (but not limited to) that hotel owners have experienced over the years. If you do experience the same, don’t forget to like our blog knowing you are not alone.

The intuitive user interface:

Many have underestimated this feature, but it plays a tremendous role in the purchase decision process. The better and more easy-to-use interface the Property Management Software has, the faster a user can learn and adapt to it. Result in much less training time obviously.

Customizable Reservation, Fees & Taxes

Reservation might seem easy and impossible to go wrong to some, but when you have multiple channel reservation systems within your hospitality software management, overbooking happens more often than you think. Having it tailored to your hotel preferences, can be tricky and require extreme help from the PMS support team. Especially when it comes to complicated fees and tax policy, it can take months (if you are lucky) or longer (if not never) when there are technical customizations involved to get it running.

Report System

Mostly the report system comes with generic reports that won’t meet up your hotel report’s requirement. You’ll find the report system to be either too specific or too broad. Sometimes it just does not have the type of report that you are looking for. Seeking support can be discouraging, as you would end up receiving the typical “out of our scope” response or “we will put it on our next release” to later know that request would never be granted. It’s unlikely for the PMS vendor to acknowledge your problem as a worthy addition.

Buying an existing PMS for your hotel can result in frustration with the lack of reports you actually need

Accessibility & Integration

Unable to access your Property Management System from your mobile? Take too long or it won’t sync in real-time? Difficult to integrate with your current Hospitality Point of Sales, OTAs and the Hospitality Channels Manager? Before purchasing, you might look forward to all the promises the PMS sales team has committed to. Your high expectations will only bring greater disappointments. Be sure to keep those expectations on your brief and actual contracts, otherwise be clear on the possible risk of failure.

Supported languages & currencies

Double-check whether or not your Property Management System supports your local languages and currencies. If not, it sooner or later will impact your system and may cause a contradiction with the other existing software you already have. It’s best that your PMS supports all languages & currencies, or get ready to be back on the hot seat of whether to suffer from the accumulating frustration or starting over with a new PMS system.

In-time support and upgrades

Getting the support in-time can be a struggle! The software never runs smoothly as they promise. Without the support and upgrades, it means nothing. Some PMSs are well known for their prolonged queuing support time. Surprise? Unfortunately, this is the norm! Nobody would like to wait for 3 whole business days in order to get supported when your system is crashed and unable to function probably. The dependency on the support team along the way will scare you for good, especially to those who have enterprise-level PMS software.

Is Building the New Property Management Software for everyone?

Building the complete new software starting from scratch is not anyone’s cup of tea. It is almost impossible and out of the norm for small and medium-size hospitality businesses to walk this path.

It can be difficult to start building your own Property Management System, especially if your business is a small scaled hotel

The opportunity cost

The project can accumulate technical debts along the road and later turn into a technical deficit, making the software quality suffer. It also does not justify the cost of operations. The math on the opportunity cost of allocating the additional resources in building the software or spending the same cost to focus on other smaller budget projects might bring greater revenue and assets for the hotel in the short-term period may put a halt on the project.

The timeline and human resources

Even if a hotel owner goes ahead in building software, it would not suffice to find a competent team of technology specialists building PMS software within the scheduled timelines. Many others took years to build and perfect their software, how can hotel owners be able to manage the team to deliver on the dot.

How many other projects and assets you have to give up in order to build your own hotel management system? Is it worth the trade-off?

The budget

Last but not least, what is the actual budget? Will there be sufficient resources to help see it through to completion? It can get overwhelming at times and may make the owner compromise for less. Though the hotel might have proposed a timeline and finances, while in the making, things can merely go sideways. Are hotel owners prepared to take a failure? Honestly speaking, not many are willing to accept the loss of building a PMS project. It leaves a heavy financial burden to carry on.

Then who would like to take this bumpy road in building a brand-new PMS themselves?

There are multinational and big corporation hotel chains willing to invest in building their own PMS system. Any company with a long-term vision in scaling up, dependency on PMS vendors is not ideal, as its pricing model won’t be sustainable for the hotel’s system.

In addition, waiting for the PMS vendors to solve the unique problem specific to a hotel is unrealistic. Especially if the problem is one of the kinds, the issue shall be pushed to the very end of their backlog that never gains enough interest or benefits for them to proceed.

Getting your PMS software developed in-house guarantees a fully customizable model that can touch base on all the problems, issues, and expectations that one hotel currently confronts with. It puts the owner in complete control over the software from collected data to even security risks, from operation compatibility to mobile-friendly, and so on.

Building your own hotel management software brings greater value and rewarding if you can go through with it

In short, if you have an in-depth knowledge of the hospitality industry, inside and out, coherently and thoroughly, from its process to operation, front to back; while owning a strong and committed technical team then we don’t see any reason to hold you back from building a PMS for yourself. All the cons shall cancel out once you meet those two criteria; the pros shall recapture your mission, vision and reassure the investment you make is well-spent. Remember patience and persistence are your friends.

This has been rather a long blog, and we hope you have got the answer you have been looking for. What do you choose to do: Build or Buy? Drop us a comment down below. We love to hear your side of the story.

Tune in with us on our next blogs, where we will dig deeper into the software insights that you don’t want to miss. See you here, this time next week!

To manage your hotel effectively, here are the 12 key metrics that you need to understand. In the challenging year of 2021, improving the following 12 metrics is even more essential to growing your business.

1. Average Occupancy Rate – AOR

What is the AOR?

AOR is the percentage of occupied rooms compared to the total number of hotel rooms in a given period. The AOR is one of the most important indicators as it shows the hotels’ performance. The AOR index is the foundation to calculate the GOPPAR index. Ideally, the AOR should be 65% or more in a year.

AOR formula:

(Total number of rooms occupied) ÷ (Total number of available rooms) x 100 =% AOR

Example: 

In one month, your hotel has 65 rooms occupied out of 100. So, your AOR for that month will be:

65 used rooms ÷ 100 existing rooms = 65% AOR

How to improve the average occupancy?

• Special treats for returning guests

Collect and save your customer information to build a personalized experience, loyalty program to attract more returning guests. 

• Hotel chain

For business travelers, you can consider opening a hotel chain with properties in strategic locations. This tactic will diversify your brand.

• Special promotions

Create an exclusive offer for each targeted group of customers to attract them to your property.

2. Average Daily Rate – ADR

What is ADR?

ADR describes the average daily income per paid occupied room. ADR is used to measure the business performance of your hotel.

The formula for calculating ADR index: 

(Average room revenue earned) ÷ (Number of rooms booked) = ADR 

Example: If your hotel makes $20,000 in room revenue by booking out 200 rooms, then your ADR would be: $20,000 room revenue ÷ 200 rooms booked = $100 ADR

Note: When calculating ADR, do not include the formula for unpaid rooms, non-paid rooms for staff, etc.

How to improve ADR?

• Increase room rates

One of the simplest ways to improve your ADR is to increase room rates. However, you need to carefully consider the pricing strategy to come up with a reasonable increase.

• Focus on potential customers

OTA sites are great sources of information about potential customers who have a high ADR. Business travelers, for example, are often seen as high-value customers. Focus on attracting these customers would improve your ADR.

3. Revenue Per Available Room – RevPAR

What is the RevPAR Index?

RevPAR is one of the important metrics. This index shows the revenue per available room (both occupied and unoccupied rooms).

Difference between ADR and RevPAR:

The ADR only shows the revenue from occupied rooms, while RevPAR presents room revenues and hotel reservation rates. In other words, the RevPAR index shows a big picture of the actual room revenue performance based on the number of rooms of a hotel.

RevPAR formula:

Average daily rate (ADR) x Average occupancy rate (AOR) = RevPAR

Or

Room revenues ÷ Available rooms for sale = RevPAR

Example:

If you have 200 rooms, with an ADR average daily room rate of $ 100 and an average occupancy of 80%, total revenue is $ 16,000, RevPAR would be calculated like this:

$ 100 (ADR) x 80% (AOR) = $ 80 (RevPAR)

$ 16,000 (Room revenue) / 200 (Available Rooms) = $ 80 (RevPAR)

How to improve your RevPAR metrics?

• Adjust room rates based on market demand

To increase your RevPAR, you need to improve your ADR and AOR. You can decrease low-season room rates to increase your AOR and increase your room rates during the high season to boost your ADR, and overall improve your RevPAR.

• Discount offers

Different offers for different seasons or holidays are always attracting guests’ attention. Such as wedding packages including rooms and romantic dinners; or family packages for Christmas or summertime.

• Upselling strategy

One of the strategies to improve your RevPAR indicator effectively is upselling. You can provide other services such as breakfast in bed, room upgrades…Upselling not only encourages guests to spend more on your property but also leverages their experience.

4. Total Revenue Per Available Room – TrevPAR

What is TrevPAR?

If hotel-related KPIs are as diverse as they are numerous, then TRevPAR or total revenue per available room is the rainbow-flavored ice cream of performance metrics. TrevPAR shows the total revenue from every service brought to a hotel.

The difference between TrevPAR and RevPAR:

TrevPAR shows the total revenue from each guest stay, including services and purchases such as restaurants, spas, and bars. Meanwhile, RevPAR only shows the revenue from rent rooms.

TrevPAR formula:

(Total revenue) ÷ (Total number of available rooms) = TrevPAR

Example:

Let say you own a hotel with 30 rooms. Last month, total hotel revenue included dining, bar, and other services were $30000. The TrevPAR index is calculated as follow:

$ 30000 total revenue ÷ 30 rooms = $ 1000 TrevPAR

How to improve the TrevPAR indicator?

• Save guest profiles

Collect your guests’ information is essential for improving the guest experience and encouraging them to use more services during their stay. For example, information like traveling style, favorite room, favorite food, activities, special needs…By understanding your guests, you can deliver a better experience.

• Improve your services

The most obvious way to increase your TrevPAR index is to improve the services of your hotel. You want to make sure that the food is good, the spa is clean, and delivers exceptional services.

• Upselling strategy

You can apply an upselling strategy to the services that you offer in your hotel: special parking areas, room upgrades, spa packages, and so on.

5. Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room – GopPAR

What is the GopPAR?

GopPAR looks at the performance of your hotel via revenues and expenses. GopPAR can tell you a lot about the financial health of your hotel.

The difference between TrevPAR and GopPAR:

TrevPAR gives you an overview of how the business is doing across the board based on revenue. Meanwhile, GopPAR goes a step further and looks at how your hotel is doing in terms of operational performance. Based on the TrevPAR index, you will see that the hotel is doing very well with great sales. However, if the operating costs are too high, the GopPAR metric will show that the actual profit is not as you expected, and you will have to keep your operating costs under control.

GopPAR formula:

(Gross revenue) – (Operating expenses) = Gross Operating Revenue (GOR)

(Gross Operating Revenue) ÷ (Total number of available rooms) = GopPAR

Example:

Assuming you have 10 rooms, your gross operating revenue (GOR) last year was $100,000. The calculation of the GopPAR is as follows:

$100,000 GOR ÷ 10 rooms = $10,000 GopPAR

How to improve GopPAR Index?

• Boost your revenue

Increasing hotel revenue would result in increasing the GopPAR. There are several ways to do it. For example, adjusting room rates, create add-on packages…However, you want to plan a pricing strategy that matches the quality of the service you provide.

• Minimize operating costs

In addition to increasing your revenue, cutting your operating costs will also improve your GopPAR. Using modern management software and applying technology in daily operations can help to cut costs. Note that cutting operating costs must not affect your guests’ experience.

6. Average Length of Stay – ALOS

What is ALOS?

ALOS stands for Average Length of Stay. In other words, this is the metric that represents the average number of night guests staying at your hotel. By tracking the ALOS index, you can find out if your guests stay shorter or longer than usual. As a result, you can encourage longer stays at your hotel.

ALOS formula:

(Total occupied room nights) ÷ (Total number of bookings) = ALOS

Example:

Let us say you had 60 room nights and 12 bookings in the previous month. So, the ALOS in that month will be 60 ÷ 12 = 5 nights.

How to improve ALOS?

• Setting a minimum length of stay

A quick way to increase ALOS is to set a minimum length of stay (02 nights, 03 nights, etc.). This will significantly improve the ALOS, especially in the low season.

• Flexible pricing policy

You can offer promotions for longer stays. For example, a discount of 5% for guests staying 05 nights or more. 

Catch on to the rest of the metrics in the next article: “The revenue management metrics every hotel owner needs to know (Part 2)” to learn about 06 other important metrics in measuring your hotel business.

Travel agencies (TAs) are an important channel, contributing a lot of sales for hotels, besides online travel agencies (OTAs) or direct booking. Depending on your business size, the number of travel agencies you have can vary from a handful to dozens. When it comes to booking management, this can be a hassle for both sides. Hoteliers could have a difficult time controlling the inventory between agencies and making sure room, and rate information are correct. On the other hand, travel agencies are struggling to get the best rooms at the best rates available. Phone call reservation with the hotel is time-consuming and not effective as information is quickly outdated.

A booking portal or a reservation system was created to bridge this gap and remove the difficulties for agencies and hotels from making reservations.

How it works

A Booking Portal plays the role of a middleman. It is a platform between agencies and hotels where agencies can place direct bookings.

• For travel agencies

With the Booking Portal, agencies can check real-time information of inventories, rate plans for them from the hotel. They can search, book easily and instantly. Also, there are options to view booking history, make adjustments, add or cancel reservations. All in one platform, no hassle, no delay.

• For hotels

The software makes life easier for hoteliers in managing travel agent profiles and their bookings. You can make sure the information is always in sync, and you can check the performance of any agency in no time.

Managing booking through agencies is easy with the Booking Portal

Benefits of the Booking Portal

• Remove manual processes
  One platform for all activities: check, book, edit, and even cancel. Everything is quick after few clicks, no phone call, no waiting time, and no error. The process is now automated with real-time data and updates for both sides.
• Reduce overbookings
  Agencies can only book rooms and rates available for them. Having a central pool of inventories helps hotels reduce the risk of overbookings.
• Increase revenue for both
  As people said a satisfied customer is the best business strategy. Through a booking portal, hoteliers make it easy for travel agents to satisfy their guests’ demands, which returns in a win-win situation for both hotels and travel agencies.

Do I need one?

There is no correct answer to this question, but it all depends on your TA network. If you find it taking too much time and effort with your current way of doing things, probably it’s time to consider having a booking portal.

Contact us now for a free consultation about Booking Portal!

The Food and Beverage industry is one of the fastest-growing businesses in Vietnam. Whether you are running a coffee shop or a restaurant chain, you need a management system to help run and manage your business effectively. Why you need one, and what are the benefits a system can bring for your business? We will discuss these points in this article.

What an F&B management system can do

This software is built to support all restaurant operations and can apply to almost all business models. Here are some of the main features:

• Manage all your restaurant information: floor plan, area map, table setup, menu, promotions, and so on
• Connect and synchronize all POS devices
• You can split – combine orders, view order history, apply for promotions, send orders to kitchen printers or kitchen display units
• Manage employee & work shift

Besides, for hotels and hotel chains, an F&B system must have the ability to integrate with PMS to allow in-room charge.

What are the benefits?

• Save operation time and costs: All operational activities, from creating orders, printing bills to sending invoices, can be done quickly right on a POS device or mobile application. Your staff can serve guests smoothly and deliver excellent hospitality.
• Minimize errors: All the data is updated and synchronized between POS and kitchen printers. And this helps to remove the risk of wrong orders which could bring disappointment to your guests.
• Better business management: knowing your business performance at the right time with the correct data is very important. What you can count on as an F&B software is its clear dashboard and comprehensive reports. Just a glare to know how the business is going.
• Improve customer service: serve your guests better with a system that handles all your operation needs, so your staff can spend more time with the guests.

Select one for your restaurant

No matter what size or scale of your restaurant operations may be, the right management system is your most reliable source when it comes to both efficient operations and optimal growth. Here are points you should consider when selecting a system

1. Data transparency
   You want to make sure that the system gives you real-time data; across businesses. A restaurant manager needs to know what’s going on all the time. It is critical to have real-time data as you may need timely action when problems arise.
2. Easy to use
   No one wants a complicated system that takes months to master. Check the system interface before you decide to buy one. To make sure the interface is user-friendly, clean, and easy to understand.
3. Scalability
   Choose a system that can support your growth and geographic expansion in the long-run. You don’t want to keep changing the software as your business expands, as it will cost you a lot.

If you still have questions regarding choosing the right F&B system for your restaurant, don’t hesitate to contact our consultant team for further advice.

As a hotelier, having as many distribution channels as possible can guarantee to bring revenue for your business. However, as bookings start pouring in, managing these channels can be painful.

It is vitally important that you need a system that connects all channels from walk-in to online travel agents. In this article, we will discuss how our CRS can come to rescue you.

What is CRS?

CRS, or central reservation system, is a system that lies at the heart of a hotel’s function. The system contains hotel data like availability, rooms, rate plans, inventory, and helps to distribute that info to all distribution channels. Also, it synchronizes reservations and transactions.

Differenced between PMS, CRS, and channel manager

A property management system, or PMS, is all about operations. It manages all operational activities in a hotel from reception to accounting.

And normally, CRS is the main module of a PMS. It, of course, can be a stand-alone solution.

A Channel manager controls all distribution channels like OTAs, metasearch sites, GDSs. It connects to PMS, collects data from CRS, and re-distributes across channels. As rooms get booked, the inventory information is synced throughout all channels to prevent overbooking.

Main functions of a hotel CRS

• Reservation management: an executive dashboard shows detailed reservation & revenue reports, filtered by channels and properties.
• Support various payment gateways and card issuers.
• Cancellations and refunds management

Implementing a CRS increases efficiency due to the automation of numerous processes. Combining CRS with a Channel Manager system, you can effortlessly expand your opportunities to reach millions of potential guests globally at a low cost. Having a CRS also helps to set up a booking engine for your hotel to boost direct bookings.

Another benefit is better business management. Revenue reports are real-time updated, and comprehensive. You can easily see the performance from different channels and quickly adjust your sale strategy. As for hotel chains, a CRS can be useful as managers could have revenue reports from any properties at any location.

In conclusion, to succeed in a hyper-competitive market, hotels need to invest in technology that helps them optimize and effectively manage their business. Having a powerful CRS gives you the advantage of expanding the distribution network, streaming all booking processes, and providing an excellent guest experience.

Contact us for more details and consultations about CRS.

What is Property Management System?

PMS or Property Management System is a software to manage all hotel operations. In other words, the PMS lies at the heart of hotels, collects information, and coordinates operations from booking, check-in and check-out, housekeeping, maintenance, billing, payments, and more. In today’s world, PMS is not just a tool to manage hotel operations but to deliver a better guest experience.

Cloud-based PMS can be accessed from any device

Currently, there are two popular types: On-premises PMS and Cloud PMS.

On-premises PMS:

On-premises or server-based PMS stores limited data in the local hotel. You will need an IT department to operate, maintain and upgrade the system. Besides, you will need to invest in workstations, data centers, and backup storage.

Cloud-based PMS:

A cloud-based PMS uses cloud computing. The software can be accessed anytime, from any device that is connecting to the Internet. Cloud-based PMS has lower capital costs, while it’s easier to run, upgrade, and backup.

The main functions of a PMS

In general, a PMS includes the following functions and features:

• Reservation management
• Night audit
• Housekeeping management
• Distribution channel management
• Revenue management
• Guest profile management
• Business reports and analyses
• Allotment management
• Maintenance management
• Point of sales

Why you need a PMS

Undoubtedly, emerging technologies impact everyone. Guests are now expecting more from hotels. Thus, a hotel must provide a smooth personal guest experience or even exceed their expectation to win their royalty. Traditional management will not get you far in this area, and having a PMS is the first step. A cloud hotel management system would bring you better benefits in the long run:

• Secured information and real-time updates
• Lower operation costs and easy to manage tasks
• Minimize human mistakes
• Know your guests better with a 360-degree guest profile feature
• Take no time to set up rate plans and distribute across channels
• Comprehensive business reports with real-time data

Before choosing your PMS

Picking a PMS vendor depends on your operational scope and needs. Note down what you are looking for and answer the following questions:

• What kind of features does the software cover? Do they resolve your problems?
• How much does it cost? Any hidden cost?
• Is the software easy to use and mobile-friendly?
• Does the system comply with security standards?
• Does the supplier provide comprehensive customer support service?

Choosing the right PMS is critical as it can make or break your hotel operations. If you are looking for one, contact us to get a free consultation.

What is a Channel Manager?

A Channel Manager is a utility software that connects hotels to all online distribution channels and manages bookings from these channels.

Channel Managers can connect to dozens or hundreds of sales channels, global OTAs channels. It’s a powerful tool to boost your bookings while automatically updating and synchronizing your information in real-time on all channels.

How does Channel Manager work?

Thanks to the emerging technologies, travelers prefer to book their stays online, we see the rise of online booking agents (OTAs) such as Agoda, Booking.com, or Expedia. In the old way of doing, hoteliers would go and negotiate with each of these OTAs and then manage their bookings separately.

Channel Managers were created to remove these hassles, to help hoteliers get a better chance to enter new market places without losing revenue. Through Channel Manager, you can sell your inventory via online distribution channels around the world.

• Close/open inventory quickly

• Update room, rate plans, availability in real-time

Fully integrated with other distribution channels and 3rd party software let you automate business process without maing human mistakes

Channel Manager can act as a stand-alone system connecting distribution channels with your hotel, or even better, it can be integrated with the hotel’s PMS to fully automate your operations.

As an independent system:

You will have an account to access the Channel Manager dashboard where you can manage information such as room rates, room availability, and promotions. Channel Manager will automatically update this information for every channel. Because it operates independently, you have to monitor the Channel Manager dashboard regularly and manually update bookings to the PMS system (if any).

PMS integration:

• One-way integration: with this, once a booking is created, Channel Manager will send this information to your PMS.
• Two-way integration: The two-way integration between Channel Manager and PMS means room availability and room rates will be updated from PMS to Channel Manager and vice versa in real-time. This way will save you a lot of time in operations between two systems.

Channel Manager works independently or integrates 2-way with PMS system

Why you need a Channel Manager

Minimize operation time: a channel manager can integrate with your property management system or central reservations system as well as a booking engine to create a central control for your bookings.

Remove manual processes: with Channel Manager systems, you can say goodbye to manual data entry, which is time-consuming, and sometimes, creates errors. Besides, you will reduce the risk of overbookings as guests can only book a room that is actually available.

Increase profit, improve brand recognition: a channel manager can help you put your brand into the new markets, and there is a good chance that travelers will first discover your hotel on one of the top online travel channels. Connect to more online channels, more online bookings.

In short, a channel manager is a powerful tool to boost your bookings and revenue, while making life easy for you to manage inventories across distribution channels. Should you need further information on Channel Manager solutions, feel free to contact us!