What is a Channel Manager?

A Channel Manager is a powerful piece of software that provides a connection between the Property Management Software of your hotel or bed & breakfast and the websites of the OTA's (Online Travel Agency). With a Channel Manager you ensure that the availability of your rooms is visible on websites such as Booking.com, Expedia or AirBnB. When changes are made to the Property Management System, these will be immediately visible on the websites of the desired Online Travel Agency (thanks to the hotel Channel Manager software). It is possible to work without a Channel Manager for hotels, only this costs a lot of time and the chance of overbookings will increase. If you want to make the rooms available on multiple external online platforms, then it is advisable to use a user-friendly hotel Channel Manager.

Benefits of a Channel Manager

Why would you choose to use a Channel Manager, what are the benefits? The main advantage of a Channel Management system is that the number of overbookings is minimized. An overbooking is the biggest annoyance of any hotelier, which takes a lot of time to solve it. With a channel manager, all external booking channels are linked to the PMS. So if a room (via any channel) is booked, then the room availability is immediately changed on the OTA websites. Another advantage of a Channel Manager is that you can get a higher occupancy rate. Are not enough rooms booked through Booking.com? Then you can make room availability available on websites such as Hotels.nl, HotelSpecials.nl or Expedia in no time. Ideal for achieving higher sales.

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One central point

With a Channel Manager you manage all booking channels in just one program, namely the Property Management System. It does not matter which external booking channels you use, if you adjust a price in the PMS then it is implemented directly. If a room is booked by telephone, you can adjust this in the Property Management System and the Channel Manager ensures that the availability is adjusted realtime on the external booking channels. Ideal to save a lot of time and avoid those annoying overbookings. Do you want to use a last-minute discount at the last minute to get a higher occupancy rate? No problem, make a rule for it in the PMS and the discount is immediately implemented on the websites of the online travel agences. Is a booking canceled from one of the external booking channels? The Channel Management system of RoomRaccoon is one of the few hotel Channel Managers to implement this directly in the Property Management System. In this way the canceled room can be booked directly on the connected booking channels.

Doubts about a Channel Manager?

Are you the owner of a Bed & Breakfast or do you own a small hotel? Then you can always ask yourself if you want to use a Channel Manager system. On the one hand you can save some monthly costs and if you do not use external booking channels you do not have to pay commission costs. But on the other hand, a Channel Management system is a very powerful (marketing) instrument to achieve a higher capacity utilization and therefore more turnover. From RoomRaccoon we therefore advise you to use a channel manager. Do you want to pay as little commission as possible to Booking.com or Expedia? Then you can, for example, use a different room rate, then the price on an external booking channel is slightly higher than the normal price so that it is easier to pay the commission costs. In short: A hotel booking Channel Manager is ideal to use your room range as widely as possible so that you can achieve a higher occupancy rate. And of course, no more overbookings!

Start saving time now

With a Channel Manager system you can really save a lot of time. In no time your offer is on your selection of OTAs. Manually adding rooms to booking.com is now a thing of the past.

No more overbookings

Thanks to the real-time synchronization, your room offer is updated immediately after a booking on all external booking channels and the booking engine. Say goodbye to overbookings!

Increase your occupancy rate

Want to increase the occupancy rate of your hotel? With the hotel Channel Manager you can quickly place your room availability to new booking channels. Empty rooms cost money after all!

Real-time synchronization

Thanks to automatic synchronization, your room availability on booking channels remains up-to-date. If a guest cancels a room, it will be immediately available on the other OTA websites.