Despite all the complexities in the Hotel business, hotels should attract guests; sell more rooms to drive revenue. But then, how do they do it when many buyers today rely heavily on hundreds of OTAs to find the right hotel? Well, the answer is simple. Hotels must have an enhanced online presence. This means, hotels must be visible on online platforms to attract the attention of potential bookers. This is where; a hotel channel management solution can help users quite effectively.

What is hotel channel management?

OTAs generate around 80% of bookings for hotels globally. That’s why; a hotel relies overwhelmingly on OTAs to attract more guests to ensure increased bookings. Additionally, every hotel today is connected to multiple OTAs. Because of this, a hotel needs to update its inventory and pricing across all the connected OTAs. Hotels cannot accomplish this cumbersome job manually. In this case, adoption of a channel management solution works well for the hotel.

Hotel channel management solution helps users manage and distribute inventory and pricing across all the connected OTAs. Thus, it reduces the effort, time and costs a hotel usually takes to update inventory and pricing across all the channels. Moreover, when a booking is done on any of the channels, the channel manager updates all the channels accordingly. Most importantly, it helps the hotel to push up-to-date rates and availability to all the OTAs.

Benefits of hotel channel management solution

• Automatically updates room availability and pricing across multiple booking channels – OTAs
• Helps hotels organize reservations received from across different channels
• Helps hotel avoid issues related to over booking and rate parity
• Ultimately helps hotels increase its online visibility

Features to look for in a hotel channel management solution

Looking for a hotel channel management solution for your properties’ extensive online distribution? Here are the points you should consider before adopting one –

• Apart from being connected to all leading and major OTAs, the channel manager solution should allow you to add more channels easily. As a matter of fact, distributing rates and inventory on more channels can lead to higher room bookings and enhanced online visibility.
• It should allow you to evaluate the performance – bookings and revenue generated by each and every channel your hotel is connected to. Thus, you can easily allocate more rooms to your best performing channels to grow room sales.
• It must assist you create rules to change the prices of rooms based on availability.

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