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Hotel channel manager is an invaluable software in your marketing arsenal. It is a “control room” for all the online channels you use for customer interaction and it allows you to manage room allotment, selling price and reporting as well as all the various booking channels your hotel is connected to.
There is no doubt that the hotel channel manager matters for online bookings since the online distribution channels play an important role in the hotel industry. With the advent of digital commerce, hotels are getting more and more clients from your domestic guests as well as international clients. The success of the hotel industry is greatly determined by how well hoteliers can reach out to their clients through online marketing channels. In other words, hotels need to be able to attract customers from different channels.
Trying to manage all the booking channels can be quite a challenge, but it can be done with the help of channel manager software. Channel Manager software allows managing all booking channels, ranging from OTAs, GDS to Internet Booking Engines. This article will talk about what channel manager software is and why it is important for hotel online bookings.
A channel manager is an online reservation management tool that enables you to create, edit and manage your hotel inventory on all major direct booking channels. It gives you the opportunity to upload your availability, rate and track bookings from one place.
Our channel manager usually has a feed that automatically updates your inventory, which you need to connect to other channels, like Agoda, Expedia or Booking. This way, you only need to update the channel once and it will get updated on all other sites as well.
A channel manager allows you to connect your hotel inventory with multiple online booking channels without having to make any changes or updates to the information that is already stored in the reservations system of the channel. It allows you to analyze the top-performing channels and how you can optimize your connections so that you can make more revenue at your hotel.
It helps you to make sure you are getting the most out of your online presence by providing real-time views of all active booking requests, bookings and cancellations. You can manage all these important customer details through an easy-to-use system.
Using a channel manager will eliminate the need for you to manage individual extranets, which can be time-consuming, expensive and inconvenient. Instead, you’ll have one dashboard where you can quickly access all of your inventory and rates so that they’re always up-to-date.
Channel manager is a tool that provides a centralized view of all channels, helping to effectively execute sales & marketing strategies through additional booking channels without increasing workload. As the distribution network increases, the convenience of managing and monitoring the channels remains.
It helps to reduce labour costs. The channel manager allows businesses to have control over their products and services while they also provide assistance to their customers by addressing their concerns regarding product availability, pricing and delivery.
Channel managers offer a lot of advantages to hoteliers. One of the most crucial benefits is that they help you consolidate your selling rates. Some people think that their unique selling proposition is their product itself. Usually, this isn’t true because guests have personal preferences and taste in mind when they are making a reservation.
Their purchasing decision is based on multiple elements, like the design of your website, guests reviews and especially the competitive prices. With a channel manager, you get an overview of all the selling rates offered by different distribution channels or your own website. Then you can decide for yourself which price is best for every retailer without having to do all the tedious calculations yourself. If you are running a limited-time special offer with your branded website, you can use this advantage to persuade your direct customers to book right away because they know that there is no other distributor offering a lower rate at this point in time. This will leave a positive impact on them and most likely bring them back in the future.
There is no one-size-fits-all service provider, however, key factors that you have to take into consideration are the number of rooms your hotel has, channels to connect, other applications that you are using and your budget.
Having an after-sale customer service program in place that is top-notch and readily available to help resolve any issues your customers may have with their purchase will go a long way towards boosting your sales.
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When choosing a channel manager, make sure that it can support all types of channels or at least the most popular ones. In the current situation, where you have to maximize your resources, using the channel manager that offers the most exposure is ideal. Click to find out the number of distributions by using Web Connection channel manager. Since we realize how hotel channel manager matters for online bookings, we have a 2-week trial period for you.
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