A channel manager is software that connects a hotel's system to the sites that sell its rooms. It sends your prices and the number of free rooms to each OTA, such as Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb and Agoda, and brings their bookings back into your PMS.
What it does
- Availability out. When a room is booked anywhere, the channel manager lowers the free count on every other site.
- Prices and restrictions out. A price change or a minimum stay set once reaches every connected site.
- Bookings in. A booking made on an OTA arrives in the PMS as a reservation, with the guest, dates, room type and price.
Worked example
A 10-room guesthouse lists on two OTAs and takes direct bookings. On a Saturday it has 1 room left. A guest books it on the first OTA at 14:00. Without a channel manager, the room still shows as free on the second OTA until someone closes it by hand. If a second guest books it there at 14:05, the property has an overbooking. With a channel manager, the free count on the second OTA drops to 0 within moments of the first booking.
Why it matters to a small property
A small team cannot watch several extranets all day. A channel manager removes the typing and the risk of selling one room twice, and it lets you change a season's prices in one place.
A channel manager works with a PMS, not instead of one: the PMS holds the reservations, folios and room status, and the channel manager carries availability and bookings between the PMS and the OTAs.
LobbyMind connects to a channel manager from its App store. Your rates and seasons go out to the channels, and their bookings arrive on the reservations calendar.