How to Pick the Best Hotel Channel Manager?

An effective channel manager is considered to be an important component of revenue management solutions and plays a significant role in a hotel's overall business strategy. It allows hotels to manage room rates across multiple online distribution channels to avoid rate parity issues. It is important to understand rate and inventory management in detail to narrow down on a good hotel channel manager.

Here is a list of successful tips to how to select the best hotel channel manager that actually works for your hotel:

 

• The channel manager should be able to manage rates/inventory across multiple channels.
• Hotel market intelligence tools should connect all distribution channels, manage room types as well as render a good insight to develop connections as per demand.
• Analyze the time taken by channels to get added on to an existing set within seconds. Besides, the basis of selecting channels needs to be understood well.
• This software must pull data from extranets easily and quickly; moreover, the hotel's inventory and rate overview must be clearly visible. Push-only systems should be avoided as they are inaccurate.
• A smart channel manager should manage the information such as rates, inventory, MLOS (minimum length of stay), available inventory and arrival, smartly.
• Restrictions at extranet level should be handled smartly and it needs to get displayed on the dashboard of the channel management tool. Rules pertaining to individual extranets are generally built in.
• If event dates get displayed, then it is always better!
• The system's training needs to be provided before one buys the channel management software. Ensure that multiple trainings are in the pipeline for the team and these are scheduled both before and after the software purchase. Additionally, inquire about the customer support process. If the provider renders 24x7 support, then this hotel business intelligence suite is good to go.
• Last but not the least, inquire about the user levels present for multiple personnel and department. There has to be access for a standalone function, such as inventory management. 

 

Thus, rates of a hotel's inventory are managed at on the basis of factors such as date, channel type, room category and rate level. Some of these rate strategies can be automated; but one has to understand the implementation methodology behind hotel revenue management and only then choose a channel manager.

It is evident that the hotel industry is now realizing the importance of smart bots and APIs. No wonder scores of properties across the world deploy hotel channel management tools on a daily basis today. After all, everyone wants a solid hotel revenue management system to escalate the business bottom line. 

Source : articlesbase.com