SiteMinder Channel Manager

Hoteliers have to wear multiple hats to ensure that their operation is done effectively and efficiently. However, this often comes at a cost. It is important to mention that some of the daily operations and workload can be time-consuming and often cause delays. However, thanks to the smart hotel technology, it allows hoteliers to run their operation with cost-saving and bring more opportunities to increase revenue. One of the important tools to support your hotel operation smoothly and effectively is the Channel Manager.

What is Channel Manager?

Channel Manager is the tool that could help the hotelier to effectively manage all room inventory and rates, and distribute to all connected OTAs without having the front desk staff do it manually. However, if you are a small independent hotel with only a couple of rooms (i.e less than 20 rooms), you probably do not need a channel manager. A channel manager helps hotels with more than 20 rooms effectively in syncing the room availability and rates across all OTAs to avoid overbooking and reduce time costs. You may read this blog post about the reasons why hotels should invest in a Channel Manager.  

What can a hotel do with a Channel Manager?

With the channel manager, it increases hotel occupancy, optimises revenue, saves time, and boosts direct booking. For instance, it helps hotels to promote and distribute rooms online with the ability to connect to various booking channels. Additionally, hoteliers could manage or amend the room rates according to the demand and monitor the rate parity across multiple channels in real-time and simultaneously.

Hotels will receive confirmation of bookings without the need to deal with guest queries. The support from Channel Manager could also reduce the likelihood of overbooking as it will update automatically for the booking made from each OTAs. It could also help hotels to define the top-performing channels and create a strategy to optimize the revenue from that channel. For example, hotels analyze data collected from each OTAs performance to make a future decision on which partners they want to list on the channel. A channel manager will aid this strategy by storing all your booking data and gathering it into monthly reports. To put it simply, it allows you to sell your rooms in various ways to maximise your business profit. 

In this technology era, there are a lot of channel manager providers in the market. Each of the channel manager providers has its own benefits and challenges to carry out them. In this blog, we will highlight one of the outstanding Channel Manager providers, which is SiteMinder, and explain their features and both advantages and disadvantages. To choose the right channel manager that is best suited to your company, please refer to this blog post. 

SiteMinder Channel Manager

SiteMinder’s Channel Manager is a leading cloud platform that provides two-way connections to more than 400 distribution channels to connect guests locally and globally. It is also allowed to integrate with over 230 leading property management systems (PMSs), Booking Engine, RMSs, CRSs, and many hotel technology solutions in real-time. Softinn PMS real-time integration with SiteMinder Channel Manager ensures your rooms are updated for bookings in every single time.

To explore more about the Integration of Softinn PMS and Channel Manager, please read this blog post. With the integration of SiteMinder’s Channel Manager with PMS and Booking Engine, it allows hotels to optimize booking and revenue by distributing the rooms in online distribution and direct by the hotels own website with the Billboard Effect. 

Key Features

There are various features in the SiteMinder Channel Manager. The key function of the SiteMinder Channel Manager are:

• Offering a single online dashboard to analyze the performance of all your online distribution channels
• Providing two-way integration with the hotel management system and PMS partners
• Able to connect with the most leading global distribution system (GDS) which can help to promote your inventory globally
• Providing pooled inventory models across all booking channels to increase your hotel’s booking without the risk of overbookings. For instance, you can display the maximum number of available rooms in all your channel sites to avoid the risk of overbookings
• The changes of bookings availability will be updated automatically in all connected OTAs in real-time which can broaden your global reach and increase your revenue
• Able to do channel self-mapping for any room types for PMS or CRS through your online channel
• Able to calculate the rate conversion of the currency for each of your channels
• Providing Channel Analysis dashboard from every single guest experience to better forecast the seasonal fluctuation
  
  

Pros & Cons

Advantages of SiteMinder’s Channel Manager:

• Saves your time and reduce manpower costs
• Minimizing manual data entry error
• Avoid overbookings or double-booking
• Able to connect to global guests across individual booking sites to maximize bookings
• Able to customize the room rates and plans and restrictions for each room type
• Ensure the rate parity compliance and take back full control of your commission 
• Able to seamless with existing hotel systems and also integrate with new booking sites
• Easy to monitor channel performance
• Multi-currency support 
• 14-days free trial for the channel manager software
• Able to connect with unlimited channels (no additional costs)
• User-friendly dashboard 
• Onboarding training from the very beginning of the free trial phase via phone, video call, or video tutorials

Cons:

Everything has its pros and cons, we should not be blind to its disadvantages. Below are the challenges and issues of integrating with SiteMinder’s Channel Manager:

• Limited payment collection options
• Slow customer service support 
  
  

Conclusion

With a channel manager, hotels could save time and money and reduce potential hassles. Hotels can show their room’s availability and rates online no matter where they are to reach locally and globally. Start by checking out the awesome Channel Manager features that we offer and requesting a free trial.