It should be noted that even a small hotel required the services of a channel manager. A small hotel can be considered a boutique hotel, motel, and Inn with 10 to 100 rooms. Imagine that constant monitoring and updating booking channels like Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, and others could be an unsustainable drain on cost and time to hoteliers. Consider how long it takes you to log into each third-party channel's dashboard and amend it manually.

Engaging a cloud-based channel manager to help you manage your properties is a key growth driver. It will help you to improve your hotel's efficiency, thus, resulting in more guests and more hotel revenues. There are a lot of channel manager providers in the market, thus it is critical to ensure that you have done enough research on which channel manager you should invest in for your small hotel.

What is a hotel channel manager?

A Hotel Channel Manager is a hotel software that helps you to better manage your property’s room inventories across different booking channels. The channel manager is able to deliver a real-time update on room availability, pricing, and restrictions to connected OTAs.

Read also: Hotel Channel Manager 

Questions you should ask your potential Channel Manager provider

By asking the right questions to your potential hotel channel manager providers is important. This will help you to determine whether you are choosing the right hotel channel manager provider for your hotel or not.

1. 1. Is the channel manager integrated with your current PMS or Booking Engine?
   2. Does the channel manager provide you with a comprehensive performance report?
   3. Is the channel manager price beyond or within your budget?
   4. Are there any charges for the channel manager account set up?
   5. Is there any training provided and account setup support?
      
      

3 Best Hotel Channel Managers for Small Hotels

1. Beds24

   Price: Starting from €2.00 per property every month, plus a fee for each OTA link connection of one room type.

   Provide a Free Trial for 14 days

   Beds24 is one of the affordable and reliable channel managers on the market, with over 50 channels and approved 2-way connections. Their channel manager is designed for small to midsize properties such as hotels, inns, vacation rental, B&B, and so on. Beds24 provides different services for hotel inventory (rooms, room types), vacation rentals, and hostels, as well as the ability to manage multiple properties from a single account. Beds24 users are expected to be more self-service in the account setup. They provide plenty of user guides on their website for their users to refer to.

   Key Features:
   • Google Calendar API connection
     • This feature provides two-way sync with google calendar for bookings and events. 
     • In fact, Bookings on Beds24.com can be exported to Google Calendar as events. They can also import scheduled events from Google Calendar as bookings.
   • Two-way XML integrations
     • Two-way XML connections with channels such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, and other leading OTAs export prices and inventory in real-time.
   • Content management
     • You can add new listings and update photographs, descriptions, amenities, and other information directly to all connected booking sites.
   • Yield Management
     • Modify pricing automatically based on availability and occupancy to optimise revenue on all booking channels.
       
       

2. eZee Centric

   Price: Starting from $39.00 Per month (Price differs based on the number of hotel rooms)

   Free Trial for 14 days

   eZee Centrix Hotel Channel Manager has connected with over 100 OTAs. It has an app for both android and iPhone users to support your channel manager on the go. This software is designed for properties with 10 to 1000 rooms such as Hotel, Resort, Motel, BnB, or Hotel Chains.

   Features:
   • Foreign currency rate updates
     • You have the ability to accept foreign currency from travel sites, agents, and guests and help you in converting the amount in local currency with the latest exchange rate.
   • API Integration 
     • This feature enables you to easily connect the channel manager to a variety of third-party solutions such as PMS and Booking Engine which are most likely needed for small hotels.
   • Rate management 
     • Their online channel manager is able to synchronise the master rate plans with derived rates. 
     • As a result, if you make changes to the master rate plan, the system will automatically update the changes to the derived rate plan.
   • Channel analytics 
     • You can easily analyse the performance of connected channels based on their revenue and bookings anytime from anywhere 
     • As a result, have better future strategies and plans
     • The Rate Shopper tool allows you to examine your competitor's real-time rates gathered from various connected channels and forecast their rates for the next 30 days. 
     • As a result, you are up to date on the marketplace, allowing you to develop competitive pricing strategies for your hotel and optimise revenue.
       
       

3. Softinn Channel Manager

   Price: Starting from $40 per month. Prices differ based on the number of hotel rooms. It will be billed yearly. 

   Has Free Trial for 14 days

   Softinn Channel Manager is an all-in-one solution for boutique hotels and resorts. Through two-way connections with 80 online travel agencies, the software helps hoteliers to avoid overbooking cases and reduces human labour. Besides, they are able to integrate with Softinn PMS which will be helpful to automate and sync all the reservations received from the OTAs. 

   Features:

   • Room Rates Management
     • With the Softinn Channel Manager, hoteliers could customize the room rates easily with just a few clicks and the room rates will be synced directly to the OTAs. Save time, save hassles. 
   • PMS connectivity (2-way integration)
     • PMS connectivity allows available information from PMS to be sent directly to your Channel Manager, and vice versa. Subsequently, information from the channel manager will sync to all connected OTAs, and vice versa. 
   • Self-service Mapping
     • Users are able to do the channel and room mapping easily from the dashboard and test the connection right away, all by themselves, with a step-by-step user guide.
   • Real-time Inventory update
     • All available rooms and book rooms from OTAs will be automatically updated. This will help save time, cost and avoid the risk of overbooking!
       
       

Conclusion

I hope our recommendations strike you as a good fit. To whichever Channel Manager you go with, it should make your hotel working life a lot easier.