Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

• 1. What is Hotel Channel Management Software?
• 2. The benefits of Hotel Channel Management Software
• 3. Typical features of Hotel Channel Management Software
• 4. The cost of Hotel Channel Management Software
• 5. Considerations when purchasing Hotel Channel Management Software
• 6. Relevant Hotel Channel Management Software trends

1. What is Hotel Channel Management Software?

Hotel channel management software is a platform for hoteliers to manage room availability and rates across distribution channels and third-party booking websites. It also lets them connect with agents, who get access to real-time room availability for reselling the rooms at a fixed commission.

2. The benefits of Hotel Channel Management Software

• Avoid overbookings with one integrated system: Manage multiple booking channels from one dashboard. Integrate this software with your property management system and booking engine to ensure accuracy in data at all times.
• Get real-time updates: Sync with multiple online travel agencies and offer real-time updates on bookings done via these channels. Update your rates, availability, and track all reservations as well as payments from the unified dashboard.
• Make better decisions: Generate reports about reservations such as booking and cancellation trends. These reports can help you make decisions about selecting channels, setting prices, and analyzing booking trends.

3. Typical features of Hotel Channel Management Software

• Multichannel sync: View and manage all the leads received from various distribution channels on a single, unified dashboard.
• Reservations management: Create and manage bookings as well as keep a track of the booking statuses.
• Inventory management: Track and manage the availability of your hotel rooms to avoid overbooking and maximize your occupancy rates.
• Rate management: Set the prices across multiple channels to optimize your revenue potential. Regularly track these prices as per the demand and season.
• Reporting/analytics: Generate reports to view and analyze channel performance as well as identify booking trends.

4. The cost of Hotel Channel Management Software

Most products in the market are priced on a “per month” basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on the starting prices.

Price ranges*:

• $25 - $35
• $35 - $75
• $75+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of June 21, 2019. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features such as revenue management, payment processing, and multi-property administration.

5. Considerations when purchasing Hotel Channel Management Software

• Integration with your property management system: Find out whether the hotel channel management software integrates with your property management software. An integrated channel management program allows you to view your availability in real time. It will also allow visitors to see the vacant rooms, beds, or properties.
• Synchronization with online travel agents (OTAs): Check the type of synchronization with online travel agents. You can synchronize data using a direct XML feed or scraping. Direct XML provides constant updates and availability to your OTAs, that then set timed criteria to ensure rate parity. Scraping is automated software that pulls availability and automatically updates the channel once a day.
• Additional costs and fees: Ask the vendor whether they charge additional fees for each booking, or a percentage of the channel revenue. The software could charge you per channel, per reservation, or even a flat monthly fee.
• Centralized content management: Inform visitors about your hotel, including the policies, terms and conditions, and facilities, nearby attractions, and hours of operation. The software should let you edit this content across all channels at once.

6. Relevant Hotel Channel Management Software trends

• Blockchain to replace OTAs: Many hotels are experimenting with blockchain as a distribution channel, which could potentially eliminate the need for OTAs. The technology will keep a centralized record of vacancies and rates. This means hotels won’t have to pay huge commissions to third-party distribution channels. However, blockchain is still new and its adoption as a distribution channel is in the nascent stages.
• AI will assist hoteliers in personalizing customer experience: Artificial intelligence (AI) parses information sources to offer nuanced insights on occupancy patterns, so that you can offer dynamic pricing. Airbnb uses AI for host pricing recommendations and offers suggestions as per a user’s previous visits. AI could also impro