What Is a Channel Manager and Why Your Hotel Needs One
If your hotel is listed on more than one booking platform, you need a channel manager. Without one, you are updating availability by hand on each platform, and overbookings are only a matter of time.
What a Channel Manager Does
A channel manager connects your PMS to online travel agencies (Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, and others). When a room is booked on one platform, availability updates on all the others. When you change a rate, it goes out to every connected channel.
The Overbooking Problem
Without a channel manager, a room sold on Booking.com at 11 PM might also be sold on Airbnb at 11:05 PM. By morning, you have two guests and one room. This damages your reputation and costs money.
What to Look for in a Channel Manager
- Real-time two-way sync, not batch updates
- Commission tracking for each channel
- Protection against overbooking when your internet connection drops
- Settings for each channel, such as rate plan mapping
The Diafa PMS Channel Manager
The built-in Channel Manager keeps Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and more than 1000 other channels in two-way sync with your own inventory. You can apply settings per channel and compare channel performance, including commission, to see what each channel really earns you. When the connection is unstable, it protects availability to reduce the risk of overbooking.