How a channel manager works and what to check before you choose one
With a channel manager, a night booked in one place can't be sold again in another. Your availability is the same on every channel you sell on and on your own website, because it comes from one calendar. When a guest books a room on Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia or Google, those nights are no longer available on the other channels within seconds. Rates come from the same calendar and may differ per channel. You change a rate in that calendar, and the change is sent to every channel. Keeping two calendars the same by hand works for a while. In a busy week an update gets missed, and two guests book the same night.
What a channel manager is and what it is not
A channel manager is the link between your calendar and the channels you sell on. A night is available on all of them or on none. A rate can be a little higher on one channel than on your own website, and it comes from that same calendar.
A channel manager does not bring in new bookings, which come from the channels themselves. Nor is it the booking engine, where a guest chooses dates and pays on your own website. Your calendar is kept in the booking system, and a channel manager works from that calendar or from a copy of it.
How the sync works in both directions
Changes are sent to every channel
Every booking, cancellation or new rate changes your calendar, and so does a room you block for maintenance. The channel manager sends each change to every connected channel, within seconds on a good connection.
Each update includes the available nights, the price and the restrictions: minimum stay, closed to arrival and closed to departure. It also includes anything that differs per channel, such as a rate plan you offer on one channel only.
Bookings come back to your calendar
A booking made on a channel arrives in your calendar with the guest's details, the dates, the rate plan and the price. The room is reserved for those nights, and every other channel is updated immediately. Changes and cancellations come back the same way.
Say a guest has booked four nights on Booking.com and shortens the stay to three. Within seconds the fourth night is available again on your other channels and on your own website, without you logging in anywhere.
API connection or iCal feed
An API connection is direct and works both ways: a change is sent immediately, and a booking comes back with all its details.
An iCal feed is a calendar file in the iCalendar format, RFC 5545 (opens in a new tab). One side publishes the file and the other reads it on its own schedule. The file contains the blocked dates only, without rates, guest details or restrictions. Between two reads, a night just booked on one channel is still available on the other.
Connect by API every channel that offers one, and keep iCal for a channel that has none. The post on iCal sync and double bookings explains what can happen in the gap between two reads.
When you need a channel manager
You need one as soon as the same rooms are for sale in more than one place, your own website included. That can be your website and one channel, or two channels: every booking in one means an update in the other.
Each place you add is one more calendar to update within minutes of every booking, which adds up to hours of work by hand. When one of those updates is missed, the same night can be sold twice. One of the two guests has to be turned away or found a room somewhere else. You cancel that booking yourself, through the channel, sometimes with a fee, and the guest may mention it in a review.
What to check before you choose a channel manager
Sync speed
Ask how long a change takes to reach each channel, and whether a new rate arrives as fast as a change in availability. When a supplier says "real time", it should mean seconds.
API connections for your channels
Ask whether each channel you sell on is connected by API or only by iCal, and expect an API for every channel that offers one. A supplier's total number of channels does not tell you whether yours are among them. Ask about the regional channels in your market too, both those you use now and those you are considering.
Rates and restrictions are sent and bookings come back
Availability on its own is the minimum, and your rates and restrictions have to be sent as well. A channel that never receives your minimum stay sells stays you would not accept. In the other direction, bookings, changes and cancellations have to come back into your calendar.
Room and rate mapping
Every room type on every channel has to be linked to the right room in your calendar. Each rate plan, whether flexible, non-refundable or with breakfast, has to be linked to its counterpart in your calendar too. Set-up goes wrong here when a link is missing or points to the wrong room, so ask to see the mapping screen. It should show at a glance which channel room belongs to which of yours.
Built in or standalone
A standalone channel manager keeps a copy of your calendar in sync, through one connection with the booking system and one with the channels. A channel manager built into the booking system reads the calendar directly. The booking from Booking.com is then the same booking your invoice, guest page and cleaning schedule are based on. Ask a supplier which kind theirs is.
Reports per channel
Ask for a report of the bookings and revenue per channel, with each channel's share of both, so you can decide which channels to keep.
Setting up without double bookings
Before you connect, write down every room type and rate plan on every channel, each next to its counterpart in your calendar. Suppose Booking.com sells your family room with a flexible rate and a breakfast-included rate. Your list then has three lines: the room and its two rate plans. A room type you leave unmapped stays for sale on the channel, and those bookings never arrive in your calendar. An unmapped rate plan keeps the last price the channel had.
Once the channels are connected, you change rates and availability in your own calendar only. A date blocked directly in a channel's extranet is unknown to your calendar. At the next sync the date becomes available on that channel again, or the calendar and the channel keep showing different things. Make sure everyone who works with the calendar knows this before the first day.
Go live once each of these is done:
- Every room type and rate plan is mapped, and a second person has checked the mapping against your list.
- Every booking already made on a channel is imported, so no booked night shows as available.
- Minimum stay, closed to arrival and the other restrictions are set in your calendar and confirmed on each channel.
- A test booking on each channel makes those nights unavailable on the others, and cancelling it makes them available again.
- Nobody uses the extranet logins for daily work any more.
Mistakes that get blamed on the channel manager
When the season's rates are changed on the biggest channel only, the other channels sell the same room at the old price all season. Change rates in the calendar, and the channel manager sends them to every channel.
A minimum stay set in the calendar never reaches a channel connected by iCal, or a channel where the setting was missed during set-up. That channel then accepts stays shorter than your minimum.
The channel manager in Drimbu
In Drimbu the channel manager is part of the booking system, and it comes with every package. More than sixty channels, including Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, Agoda and Google, all read the live calendar in which you manage bookings and payments. The booking engine on your own website works from that calendar too.
You enter a rate change or a booking taken by phone once, in that calendar, and every channel has the change within seconds. A booking from a channel arrives by itself as an ordinary booking with its invoice and guest page, and check-out creates the cleaning task. When a guest writes to you through a channel, the message arrives in the same unified inbox as your WhatsApp messages and emails.
Start with one calendar
If you sell in more than one place and update each calendar by hand, begin with a single calendar for all your bookings. Next, list your room types and rate plans per channel, since connecting the channels starts from that list. You can start for free with Drimbu.