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What is a channel manager? A plain words guide for hotel owners

A channel manager keeps your prices, rooms left and bookings in step across Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Agoda and other booking sites, so a room sold on one closes on the rest.

The Keyvasa team3 min read

Short answer: A channel manager is software that connects your hotel system to the booking sites you sell on. When a room sells on one site, it closes on the others; when you change a price, it changes everywhere; and new bookings arrive in your calendar without anyone typing them in. It stops double bookings and saves hours of updating extranets.

What a channel manager does

Every booking site, such as Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Agoda or Expedia, has its own extranet where you set prices and how many rooms are left. Without a channel manager, someone has to open each one and change it by hand, every time. A channel manager does three jobs for you:

  1. Sends rooms left and prices from your system to every site you choose.
  2. Brings bookings back, including changes and cancellations, into your calendar.
  3. Keeps them in step, so the last room cannot be sold twice.

Booking.com calls these companies connectivity providers. You choose one in the Booking.com extranet, accept its connection request, and it then maps your rooms and rates and switches the connection on.

Do I need one?

If you sell on one booking site and get a few bookings a week, careful manual updates may be enough. Once you sell on two or more sites, or your rooms fill up at weekends and in season, double bookings and stale prices start to cost you. That is usually the point when owners add a channel manager.

What to check before you choose

  • Which sites it connects to, and whether it is an approved partner of each one.
  • Two way or one way. Two way means bookings come back into your calendar, not just prices going out.
  • Room and rate mapping. Each room type and rate plan on every site must match one in your system.
  • What happens when it fails. Ask how you will know if a site stops updating, and what to do.
  • The cost, and whether it is charged per site, per room or per booking.
  • Your own booking page. Direct bookings pay no commission, so a booking page that shares the same rooms left is worth having. Our guide to reducing booking site commission explains more.

Words you will hear

  • OTA: an online travel agency, such as a booking site.
  • Inventory or availability: how many rooms of each type you have left to sell.
  • Rate plan: a price with its rules, such as breakfast included or no refund.
  • Parity: keeping the same price on every site. Check your contracts for what they say.
  • Stop sell: closing a room type on a site for chosen dates.

The glossary explains more of these terms.

How Keyvasa does it

The Keyvasa channel manager is part of the Plus plan and above. It keeps rooms left and prices in step across up to 15 sites, including Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Agoda, Expedia, Airbnb and Google, and brings bookings straight into the calendar. Your own booking page uses the same rooms left, so a room cannot be sold twice.

Sources

Questions about this article, or about running your hotel on Keyvasa? We are happy to talk.

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