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In a fast paced hospitality business, property managers need to be able to focus on their F&B business and let their rooms take care of themselves. Channel management software enables independent hotels to manage availability and get maximum visibility on their connected online travel agents without worrying about double bookings.
Very simply our property management system works in the background to automatically update availability and pricing for all your connected booking channels, in real time and without human error. Any new reservations from your online booking sites are automatically imported into the pms and allocated to a room. We take care of the setup and mapping configuration, and ensure only your empty hotel rooms are available to potential customers on all your various channels.
Grouping together similar physical rooms into room types allows for increased occupancy compared with than selling those physical rooms individually. Being able to move bookings for a similar room type between physical rooms can open up longer durations of stay and fill in what would otherwise be gaps in your calendar. Channel managers like Caterbook allow a physical room to be sold as more than one room type, meaning you could have all your double rooms for sale on your website, but make fewer doubles available for online travel agencies. Our pooled inventory model means your rooms are available on multiple channels with real time updates maximising your bookability.
Our powerful channel manager allows you to adopt a granular approach to pricing in order to maximise the profit on hotel rooms. Where rate parity isn't a concern, hoteliers can use a simple function to apply an uplift on specific online channels like wholesalers or the GDS, whilst keeping OTA pricing more closely tied to their direct room rates. Dynamic pricing rules enable you to adjust pricing based on booking lead time and remaining rooms
New bookings are imported and assigned to a room and any guest or virtual cards are securely stored. Notifications are visible in the Dashboard. Email and SMS messages can be scheduled to guests on confirmation and at other points prior to arrival, in stay and post departure. Any modifications to bookings and cancellations made by the guest at the OTA are also pushed to Caterbook.
By linking with a variety of booking channels you'll increase global reach for your property. Travellers are individuals and have their own preferred sales channels. Many properties miss out on corporate bookings, which are often made not by the booker themselves, but via a business travel agent using the GDS. Properties should use not just a variety of connected channels, but different the types of online distribution, including meta search and paid placement like Trivago, Marketplaces like HyperGuest and Hotelbeds, GDS and regional destination booking sites live Visit Devon and Costwolds Tourism. There are many OTA's who are market leaders in their own territory, who can bring high spending overseas traveller. Some individual sales channels have low commission rates and unique business models, like Hoo that enable guests to make a offer for your rooms which you can choose to accept.
For accommodation providers, their online presence is enhanced by the right channel mix, and not just how many channels their rooms are listed with. But in discussing channel management systems don't forget the importance of an online booking engine on your hotel website, to drive direct bookings to your property management system at zero commission in most cases.
Google hotel ads can boost direct bookings by placing a link to your integrated booking engine. Where our channel manager sends pricing and availability to Google, any bookings via the free booking link take place on your own booking engine at no additional cost.
