What Is A Channel Manager And Why Is It Important?

With long short-term rental property listings available across multiple online travel agencies and booking platforms, managing these properties can get complicated. A channel manager is essential for property managers. This helps to ensure that real-time availability, pricing options, and bookings stay current throughout multiple platforms. 

This article reveals the features and benefits of a channel manager. We’ll also investigate how the tools can streamline property management functions, determine whether a channel is either strong or weak, and answer some frequently asked questions that will enable you to be more efficient in your rental management efforts.

What is a channel manager and what is it used for?

A channel manager is a software solution that helps property managers stay organized and manage multiple listings across different online travel agencies (OTAs) and booking platforms. The channel manager brings the availability, rates, and bookings data under a single roof to provide one source of information. In other words, all property details are updated in real time across the connected channels via the unified back-office system for properties. 

By doing so, it ensures there will be no double bookings or duplication of work ensuring that the property managers have more time to enhance their guests’ experiences.

Hospiria’s channel manager

Hospiria’s channel manager goes even further by being fully integrated with its Property Management System (PMS). A channel manager is focused on distribution and booking synchronization, while a PMS is concerned with day-to-day operations such as guest check-in/checkout, housekeeping, and financial reporting. An all—in—one solution—Hospiria’s channel manager, coupled with PMS—provides an effective and efficient way to manage your property.

Hospiria allows property managers to manage their whole portfolio from a single point, automating many repetitive tasks and providing valuable data on how they run their business. Integration with this PMS boosts productivity and ensures that optimal pricing is available in every channel, allowing you to maximize your revenue.

Why is a channel manager important?

Channel management is essential for short-term rentals for several reasons:
 

Increased Visibility

By distributing property listings across multiple channels, owners can expand their reach to a broader audience. Each channel has its own user base, so by leveraging various platforms, owners can attract more potential guests and increase their chances of securing bookings.

Avoiding Double Bookings

Managing bookings manually across different channels is prone to errors and can result in double bookings. This can lead to guest dissatisfaction and harm the property's reputation. Channel management systems automatically synchronize availability across channels, ensuring a property is not double-booked. This enhances the guest experience and prevents conflicts.

Time and Effort Saving 

Manually updating availability, rates, and property information on multiple channels is time-consuming and susceptible to mistakes. Channel management tools provide a centralized platform where owners can efficiently manage and update their listings, saving time and effort. In addition, changes made in one place are automatically reflected across all connected channels, eliminating the need for manual updates.

Rate Optimization

Effective channel management enables owners to implement dynamic pricing strategies based on demand, seasonality, and market conditions. By adjusting rates in real-time across different channels, owners can maximize revenue by taking advantage of high-demand periods and offering competitive pricing during low-demand periods.

Consistent Property Information

Maintaining consistent and accurate property information across various channels is crucial for guest satisfaction. Channel management systems ensure that property details, amenities, descriptions, and images remain consistent across all platforms, providing guests with a cohesive and reliable booking experience.

Analytics and Insights

Channel management tools often offer reporting and analytics features that provide valuable insights into rental performance, occupancy rates, revenue, and the effectiveness of different channels. Owners can analyze this data to make informed decisions regarding pricing, marketing strategies, and channel selection, optimizing their rental operations for better profitability.

Streamlined Operations

With channel management, owners can streamline their rental operations by consolidating bookings, reservations, and guest information from multiple channels into a single platform. This centralization simplifies administrative tasks, improves guest communication, and enhances operational efficiency.

How to differentiate strong and weak channel connections

In the vacation rental management software industry, not all channel managers are created equal. So while it may seem that many platforms offer similar attributes, the strength of their channel connections can be very different. Understand these differences so that you can make an informed choice about which tool to use for your property management.

1-way vs. 2-way channel connections

An essential aspect to take into consideration is whether a particular channel manager offers 1-way or 2-way integrations. A 1-way connection is a unilateral pipeline of data from your system to the booking platform (usually delivering rates and availability) However, it can't accept booking confirmations or updates from the platform which means you have to manually synchronize your system with what’s going on.

On the other hand, a 2-way connection opens its communication in both directions: while your system pushes rates and availability to the booking platform, it also pulls up-to-date reservations along with their status from that same channel. This ensures a seamless sync between your accounts, minimizing the chance for double bookings and keeping all information on your property completely up to date. 

Good channel management requires having a 2-way connection, so be sure to choose a platform that offers this, like Hospiria. 

Understanding iCal connections

With an iCal connection, we are talking about simply sharing calendar data using a specific file format. This third type of connection is the weakest, but it’s good for basic calendar synchronization. In iCal, it misses the dynamic, real-time data exchange required for effective channel management. If a channel manager functions only via iCal connections, it is a less productive and poor implementation of a system.

That being said, iCal still has its place — it could be a tool to enforce connections with some of the smaller players in travel that otherwise couldn’t support more complex implementations.

Evaluating the scope of channel connections

The scope of your channel manager’s network matters too. More basic integrations may provide calendar availability and rates to platforms such as Airbnb or Vrbo only. Stronger systems have larger integrations that let you update things, such as the description of the property, photos of the properties, titles, and many more details about the entire property. This in-depth data push not only ensures your listings are complete and identical on all platforms but also maximizes the visibility of your property to potential guests.

When referencing several channel manager products, it is important to consider not only the connection type but also the data synchronization range. A robust channel manager should enable full data synchronization (including multimedia and detailed descriptions), ensuring that your property listings always look good.

Summary

Ultimately, a channel manager is vital when dealing with short-term rental properties on more than one platform. With Hospiria's integrated channel manager and PMS system, property management becomes easier as everything synchronizes seamlessly with real-time updates, and comprehensive data integration. With Hospiria as a partner, you can guarantee strong 2-way connections to major sales channels without working manually to optimize bookings.

Ready to make managing your property easier and increase bookings? Let us show you how Hospiria can give your rental business the makeover it needs today. Take a product tour today to find out more about what we offer short term rental property managers.

Channel management FAQs

What should I do if the channel manager encounters a technical issue?

Sometimes, technical issues can arise with any software. If you decide to go with a channel manager, you need to make sure the provider has reliable customer support that will help address these issues as quickly as they possibly can. Take Hospiria, for example. This solution comes with excellent customer service that draws attention to any technical issues you're facing and gets them repaired right away so your property management is back on track.

What is the typical cost of using a channel manager?

The pricing of channel managers usually revolves around the number of listings or bookings you manage. Over time, fees per listing may go down with the increase of properties, creating volume discounts. Many property managers like a fixed fee structure because it is more predictable and efficient. Also, many platforms charge initial setup fees to get your service up and running smoothly by guiding you through the integration process.

What training and support options are available from channel manager providers?

Most channel manager providers hold onboarding sessions where the new users are taken through using the software. Some are easier to use and more intuitive right off the bat than others, but even with a fully functional system, you’ll need some training. For example, we offer comprehensive training and ongoing support through Hospiria helping you to get the most out of your system as possible