Channel Manager

Before channel managers became standard, hoteliers had to manage allocations. They would give 5 rooms for Expedia and 5 rooms for Booking.com. If Expedia sold out, these potential customers were turned away, even if the Booking.com allotment sat empty.

The Channel Manager has introduced Pooled Inventory. This model gives a supplier the ability to list all the available rooms on all the channels simultaneously. The instant a room is sold on one site, the channel manager would automatically update the inventory number on every other site connected to the system in seconds. This guarantees that you get every exposure possible with no danger of selling the same room twice.

From a technical point of view, the Channel Manager uses Two-Way XML/API connections in order to establish a continuous feedback loop:

• Push (ARI): The hotelier changes a price or closes a date in the Channel Manager. The system instantly pushes these updates (ARI: Availability, Rates, Inventory) to Agoda, Expedia, Airbnb, etc.
• Pull (Reservations): When a guest makes a booking on Expedia, the Channel Manager pulls the reservation details, injects them into the hotel’s Property Management System (PMS) and immediately decreases the count of inventory on all other connected channels.

In addition to avoiding mistakes, sophisticated channel managers are tools for revenue strategy:

• Derived Pricing: Users can set a Master Rate and have the system automatically calculate rates based on other channels (e.g., “Set Booking.com as Base Rate + 15% markup”).
• Stop Sell: A revenue manager can immediately stop the sale of inventory on high-commission channels (like OTAs) if the hotel is almost full, reserving the last few rooms for direct, high-margin bookings.