The name of the game is efficiency, and the ball is played best through online avenues. And yes, we’re still talking of business frameworks and methods within the sphere of hospitality management.

What’s new in this ever-expanding industry? Hotel channel manager. We’ll tell you why adding this to your system for workflow and staff movement will up the ante to the next level.

Why Channel Managers?

– 1. Operational Efficiency Like Never Before
This may sound like a stretch or a bit of a romanticized overstatement. But it’s true. Hotel channel managers are primarily a means for making hotel operations efficient, to the point of speeding up task line-ups up twice faster than without these web applications. Or faster.

Most hotels these days, at least, the ones that still care about keeping up with customer demands and industry changes, are equipped with tools such as Property Management Systems or PMS. These aid in directing and monitoring work from every branch of the hotel’s staffing departments.

Though that in itself is and continues to be, a driver of productivity, one can only imagine the level of performance your team can achieve with the support of channel managers. Time-wasting updates (and annoying, might we add) and manually archiving details will no longer be required. The web channel manager will do that for you and your team.

– 2. Inventory In A Click
Allocated inventory schemes? They had their time under the limelight. They somehow lessened the bulk of static allocation. Be that as it may, they don’t really do the job well when talking of a larger, more diversified operations framework and larger hotel enterprises. Painstakingly following through with manual logs, even with basic inventory applications, just won’t make the cut.

Well, online channel managers will. Everything can be streamlined, with inventory numbers and categories pooled together in an organized and accessible manner. Interior communications, hotel branch-to-branch exchanges, or communications with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) will all be a click away. And very literally, too.

– 3. Human Error, Be-Gone
Whether in large-name, big-brand hotels and hotel chains or stand-alone local accommodations, one thing is for certain— operations that lack the reliance on channel managers often see “human error”. This is a fact, whether in rate updating, overbookings, date changes, balancing sheets, or coordinating site-wide changes and the like. What’s worse is that the smallest wrong detail can greatly affect an entire indexing record.

Yet with online channel managers, you will be able to reduce human error considerably. Overbookings will be reduced, possibly to the point of “zero”, misinformation and updating can be accomplished at once and across the board (of an entire hotel chain), booking accuracy will be at a high, and dashboards can be standardised, no sweat.

– 4. Revenue Through Multi-Channel Booking
You’ve got the web as your platform for marketing to, and pooling, potential guests. Multi-channel booking is today’s best strategy for leveraging your hotel above your competitors. Said pool is as wide as the web itself, but online channel managers are the “how” for you to reach your target clientele.

More booking sources equals higher ROI. More booking sources equals indirectly extending your brand so that it reaches more guests.

– 5. Automation. No More. No Less
To sum it up, what online channel managers have the capacity of carrying out is automation. It’s the string that ties everything we’ve mentioned until this point, together. From staff work and communications dissemination, inventory updating and verification, to rate distribution and so much more, a channel manager is the abracadabra of it. You’ll see.