Whether it’s manually updating your room availability on Meta Turismo engines, responding to countless emails to potential clients looking to book a room with you, or the problem of overbooking. Channel management in hospitality presents a number of challenges. However, these areas need to be addressed well on a daily basis for hotels to stay ahead of the competition.

With the unstoppable advancement of technology, revenue managers have a great opportunity not only to manage many of these relevant domains, but also to save costs and generate more revenue.

Also in the past, we have discussed common challenges in channel management. In this article, we will describe in more detail some rare and mostly overlooked aspects of channel management in the hospitality industry. These areas may not directly affect your distribution, but they certainly impact your channel management indirectly.

If they are fixed, inventory distribution will be a simpler and more efficient task as well.

Rate parity

Rate parity is a very difficult area in hospitality and requires maintaining rate consistency across different distribution channels, such as the brand’s website, OTAs, etc. Hotels often claim the ‘best rate guaranteed’ on their website so their customers feel confident that they don’t need to look elsewhere for a better rate.

However, the problem here is that no website can claim to offer the lowest possible rate, regardless of how many hotels advertise the “best rate guarantee” on their own websites. Customers will surely find another website with a better rate. This generates frustration and a lack of satisfaction and trust about the hotel among customers.

A solution to this problem would be to gain the trust of customers by maintaining rate parity to meet the rate expectations of different customer segments and those who come to you after doing your rate comparison on different platforms. Ensuring this would preserve the integrity of rates, ensure transparency, and control price discrimination. Ensuring the stability and accuracy of rates requires efficient and profitable management of the different distribution channels to ensure a high volume of bookings every night. That’s when a comprehensive rate parity tool and an advanced online channel distribution tool come in handy.

Customer relationship management (CRM) and online reputation management (ORM)

Customer relationship management (CRM) is another very important aspect of the hospitality industry, which is why it needs the utmost attention. Today’s hotels primarily handle CRM online and therefore matches the term Online Reputation Management.

When it comes to online reputation, every wise mind would swear by the crucial role of social media. The sites used in electronic distribution with respect to social media work together as they allow the travel community to interact and draw on the thoughts of others, especially in terms of reviews.

This process has mainly four main stages. The first stage is the stage of absolute non-acceptance by the customer. The second stage is the indifference / consideration stage, in which a customer has doubts about the level of satisfaction of a hotel’s service. The third stage is the ‘delight’ stage. Here, the customer is completely satisfied with your services. The fourth stage is when customers become your advocates and actively provide you with business through promotions and referrals. ORM aims to take customers from the first stage to the fourth stage.

ORM can help hotels keep their guests informed with important information such as inventory, rates, and discounts on a regular basis. Poor channel management equates to poor customer relationship management, so a robust information system that supports effective channel management is one of the possible solutions to key challenges in managing customer challenges. electronic distribution. Some other factors that influence your CRM strategy are:

• The way a hotel communicates with its website visitors

• The method of obtaining customer information and using it to develop strategies.

• Post-stay behavior of customers who choose to write reviews on meta-tourism sites.

As long as your hotel manager takes care of the above factors, you can earn your visitors’ trust in your property.

Any deficit of service in any of the distribution channels is reflected in the reviews written by consumers. Therefore, your hotel’s service capabilities are open to the world with just one click. Negative reviews often become an obstacle to a new visitor’s purchase decision. To meet this challenge, hotels must have a robust mechanism to monitor feedback from different booking channels and analyze the performance of the channel in question from them.

We can see that all the problems mentioned above turn out to be quite complex and yet they are faced by almost all hotels, especially those that are growing. However, the good news is that there is a simple solution to these problems.

How a channel manager can help you manage your channel

A channel manager is an online tool by which you can integrate information from your entire distribution management and use it for different purposes: monitor channel performance over time, add or remove channels, change prices on channels, whatever! Take a look at some of its tremendous benefits that you can get.

Boost online reservations

A report from Skift indicates a 7% increase in online bookings, and the same is only going to increase now. A channel manager will allow you to focus on your choice of channel from which to channel sales.

Boost revenue

A Channel Manager helps you update rates and room availability across channels with just a few clicks, so you can accept more bookings faster. You can also have different rates on different channels according to the dominant market segment in each of your channels to generate incremental income.

Address excess reserves

Without a channel manager, you are forced to divide your inventory between channels and invite the risk of double bookings or lower booking volume. Combined inventory and automatic real-time room updates mean that guests can only reserve a room that is actually available.

Improve brand recognition

Channel managers help you integrate your data with many popular OTAs, helping your property get listed in as many places as possible and gain popularity.

Boost direct bookings

OTAs can generate the majority of your sales channel, but a channel manager will help you offer alternatives to your audience, such as your own website, which will eliminate the commissions of your reservations that go to the OTA in question for each transaction.

Eliminate manual processes

Having a channel manager means that there are no manual updates on the Meta Turismo websites or answering countless queries from guests. In this way, you will keep both your staff and your guests fully informed about the crucial information about your reservations and availability.

Today we have the technology to control the most dynamic area of ​​hotel operations, channel management, at our fingertips. Therefore, it would be reckless not to take advantage of these tools to tap into your hotel’s untapped revenue-maximizing and cost-saving potential.