What is a channel manager,
and what does it do?

A channel manager is software a hotel uses to send its rates, availability and sales rules to online travel agencies (OTAs), travel agencies and other sales channels from one place. The hotel makes a change once, and the channel manager passes it to every connected channel. Bookings from those channels travel back the same way, and the remaining room count updates on every channel together.

A channel manager is a hotel tool. The hotel works in it, and agencies and other channels connect to it.

How does a channel manager work?

The data a channel manager carries is often called ARI: availability, rates and inventory. In other words, whether a room is open for sale, what it costs per night, and how many rooms are left. Sales rules such as stop-sales and minimum stays travel the same way. The flow has four steps:

1. The hotel updates. It changes a rate, closes a date or adjusts the room count, once, in the channel manager.
2. The channel manager distributes. The change goes to each connected channel in the format that channel expects. The hotel's room and rate plan codes are mapped to each channel's own codes in advance.
3. The channel sells. A traveler or an agency books through that channel.
4. The booking comes back. The booking reaches the hotel through the channel manager, and the sold room comes off the remaining availability on every channel.

That last step is the real job. If the same room is on sale in five channels, a sale in one has to close it in the other four straight away. If that lags, the room sells twice and the hotel has to move one of the guests to another hotel. That is overbooking.

What does it give a hotel?

• One update. A rate or availability change is not keyed into each channel's extranet separately.
• Less overbooking. A sold room comes off every channel at the same time.
• More channels. Adding a channel means opening a connection in the channel manager, not learning another extranet.
• Consistent rates. Rate differences between channels come from the hotel's decisions, not from typing mistakes.

What does it mean for a travel agency?

For an agency working with hotels, a channel manager is a way to receive rates without keying them in again. If the hotel already uses a channel manager, the agency connects to it, and the hotel's rate and availability changes reach the agency's system through the same connection. The hotel keeps managing its rates in one place, and the agency stops re-entering rate sheets that arrive by email.

In return, control stays with the hotel. The hotel sets the rates and the closed dates, and the agency adds its own markup and sales rules on top. Commercial terms such as payment due dates or the commission rate are written in the agreement with the hotel, not in the channel manager.

The tool an agency uses to distribute its own products to partners and sales channels is not a channel manager. That is the job of B2B distribution and booking systems, covered in the B2B in travel guide.

Common connection mistakes

• Taking a hotel's rates from two sources. If a hotel's rates come both from its channel manager and from a rate sheet keyed in by hand, nobody knows which one is right. Pick one rate source for each hotel.
• Skipping room mapping. Will the hotel's Superior Garden View room show up as Deluxe in your catalog? A room that is not mapped either never sells or sells as the wrong room.
• Not agreeing on the currency. If the hotel sends rates in lira and you expect euros, the connection may work but the rates cannot be used. Agree on the currency up front.
• Fixing the rate on your side. If you edit a channel manager rate in your own system, the next update overwrites your change. Fix errors at the source, in the hotel's channel manager.
• Not watching the connection. Check regularly when the last successful update arrived. A connection that drops silently means a date the hotel has closed still looks open to you.

Channel manager, bedbank or contract

For an agency, a channel manager is one of three ways to source hotel rooms. With a contract, you negotiate the terms with the hotel and take the rates from the contract. With a channel manager connection, rates and availability arrive live from the hotel's channel manager. A bedbank is a wholesaler that sells rooms from many hotels at net rates. The bedbank guide compares the three side by side, and the hotel contract guide covers what a contract includes.

How Adrasis works with channel managers

Adrasis Console receives rates, availability and sales rules from widely used channel managers. The connections available to your organization are listed on the integration screen in the Console. Setup covers the following steps:

1. Activate the connection. You turn on the channel manager connection for your organization and enter the credentials the partner issued.
2. Bind the hotel. You enter the hotel's channel manager identifier in the connection settings on the property's Connectivity tab.
3. Map where required. You map rooms, rate plans, meal plans and attributes to your catalog. The mapping page shows what is missing. Some connections do not require room and rate-plan mapping.
4. Monitor. The connection status shows the last successful message, the error rate and any messages in retry.

Each hotel has one supply connection at a time, so two sources never write the same rates and the question of which one is right never comes up. To switch sources, you disconnect the current one first. Incoming rates must be in the hotel's currency: a rate that arrives in a different currency is rejected, not silently converted.

Every rate and availability cell that arrives keeps a record of which partner wrote it and when. Hotels from channel managers sit in the same product record as your own contracts and bedbank supply, and your pricing rules and sales channels apply to all of them the same way. See Integrations and the channel manager documentation.