Channel manager: what it does for a hotel, and what it doesn't

Booking.com describes a channel manager as a service that links the system you manage your rooms and prices in, your property management system or PMS, with online platforms such as Booking.com, so you can update rates, availability and reservations on several platforms at once. Some channel managers, it says, can provide a PMS if you don't have one.

• Prices: one change goes to every site connected.
• Rooms to sell: when a room sells on one site, the others are told, so it isn't sold twice. Booking.com says a cancelled room goes back online the same way.
• Rules: minimum stays, closed dates and stop sells, set once for every site.
• Bookings: each site's bookings arrive in one place.

• A property management system, or PMS, runs the hotel: the room plan, check-ins and guests' bills.
• A booking engine takes bookings on your own website.
• A channel manager connects these to the booking sites. Booking.com and Expedia call such companies connectivity providers.
• Google lists a channel manager, with a booking engine, a PMS or a central reservation system, among the partners that can send a hotel's prices to Google for its free booking links.

Many companies sell two or three of these together.

A channel manager sends your prices. It doesn't read what each booking site then shows a guest, and the two can differ: a member price or a deal you joined can take money off, a site may show a different room or different terms, and other sites may resell your rooms at their own price. Booking.com tells hotels whose prices differ between the extranet and the channel manager to check first whether a deal on that rate is the cause.

OneHorizyn works from the other end. Every week it reads the price Google Hotels and each booking site show for each of your next 90 nights, beside your own website's, with a screenshot of the booking page on the nights that matter. It sends no prices: it shows whether the prices your channel manager sent are the ones guests see.

1. 1After a price change, open each booking site as a guest for a few dates and check the price shown.
2. 2In the Booking.com extranet, click your account icon and choose “Connectivity Provider” to see what your channel manager handles. Booking.com marks those parts in green, and you change them in the channel manager, not the extranet.
3. 3When you add a room type or rate plan, map it in your channel manager too: Booking.com says rooms and rates added in the extranet must be mapped in your provider's system.
4. 4If a change doesn't appear, Booking.com says it can take up to five minutes to be processed. After that, ask your channel manager whether the change was sent.

• A booking missing from the channel manager: Booking.com says this can happen when the booking is for a room or rate the provider hasn't connected yet, or after a technical fault, and that it emails the hotel when a booking couldn't be passed on. Keep your contact details in the extranet up to date.
• Prices that don't match: Booking.com suggests checking for a deal on the rate, using the channel manager's refresh if it has one, and checking every room and rate is mapped.
• The channel manager down: Booking.com says to contact it first, and if you can't reach it and need rooms closed urgently, to contact Booking.com, which can close them by hand.

A hotel on one or two booking sites can manage each site's back office by hand. With more sites, more room types or prices that change often, a channel manager saves time, and Booking.com says it makes overbooking far less likely, because a sold room is taken off the other sites at once.

• Check it connects to every site you sell on, and to your booking engine.
• Check it sends prices, rooms to sell and rules, and brings every site's bookings back.
• Ask whether it can send your prices to Google for free booking links.
• Ask how fast it sends a change, and who answers when something goes wrong.