Hotel bookings are like organizing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, where each piece represents a reservation. There will be chaos if two pieces struggle to fit in the same spot. Hotel channel manager software steps in as the puzzle master- ensuring every piece has acquired an individual spot with no gaps or overlaps.
In today’s rapidly evolving hospitality landscape, customers are abandoning traditional booking methods, such as walk-ins and phone calls. They prefer to reserve their room through online travel agencies and direct websites. This paradigm shift has opened doors for new opportunities for hoteliers, thereby increasing revenue.
But the benefit is often associated with some hurdles. It has also introduced the problem of overbooking. It happens when multiple guests reserve the same room from different platforms due to delays.
This is a cacophonic situation for hoteliers. To avoid such chaos, investing in the best hotel channel manager software in India is mandatory. They are now adopting hotel channel manager software to prevent overbookings and enhance productivity.
Underlying Issue Of Overbookings
Overbooking usually happens when hotels sell the same room via multiple platforms but lack real-time pricing synchronization. For example, if there is one room available and two different guests book the same room from different platforms, the hotel ends up having more reservations than the availability.
This problem gets elevated when demand is significantly high, such as during the peak seasons. In the absence of a robust channel manager for hotels, it is difficult to manually update the availability and pricing details.
In What Ways Does Hotel Channel Manager Software Prevent Overbookings
- Real-Time Inventory Upgradation
One of the most powerful features of channel manager software for hotels is real-time inventory upgradation. As soon as a room is booked through a platform, the hotel distribution software automatically updates availability across all the connected platforms. This eradicates the risk of multiple bookings for the same room.
- Integration With Hotel PMS
Integration of hotel PMS and channel manager allows hoteliers to handle reservations, cancellations, and upgradations efficiently. PMS’s role is to keep a record of the booking details, while the hotel channel manager ensures that updates are surfaced across all the channels.
- Automated Pricing Updates
It is the sole responsibility of a hotel channel manager software to automatically update the prices of rooms along with their availability. This ensures that pricing updates are reflected in real-time on all the platforms. It lowers the risk of errors that may occur during manual upgradation.
- Centralized Dashboard
Modern online software solutions come with a centralized dashboard, which allows managers to check reservations, availability, and revenue from a unified place. This minimizes chaos and ensures that staff members have a clear understanding of the number of rooms available at present.
- Tailored Allotments
A hotel channel manager software system gives hotels the ability to allot and reserve rooms for certain online channels. For example, a hotel may say, “We want these specific rooms to be booked direct only”, and hotel distribution software will take care of ensuring that those rooms never accidentally become sold out.
Conclusion
Having overbookings can hurt a hotel’s reputation, decrease a hotel’s revenue, and, most importantly, create headaches and unhappiness. It is essential that hoteliers have a solid hotel channel manager software system in order to avoid overbooking.
A hotel channel manager software system will keep all room availability and inventory updated in real time. Integrating with PMS will also reduce effort and increase guest satisfaction. By adopting a hotel channel manager software, hotels can significantly maximize reservations and revenue.
