A Distribution Channel is any agent that mediates for the sale of services to the final customer.
The Distribution Channels (or sales channels) enables hotels to introduce their own pricing policy regardless of its complexity level. This is the heart of Hotel Proxy’s sales subsystem since it undertakes the pricing policy towards the partners – customers.
Hotel Proxy supports the following categories:
Each distribution channel includes its own pricelists and availability, payment and cancellation policies.
For user friendliness and flexibility, the Distribution Channels’ pricelists, can be connected with the main pricelist of the supplier and be defined based on a discount percentage or a price markup.
The Channel Manager module can be used to enable the management of all external online booking systems like booking.com, expedia.com, venere.com etc., centrally within the Hotel's Proxy Control Panel.
It is an easy-to-use system that updates and reallocates rooms on the spot and manages them without complexity.
It minimizes the cost of managing channels by saving a great amount of working hours. Hotel Proxy’s Channel Manager enables you to have one single application and a single fee to control centrally all of your cooperating external booking systems (e.g. booking.com, expedia.com, venere.com etc.).
With Hotel Proxy’s Channel Manager there is no need for logging on to multiple websites, checking availability manually, trying to rearrange room availabilities and avoiding duplication. Stop losing bookings with the manual categorizing of your rooms into multiple rates.
It is extremely simple. It automatically updates the availability of your hotel and fetches reservations. As simple as that.
Hotel Proxy’s Channel Manager automatically allocates all the room packages in priority order. When a room is booked, Hotel Proxy’s Channel Manager instantly and without the need of any manual administration whatsoever, it automatically redistributes the remaining rooms amongst the available room packages. It updates every accommodation portal on your behalf instantly.
Hotel Proxy's Channel Manager will enable you to maintain rate parity across all your online distribution channels like booking.com, expedia.com, venere.com etc., regardless of the commission rates that you pay to them.
Managing accurate and competitive rates manually is extremely time-consuming and could virtually be impossible as you spread out and sign contracts with more and more external online distribution channels.
If you have one or two online business partners this would be an easy task to carry out. However, in today’s highly competitive world most hoteliers seek maximum product exposure in order to maximize the possibilities of achieving more bookings and thus sticking to one or two external distribution channels is not a feasible option. Attempting logging into several extranets on a daily basis or even on a frequent basis, with each extranet having a different website address and login procedure, with different markup methods, different ways to access and change rates, different contract terms, different website exceptions and different price rounding methods, is extremely difficult if not impossible.
For example if you manage 5 external channels (which is a reasonable average number for a hotel), it takes about one hour (= 10 to 15 minutes each) to update prices, availability and reservations. Especially during the high season for the hotel, this can be done 3 to 5 times a day, i.e. a total of 3.5 to 4.5 hours. This corresponds to 25 to 50 hours a month. How much is your per man-hour cost? A simple cost – benefit analysis will surely lead you to the Hotel Proxy Channel Management solution and will allow you to use your human resources where it counts the most in the hospitality sector: More quality time with your guests, a recipe for creating repeaters.
From your partner’s point of view, maintaining a common rate policy across all your online distribution channels is vital in order to allow them to engage in a healthy competition. The partners that you work with compete with each other in every level apart from the price given to the client. As mentioned above, hoteliers are seeking maximum product exposure, hence they take on board as many external distribution channels as possible. Treating every online partner equally when it comes to the rates is essential and it’s a core action that has to be carried out by the hotelier. Attempting to do this manually will most likely lead to a failure.
In the past attempting to maximize product exposure while maintaining equal rate policy across all online partners at the same time would eventually cancel each other out as the number of online partner increased. Hotel Proxy’s channel management solution virtually defines gravity! Today hotels can succeed in both at the same time and effectively. Obtain and manage increased internet exposure through external online distribution channels like booking.com, expedia.com, venere.com etc. and while maintaining accurate and competitive Rate Parity. With Hotel Proxy’s channel management every hotel can simultaneously update rate, allotments and inventory Restrictions on ALL of their Internet Wholesalers.
Rate parity can be defined as maintaining consistency of the hotel’s rates across all online distribution channels like booking.com, expedia.com, venere.com etc., regardless of the commission rates paid to them.
Implementing rate parity is a strategic move that many hoteliers decide to make in order to maintain an equal rate policy towards their external online distributors. It is critical in protecting a hotel’s relationship with all its distribution partners. However, rate parity does not mean stagnation. In order to build success through the rate parity strategy requisites flexibility and dynamism to deviate from time to time.
The effective control of the rate parity assures rate integrity which in turn increases the consumer confidence in your hotel. Rate parity is a critical in protecting your hotel’s integrity, especially in in today’s highly networked world were information is easily traced and compared.
Consumers look around and compare market prices. The internet has simplified the price comparison process and has made it so much faster. If a consumer visits a number different travel websites and there is a different rate on every site for an identical product, the hotel’s integrity is put into question. This is something that has to be avoided since it could harm the hotel’s reputation in a fast reputation spreading world dynamically defined by the consumers through blogs, social media etc.
Rate parity will protect your hotel’s integrity towards both your distributors and your potential clients. Hotel Proxy’s Channel Manager will enable you to carry out this strategic task and maintain rate parity in both the wholesale and retail hospitality market.