When a guest wants to book a room, he may come across various booking platforms and become confused about which one to rely upon. There are many OTAs, distribution channels, GDS platforms, or direct booking sites. Just like positive feedback improves the chance of bookings, negative reviews lead to confusion and losing trust in your business, thereby decreasing the chances of booking.
In this digital world, people would like to check customer reviews, compare products and services, before making a decision. That is why hoteliers need to move a step forward and make their bookings and services a memorable experience for their guests, which in turn improves the trust in the industry.
With the right Channel Manager you can experience the ease of booking, get real-time tracking, and avoid overbooking.
In this article, let us see the role of channel managers in reducing overbooking.
Channel Manager Role In Overbooking Prevention
An ideal channel manager is essential to avoid overbooking and maintain your room information constant throughout various booking channels. It allows your hotel to post about its availability, updates, events, pricing, etc. across all the channels at once.
Whether a traveler uses your website or through any of your partner’s websites, the channel manager works in real-time and updates about room availability. This also helps in data adjustments and closing for sales. It is essential as many people prefer to book online. It ensures faster booking with real-time prices and availability within a single dashboard.
This boosts your revenue and grab more visitors and boosts engaging relationships even with international booking channels.
A good example of a tool that offers these features is UNO RateGain. It helps hotels easily manage bookings by connecting with global booking platforms, updating information automatically, and making the whole process smooth and simple.
How Does It Work?
A hotel channel manager distributes data between booking channels and your property management systems (PMS) and automatically adjusts real-time updates. It includes automation and improves performances, minimizes human errors, and reduces the risk of multiple reservations. Thus the channel manager maximizes occupancy and income and prevents overbooking.
Practices For Avoiding Overbooking
1. Use A Dependable Booking And Reservation System:
Use a reliable system which provides real-time updates on room availability.
2. Clearly Mention Your Rules And Regulations:
State your policies about reservations, cancellations, and fines.
3. Check The Booking Patterns:
Analyze past booking data to check peak periods and change availability based on that.
4. Allow Clients For Waitlist:
When the rooms are occupied, provide the choice to add themselves to a waiting list so that you can avoid any cancellation.
5. Let Your Employees Be Knowledgeable
Educate your employees about handling overbooking and reservations and also ensure that they can respond to any queries from guests.
6. Reduce Over Scheduling
An online integrated channel manager helps you with real-time occupancy rate updates across various channels.
7. Stay Ahead Of Time:
Analyse the number of visitors staying for a night and who are staying for a longer time to avoid overbooking.
8. Collaborate With Other Hotels:
If overbooking happens and you are out of available rooms, connect with the like-minded hotels. It helps you to be more authoritative and minimize negative impacts.
9. Integrate An Online Booking Engine And Payment Gateway
It helps in direct reservations and confirmations.
Conclusion
The channel manager integrates with other booking partners and helps the guest to book the room without any hustle. It improves hotels to have clear pricing and transparency.
This article has detailed about the role of a channel manager in reducing over bookings.