On one hand channel management in the hotel industry can refer to the simple function of using a channel manager tool to list and manage your inventory on a variety of booking channels.
It could also relate to the strategy of managing which channels you choose to list on, how you analyse the top performing channels, and how you can optimise your connections to make more revenue at your hotel.
If we take the simple approach, channel management is the process by which you will sell your inventory via online distribution channels around the world. These channels may include OTAs (Expedia), retail travel agents, metasearch engines (Google), global distribution systems (GDS), or direct channels (your website and social media pages).
This will be facilitated by a single dashboard, allowing you instant access to lives rates and availability without needing to access several individual extranets. In this context channel management is a process by which you can simplify and speed up the way you sell your products, namely your hotel rooms and the ancillaries you attach to them.
Ability to measure your hotel reputation and reviews across all online channels, provide real-time notifications and analytics for performance measurement.
Defining “market intelligence” in the hotel business, or any industry for that matter, is quite simple… it’s the general understanding of any information relevant to your market and using that aggregated data to make confident business strategy decisions.
For hotels, it’s about understanding your competitors’ pricing strategy and demand forecasts in real-time, being aware of local events and other seasonal occurrences along with weather conditions that impact overall market demand, and using this information to adjust your pricing and revenue management strategy accordingly.
Market intelligence tools and rate shop software help hoteliers make more informed decisions on hotel pricing and hotel revenue strategies based on the latest market trends. These tools have become increasingly important post-COVID as hotels are less able to rely on historical data even from mature channels like metasearch and GDS.
Previously manual processes, such as monitoring competitors’ rates, managing your own properties (or properties’) rate parity across multiple channels, predicting your competitors’ demand, pulling local event and weather data, etc. are now fully automated. For those who operate a broader portfolio, the time savings is multiplied for each property under management.
