Markets are gradually opening up. The travelers are optimistic once again on the back of rapid vaccination programs across the world. There is a lot of pent-up demand. With guests about to make a comeback, you must remain on top of your distribution.
Managing multiple channels, developing a solid pricing strategy, evaluating demand channels for growth, keeping a tab on the pulse of critical KPIs like Room Nights, ADR, LOS, etc., put a lot of stress on e-commerce and distribution teams.
The short answer to some of these challenges is channel management software. If you have only 30 minutes to spare in the day, this post will guide you to get the most out of a channel manager. In our case, I will use our enterprise channel manager, RezGain, as an example. RezGain is used by more than 60 chains globally, providing connectivity to 400+ channels. Let’s get started.
You have 30 minutes in the day, here’s what you should look at in RezGain
Inbox
This section showcases notifications to keep track of your check-ins and checkouts channel synchronization or helps you view which OTAs are disabled — or the settings that are pending to be completed.
Dashboard
Do you want to know how your properties are performing across different metrics such as Revenue, ADR, Room Nights, Length of Stay, and Booking Window? Export or schedule the dashboard to your inbox and keep a tab on your performance every day.
A word of advice: If your Enterprise Dashboard is disabled, kindly contact your relationship manager to enable it.
Strategic Insights
‘Strategic Insights’ screen gives you a comparison snapshot of a hotel’s performance. A property can compare primary metrics like Revenue, ADR, Room Nights – and secondary metrics like Booking Window and LOS(Length of Stay) with similar hotels. You can glance through your productivity trends for 12 months in the future or 24 months in the past. These insights can be viewed in the base currency. It is effortless to download and schedule these reports to your inbox daily, weekly, or monthly in Excel format.
Please note: Contact your relationship manager if you want to know more about Smart Distribution — or like the product to be enabled. If you’ve come across Smart Distribution for the first time, schedule a personalized demo.
Opportunity Analytics
Basis the similar hotels in your region, you can navigate to source countries and OTAs that look promising to you along with the estimated incremental revenue room nights you can generate if you connect with these channels through the channel manager via Smart Distribution.
Inventory Calendar
‘Inventory Calendar’ allows you to easily update availability, rates, inventory, and restrictions for the channels mapped to RezGain. It is now easier to quickly review the updates sent to the future check-in dates within Inventory Calendar.
Status
To ensure if the updates sent were duly processed, navigate to the ‘Status’ section in the main menu.
View the status of reservations received within the section by clicking on the ‘Reservations’ tab. You can choose to download the reservations’ status by clicking ‘Download as Excel’ option.
Scroll down to check the reservation status in the product UI instead of downloading the Excel file.
Products and Linking
Post checking the status of unmapped products in your inbox, you can directly navigate to Products and Linking page to complete and start sending ARI updates. Go to Products and Linking by simply clicking on the ‘setting’ icon at the top.
Manage auto sync by clicking on the ‘Sync’ button beside the ‘Save’ option — and three options would open: the user can sync either only a single channel in the main view or sync all channels or set up sync frequency.
You can also quickly glance and look for unmapped room rate types highlighted in white in the right of the Products and Linking section.
You can also download the entire mapping status on Products and Linking page into a spreadsheet to review them offline. Click on icon to download the mapping.
I hope this quick walkthrough was helpful. These were a few tasks that you could accomplish from RezGain. But there is a whole lot you can do in RezGain — curious? Drop me a line here, and my team would be happy to set up a call or a brief demo with your team.
About the Author
Sara De Urrutia 
Manager, Customer Success – Europe
RateGain
