When you start renting your holiday home, there are terms and acronyms that get thrown around like OTA, PMS and one common thing you may read about is a “Channel Manager”, here is some information on what it is or why you may choose to use it. Hopefully, this article will explain what a Channel Manager is, and help you to determine if you need one.
What is a Channel Manager?
In the simplest terms, a “Channel” (or sometimes “Sales Channel”) is basically any website through which guests make holiday rental bookings. Examples include big global sites like Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia, as well as Metasearch platforms and more niche travel channels for business travel, luxury or perhaps golfing.
If you want to ensure your holiday rental is booked out as much as possible you need to advertise your properties on as many of these different channels as possible. This allows you to reach many more potential guests and diversifies your revenue streams. You could create and manage listings, calendars, bookings and payouts separately on each site, but this requires a reasonable amount of work, especially if you have multiple properties.
Instead, most rental professionals use a “Channel Manager”. A Channel Manager is a tool which connects or distributes your online property listing to different websites to make it easier for you to manage. Some Channel Managers only send the listing content (for example the pictures, descriptions and facilities) to each channel, whereas the Search and Stay Channel Manager is also able to send all information such as prices, seasons, amenities, inclusions, property and guest rules and calendar availability.
Who Should Consider Using a Channel Manager?
Basically, anyone who manages a rental property and is serious about receiving bookings should be using a Channel Manager. This is especially important for those managing multiple properties, as keeping on top of all your listings on all the different websites is an incredible amount of work without a Channel Manager tool.
How Do Channel Managers Work?
Different Channel Managers work in different ways. Generally, you'll need to create an account on every channel you want to use. You then create a listing on Search and Stay and connect it to your chosen channels. With Search and Stay Channel Manager, you create a listing and it gets sent to all of your chosen channels. Whenever you update your listing content, calendars or prices, these changes will be made on every channel you use. You also manage all your bookings and payouts in one place.
Why Should I Use A Channel Manager?
Channel Managers are really useful because they save you a huge amount of time and effort. Using a Channel Manager allows you to:
- Maximize your chances of receiving bookings by advertising to different audiences
- Increase your brand exposure and awareness in different markets
- Diversify your revenue streams
- Reduce the amount of time you spend on manual updates
- Increase your visibility without increasing your workload or headcount
Do I Need A Channel Manager and How Much Does It Cost?
If you:
- Manage one or more rental properties
- Want to get more bookings
- Don’t want to hire lots of extra staff or spend needless time on repetitive tasks
Then you should probably be using a Channel Manager. The best Channel Managers take the hard work out of listing across various channels, like simplifying confusing commission structures. Some Channel Managers require a set-up fee or have monthly subscription costs, to use the Search and Stay Channel Manager you simply pay $10 per property per month.
Summary
An effective Channel Manager is an absolute must for anyone hoping to successfully manage your holiday property. It distributes your rental properties to multiple sites and removes much of the manual work that can make renting your holiday property tedious, time consuming or complicated. Click here to speak to us via our help chat for more information about the Search and Stay Channel Manager.