Best Channel Management Software

What is Channel Management?

Channel management is a sales marketing term used to define a process in which a company devises various sales and marketing strategies to reach its widest audience. These channels include different ways or outlets a business uses to sell its products. 

Retailers, wholesalers, and agents are some common examples of channels. A typical channel management procedure consists of the following steps. These include:

• Understanding the consumer

• Determining channel goals

• Assigning distribution roles

• Evaluating various channel alternatives

• Monitoring the performance of members across different channels

What is Channel Management Software?

Channel management software is designed to help businesses manage their bookings and sales across multiple channels. These tools help hotel businesses improve sales and distribution outcomes by facilitating effortless yet effective client segmentation and tracking. Hospitality business owners widely use channel management systems for managing and monitoring room bookings for an inn or hotel.

The ultimate goal of any organization is to develop a fruitful customer-product relationship. Channel management helps achieve this objective by streamlining communication between a business and its customers. But, as business scales, the number of products and customers also increases, which makes manual channel management difficult and time-consuming. Here's when channel management software comes into play.

Benefits of Channel Management Software

Channel management tools assist hotels in managing inventory and rates across numerous distribution channels. In addition, these solutions help you increase your hotel's global reach and take off the load from your workforce by providing real-time channel management connectivity. 

Let's take a look at some apparent benefits of channel management software. 

1. Live Inventory Updates:

Channel management tools provide one-click access and update to inventory and rates across all of your managed channels and provide real-time insight into the availability of rooms. A channel management system automatically updates room reservations or cancellations on multiple sales channels and saves all details in the channel manager database. 

2. Added Benefits of Pooled Inventory System:

Most channel management software solutions come with a pooled inventory system, which reduces the manual effort required to manage the inventory. For example, this tool uses pooled inventory to establish real-time contact between hotel booking channels to ensure all your rooms are up for booking. 

3. Elimination of Human Errors:

Channel management solutions help you automate time-consuming, exhausting, and inaccurate human tasks. It prevents overbookings by automatically updating the dashboard and online channels. These tools improve online hotel bookings by providing your customers with accurate rates and booking information. Not only does this help you save human hours, but it also enables you to eliminate the chances of errors and mistakes. 

4. Enhanced Global Visibility:

More than half of travel reservations are made online, and the best channel management system enables you to link to as many booking channels as possible, thus, providing global visibility. With the help of a channel management tool, you can connect with travelers from across the globe, which is impossible with traditional booking methods. In addition, it helps you build a complete image for your brand and, thus, more trust and credibility. 

5. Improved Operational Productivity and Efficiency:

A channel management platform functions as a bridge between your PMS dashboard and online channels. It lets you focus on core administrative tasks without investing too much time and resources in your distribution channels and excel sheets. It provides an intuitive dashboard that helps you manage all sales channels in one go. This gives you and your staff more time to focus on crucial tasks, thus, improving operational efficiency.

Importance of Channel Management Software

Channel management software is critical in helping hotels maximize their bookings and increase revenue. Here are some reasons why a channel management system is essential for your hotel business.

1. Diversified Booking:

It provides your customers multiple sources to make a booking at your hotel. Hotels must diversify their booking channels to stay ahead of the competition in a competitive market.

2. Inventory & Rate Management:

Contextual hotel management requires you to keep up with the changing times. A hotel management system linked to your PMS enables you to seamlessly distribute inventory and rates without consuming much time.

3. Global Exposure:

As discussed before, investing in a channel management solution allows you to attract guests from across the globe.

4. No Missed Opportunities:

One of hotel businesses' biggest hurdles is discrepancies in rates and inventories across multiple channels. Channel management software automatically updates rates and inventory status in real time, thus, leaving no scope for error.

5. The Billboard Effect:

The more visibility you get on online channels, the higher the chances of your prospective guests checking your website. A channel management system keeps you connected with popular booking channels to ensure you get maximum attention.

Features of Channel Management Software

A robust channel management solution is crucial for the smooth operations of any hospitality business. Here are some key features of the best channel manager system.

1. Room Allocation:

Room allocation is an essential task for every hotel business. A channel management system automatically distributes hotel bookings and displays it on the booking chart of the hotel. This feature eliminates the risk of errors during room location, ensuring the guests are happy.

2. Budget Planning:

Channel management software plays a critical role in budget planning as well. These tools constantly track historical data, past revenue, booking trends, and seasonal traffic across various channels and occupancy charts to assist with planning budgets and determining rates.

3. Query Response:

Customer satisfaction is paramount in the hotel business, and overlooking feedback can be detrimental. Channel management solutions provide a speedy response system that helps you identify and respond to a customer issue or query instantly. It helps you cater to all your customer's requirements as soon as possible, thus adding to their satisfaction and experience.

4. Remote Access:

With the world hoping digital, hotel owners and managers require remote capabilities to manage their business anytime. A channel management system offers multi-device support, which allows you to stay on top of your business.

5. Auto Update:

Channel management solutions provide auto-update capabilities to ensure seamless synchronization between rates and inventory status across all online channels.

Market Trends about Channel Management Software

The adoption of channel management software is rising, and the future seems more exciting. For example, ZINFI, a leading UCM company, recently launched a mobile application that enables hotel businesses to run their businesses on the go. Some future market trends to look out for in channel management software include:

• More hotel businesses will shift towards mobile capabilities. As a result, future solutions will be more mobile-centric to enable business owners to manage their channels remotely.

• More technologies, like AI and IoT, will make the channel management process more innovative and effective. For example, these technologies will predict customer behavior to help businesses make improved decisions.

• In the future years, we'll see an enhanced collaboration between hotels and global OTAs to improve international engagement. More and more people are planning international trips, and channel management vendors will make the hotel booking easier for customers and hotels.