We have finalized the Channel Manager database sharding project we have been working on at YieldPlanet for the last 12 months.

Sharding is a database partitioning that separates very large databases into smaller, faster and more efficient parts.

Why is sharding so important?

Over the last few years, the demand for the hotels to exchange data year to year has been increasingly and dynamically growing.

Data traffic increases at least twice fold each year, requiring constant effort to keep up with that pace from the channel manager. Sharding has prepared us for supporting big loads of rates and allotments distributed to your OTA channels, as well as processing rates received from revenue management systems which are becoming more and more popular.

The process will, therefore, allow it for our Channel Manager to operate faster even with big amounts of data.

Finalizing the database sharding project required from us moving resources within our database.  We did our best to minimize any negative effects on hotelier daily operations. Now we can take advantage of this milestone project and grow further with you.

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YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager is the most comprehensive online distribution solution available on the market. It is used by hundreds of hotels all over the globe. Extraordinary flexibility and adaptability in case you suddenly need to quickly transfer data to online systems, a situation so common in every hotel.

Nowadays the world around us is changing and developing dynamically, so it’s important to choose a channel manager that can easily adapt to changes and meet carious challenges that hotels face. Flexibility is therefore an indisputably essential feature when selecting an optimal online distribution tool.

Enough of the introduction. Below we will take a closer look at the features of Channel Manager by YieldPlanet that make it into the most flexible price and offer optimizing tool in the industry.

Channel Manager by YieldPlanet – flexible tool for price optimization

Defining room/price formulas

In Channel Manager by YieldPlanet you can define formulas for price linkages between rooms and offers, a feature that provides Revenue Manager with flexibility when modifying rates in response to market or season changes.

Loading rate tables (predefined rates)

Channel Manager allows to quickly predefine rates. Moreover, it allows you to load rates using grids which, in turn speeds up the entire online distribution process in weekly cycles.

Establishing revenue rules

“Revenue rules” is another feature of the YP’s Channel Manager that facilitates flexible price optimiziation. Vast majority of the processes is automated, thus saving time spent needed to manage online distribution.

YP’s Channel Manager functions making it into flexible offer optimization tool

Price formulas

Managing offers in YP’s Channel Manager is an easy task, even in a long period. You can create formulas between tariffs. It helps you reduce the error margin and significantly speed up loading new prices.

Formulas for mapping on the channel level

Creating and modifying formulas for maps on the channel level is another advantage of Channel Manager’s flexibility. It will help you reduce time spent on activities in this area.

Narrowing down rates transfer to channels depending on the season

In Channel Manager by YieldPlanet you can establish rates depending on the season, you can even set different rates for every season, all this from one control point. Rates can be calculated automatically according to the room type and price plan, while, at the same time, using various formulas on a room or tariff plan level.

YP’s Channel Manager functions making it into the most flexible tool in the industry in comparison to other available tools

Channel Manager by YieldPlanet is the only tool of this standard on the market equipped with features unavailable in other tools.

Flexible formulas and revenue rules configuration

This function gives Revenue Managers flexibility in their every day work, thus allowing for easily configuring unlimited number of formulas and revenue rules to optimize revenue. Thanks to this functionality, you can program certain automated activities enabled in case of increase or decrease in the number of rooms of a certain type available. The above circumstances can lead to rate change by a predefined numerical value or percentage, or close sales in all distribution channels, leaving exclusively the sales in hotel’s booking engine open.

If you want to learn more about flexible functionalities of the Channel Manager by YieldPlanet, contact us or order a demo version to test our tool.

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Not long ago, advanced hotel system infrastructure was a domain of big hotel chains. Today, in the era of digital revolution, ignoring technologies, services and solutions provided by software producers can prove to be an enormous obstacle on your way to development. In a longer run, it can even lead to serious difficulties in the context of maintaining high occupancy. What system are worth considering? Can small hotels afford their implementation and maintenance?

Many dream of running their own accommodation facility, however opening and managing a hotel is much more difficult than it might seem. The main challenge is to raise capital to be invested into launching the facility of your dreams. But to think that this is where challenges end is false. Quite to the contrary. Real challenges and obstacles start hoarding the moment you launch your hotel. Small facilities are normally in the hands of a family business or a partnership with a handful of investors owning shares which most commonly leads to fragmentation of decision-making, blurred responsibility and thereby general organisational chaos. Further, lack of formal and centralised facility management as well as lack of professional employee training are among the most common mistakes of small hoteliers.

Small and medium hotel facilities also tend to shy away from modern technologies and solutions that help optimize and automate every-day workload of the reception. To a certain extent this behaviour is understandable – the majority of hospitality facilities avoid investing into technologies as they constitute an additional burden on the budget, a difficult issue especially for small hotels. In particular today, when short-term rentals reach new heights of popularity, forcing hotels into more and more fierce competition to win clients. There is no denying that the enormous number of apartments for short-term rental takes a toll on all types of facilities present on the market; competing with lower rates is normally not an option due to a high and still growing cost of running a hotel. The industry is subject to strict regulations and ever more dependent on internet sales channels – OTAs – each of which charges between 10 and 30% commission. Moreover, in many cases entering into agreement with an OTA results in signing an agreement with so called wide rate parity clauses, restricting hotels from offering rooms at rates lower than those on the OTA’s platform. While many countries banned wide parity rates by now (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland), in Poland their use is still legally accepted. In principle, leading OTAs apply harmonised rules throughout the EU and do not demand rate parity, while exceptions happen.

In the wake of digital revolution, virtually all of hotel services sales moved to the internet. Therefore, in today’s world building a multi-channel distribution strategy that includes a wide range of OTAs is not an option, but a necessity. It’s to be or not to be in hotel industry – both for chain giants and small facilities offering merely a dozen rooms. Yet implementing this strategy can be an arduous task without the support of modern technological solutions.

Technologies for small hotels

It is a common misconception that full and automated information flow in a hotel is only possible in large facilities as it requires an elaborate combination of a bunch of systems – among others, Property Management System, Channel Manager to help manage large numbers of channels (such as hotel’s own Booking Engine and OTAs) and, more and more often, Revenue Management System to facilitate room rates management. Today, all large hotel facilities depend on broad infrastructure systems like the one described above. In their case manual sales and booking management systems simply wouldn’t do. As in small hotels the scale of activity is much narrower, they can still be successful while refusing to invest into modern technologies out of fear of investing large sums into implementation and maintenance of the technological solutions.

Is this fear justified? Is it true that only the largest facilities with big budgets and professionally trained staff can afford expert technological infrastructure? According to statistics, as little as 14% of all hotel facilities in Poland are chains (in Spain the share equals 34%, in Portugal 26%). Vast majority is in private hands, most of them are small or medium sized. Bearing in mind the above numbers, hotel software producers adjusted their solutions to the industry reality and implemented rate policies that allow for wide distribution. It is clear that the cost of building system infrastructure is unavoidable, yet its scale is much smaller than many owners of hospitality facilities (hotels, hostels or apartments) expect.

Fixed rate vs. commission model

The key element in information flow is the Property Management System, the essential tool of every hotelier. Maintenance of the cheapest systems costs as little as a few hundred PLN a year. Extended PMS for the largest facilities can cost as much as several tens of thousands PLNS a year. Yet, it is worth mentioning that such a system helps automate many everyday duties of the reception, such as accepting reservations and introducing them into the calendar, thereby saving considerable sums of money and enhancing service quality.

When considering an investment into hotel technology, you might want to take a closer look at both affordable PMS solutions (e.g. KWHotel or Hotelgram) dedicated to small and medium-sized facilities and sold in a subscription model, as well as a wide range of services and solutions commonly available against a commission fee. It is crucial to make your facility well visible online and provide fast and smooth reservation experience in the times when majority of booking come from online distribution channels. PMS as a strategic system for the hotel should be a starting point, yet it shouldn’t be the only solution you rely on. You will also need a Channel Manager and a Booking Engine. The commission rate for the suppliers of the above solutions normally starts from 2% of the handled reservation. For managers of small-sized hotel facilities YieldPlanet prepared a START version of the Channel Manager. In this purchase option there are no fixed monthly fees. It is also worth noting that nearly all, if not all, OTA platforms rely on charging commission from their partners. This, in turn, means that the hotel only pays for the results, i.e. a successful reservation done via a booking platform. Commissions of the largest companies on the market normally range between 10-20%.

Knowing that strategic compounds of information distribution chain are available at the cost of a few hundred PLN annually (PMS), solutions of the Channel Manager and Booking Engine type can be purchased in a commission model, and OTAs charge their fees exclusively for actual results (value of successful reservations), we can safely state that investing into hotel technology does not constitute an obstacle for the business nor a burden on the budget for already existing facilities of any size. If you want to balance the cost invested into technologies, you can supplement the above mentioned system infrastructure by an RMS or choose a Channel Manager equipped with a feature to aid optimize hotel revenue. Owner of every facility offering over a dozen of rooms should seriously consider investment into a technological management system. A reliable RMS can help effectively boost hotel revenue and reduce to minimum the cost of unsold rooms – according to hoteliers the biggest cost born by every facility manager.

Solutions and features for small hotels

Small and medium hospitality facilities can nowadays pick and choose from among a wide range of solutions to automate processes and optimize revenue, available at affordable prices and in convenient payment models. Many software providers pay great attention to the smallest businesses on the market and offer interesting solutions adjusted to the needs and wishes of small facilities. Example? YieldPlanet offers a solution dedicated to facilities whose reception does not run 24h or is closed on holidays that allows them to block guests arrival on the same day or on a holiday within selected time-frame. Thinking of the needs of small and medium hotels we also designed a feature protecting against human error (e.g. too low or high rate, publishing online higher than actual room availability by mistake). Apartment owners can easily manage rates depending on the number of guests using the rented facility, hostel managers will easily publish rates for beds in shared rooms.

 
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YieldPlanet is a Channel Manager founded on the Yield philosophy. As the name implies, its function is yielding, or, in other words, ensuring maximum profitability of your rates and hotel distribution in an optimised and effective manner.

YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager is focused in its entirety on clients’ profits. This premise is as valid as ever, the objective of monthly software updates is to comply with industry requirements and revenue management specialists’ needs in order to boost the revenue.

YieldPlanet is one of the most prestigious business partners for Booking.com, on top of that, it also offers the highest possible standard for connections reliability, which, in turn, translates into fast connections and makes the Channel Manager into the most powerful revenue management tool.

As we are well aware how difficult it is to continuously increase hotel’s revenues,
month after month, we decided to draw up this article. Here we will walk you through the features of the Channel Manager and explain how to use them to increase your revenue. We will also provide you with some tips and professional tricks on the use of the software.

Distribution strategy – setting and frequent optimizing

YieldPlanet Channel Manager allows for creating distribution strategy that will help you manage monthly data analysis executed to make informed and reasonable decisions about the revenue, prices, bookings or intermediary commissions.

Before you get started, take your time to contemplate and set your objective. Next, decide which distribution strategy you are willing to implement and what profits you will expect it to bring. Based on these data you can make decisions on the best integrations, channel management and price strategies fine-tuned to individual seasons of the year.

Connect to nearly 500 integrations to expand your global reach

As opposed to other Channel Managers, YieldPlanet Channel Manager provides integrations to nearly 500 OTAs, tour operators, wholesalers, PMS, CRS, GDS, RMS, metasearch engines and booking systems.

These integrations will help you strengthen your visibility and global reach. Integrating your hotel prices with the most important integrations according to the revenue management and profit analysis data will translate into an increase in hotel revenue.

In-depth intermediary cost analysis (OTA, IDS)

One of the most prominent advantages of our Channel Manager is the amount of data it can access for analysis to later help you make informed decisions.

As you can manage each channel separately, you can also run an analysis on every channel individually and verify its cost, the intermediary commission rates and what improvements can be introduced to increase its profitability.

According to YieldPlanet, using many OTAs or adding new sales channels on a regular basis does not always prove to be good for your business. We suggest that you adhere to a few main channels (max. 12) and manage them in an active and informed manner. Do not let the number of channels and their costs get out of hand.

Manage each channel individually with YieldPlanet Channel Manager

Channel Manager not only provides integrations to a large number of channels, it is also fitted with a series of functions to let you manage each channel separately.

The difference lies in the revenue. It is therefore advisable to run each channel individually to achieve better results. Joint management of the channels can cost you valuable data and trigger bad decisions.

Using YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can submit various rates and inventory to different channels, and, consequently, achieve your revenue objectives.

There is an alternative way to boost the revenue. Revenue Rules module opens and shuts channels named by you to increase rates should the availability drop.

In this way you can activate the channels you don’t normally use for sales and, for instance, only use them in the period preceding the peak season. Moreover, with this function you can also limit the room availability in certain channels or diversify the availability in different channels so that some channels have more rooms to sell than others.

It is a way to stimulate direct sales by, for instance, increasing room availability in your own internal booking system.

Increase or reduce prices as often as you wish in a segmentary mode

To boost revenue you need to always be vigilant, always ready to asses and analyse prices.

With YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can incorporate into your strategy a complete tool helping you to manage your rates and pricing policy in an easy and effective manner. You will notice that your pricing decisions are more precise and better-informed.

In YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can identify 20 rate types depending on room type and pricing policy, which translates into flexibility when setting pricing strategies for individual segments.

On top of that, you can programme sales in individual sales channels to automate the process. Revenue Management Rules function is designed to set automatic price change in any direction, depending on the room availability at a certain period.

Additionally, it will help you plan price changes at any time, so you don’t need to worry about forgetting to do so as the changes will be implemented fully automatically, saving your time.

Summary

Ready to boost your revenue? Contact us to learn more about options to increase your revenue with YieldPlanet Channel Manager. Our team will be happy to provide you with advice and support whenever you need it.

You will also be shown concrete case studies showcasing our clients’ stories of how implementing Channel Manager in their properties helped boost the revenue.

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KajWare, PMS KWHotel

The perfect duet of the hospitality industry

Automation is a key term for the hoteliers of the 21st century. Only slightly over a decade ago relying on a notebook and your own memory was a standard procedure in property management. Yet memory isn’t always reliable and a pile of papers doesn’t necessarily provide an easy insight into the hotel’s current condition.

As the technological development progressed, new tools for better organised handling of the facility and data storage emerged, thereby remarkably limiting the hotel staff workload. In the HoReCa sector, Property Management and Channel Manager systems lead the way. While they are two independent systems, they first show their true potential once combined together. You will learn more about this here.

Channel manager is the orchestra, PMS its conductor

Every performance of the “Channel Manager and PMS” duet helps you to more effectively coordinate the operation of the entire facility. What areas are involved? Below we have gathered six areas that can be automated with the use of the two tools.

1. Quick availability and price lists synchronization with OTAs

Manual rate and availability updates in every portal individually will soon become a thing of the past. Now you only need to enter a new booking or rate into the PMS and it will immediately send them to the channel manager system for further distribution. You can use the time you just saved to take better care of your customer.

2. No more manual register book

Knowing how many check-ins and check-outs are scheduled for the day is the essence of every hotelier’s work. Good quality hotel software can clearly present these information. What’s more, every customer is automatically registered in an electronic register book. Quick, easy and safe!

3. Access to statistics and reports – optimize your strategy!

By analyzing the information on the channel that brought the customer to your hotel and what real profit the booking will bring you can perfect your marketing and sales strategies. Both PMS and channel manager dispose of an enormous number of reports “for every occasion”. Reports are also automatically send to your email address – this feature will make sure your always up to date!

4. Automatic email and text message notification – for you and your guests

Sending out notifications manually can be a back-breaking task, especially in the high season. PMS and Channel Manager will do that for you. Starting from automatic booking confirmations, through generating discount codes and sending “thank you for your stay” messages. You can also send notifications to your staff.

5. Optimum occupancy management

Have you ever been forced to walk your guest from one room to another because there were no more vacant rooms? Some property management systems will handle booking to as to avoid this inconvenient situation. The system will make sure the way rooms are assigned to guests will maximize facility’s availability and your profit.

6. Improved payment handling

Automated payments are another area that can enhance the service provided to the guest and reduce human error factor on the part of the staff. Cooperation with property management systems will improve communication between the reception and hotel restaurant. Using terminal will make the check-out faster and automatically generated hyperlinks to the payments will help you collect the payments.

Conclusions

PMS and Channel Manager system facilitate the hotelier’s work. But there’s more! This software will also give you the access to crucial information, such as customer’s preferences on virtually every stage of their stay.
You can learn more from our upcoming article!

The discussed facility automation areas are fully handled by, among others, KWHotel software.
Below you can watch an animated presentation of the modern facility management model with the use of the above described PMS.

Watch animation now