This webinar features How to increase your booking revenues using a Unified Distribution System. You would learn What is a Unified Distribution approach, it's benefits, how to connect to Channels and GDS to boost revenues, Demo of the Hotelogix Distribution System and much more!
2. WHO ARE WE
Hotelogix provides property management system and
distribution system on the cloud in a subscription
model to hotels in over 50 countries.
3. Why Us?
Customers in 50+ countries.
Resellers in 15+ countries.
Customers are small and mid sized independent properties
Customers range from 4 room BnBs to 300 rooms business hotels
Customers come from developed to under developed countries
4. Channel
Manager to
connect with
OTAs
Point Of
Sales
Web
Booking
Engine
PMS
Back office
Sales &
Marketing
Office Logins
Travel Agent
& Corporate
Sales System
Facebook
Booking
Engine
GDS/IDS
Connectivity &
Over 1200 Travel
Portals
Hotel
Property
Owners
Unified and
Real-time
Distribution
System
5. Channel
Manager to
connect with
OTAs
Point Of
Sales
Web
Booking
Engine
PMS
Back office
Sales &
Marketing
Office Logins
Travel Agent
& Corporate
Sales System
Facebook
Booking
Engine
GDS/IDS
Connectivity &
Over 1200 Travel
Portals
Unified and
Real-time
Distribution
System
• Online Savvy Customers
• Complexity of
distribution
• Competitive Market
• Managing non unified
distribution
• Brand Positioning
• Resource Management
• Time Management
Challenges
6. What Is Unified Distribution System?
• A Unified approach towards Distribution on the cloud.
• Work in real-time with third party channels for your room sales.
• Centralized platform to control your business from a single point
dashboard.
7. Do I Need It?
Do I need to . . .
• Sell more rooms?
• Simplify my distribution and make it more efficient?
• Be always present where my customers are?
• Reduce cost of Marketing and maximize my hotel business?
12. Existing approaches
OTA’s
Web Booking Engine
Social Media Engine
Travel Agents
GDS
Managed as
separate
entities with
additional
requirement
of trained
resources
13. Unified Distribution System
OTA’s
Web Booking Engine
Travel Agents
Face booking Engine
GDS
Managed from
one centralised
platform with
existing
resources
available
15. Experience the power and simplicity of Centralized Dashboard for your inventory sales
through all available mediums of sale and distribution.
HOW IT WORKS ?
16. Total Rooms
40
Total Rooms
40
Total Rooms
40
Booked
10
Booked
5 Booked
5
TOTAL ROOMS 100
AVAILABLE 40
Sell across all sources of distribution without blocking your Room-nights. Get Real Time
updates across all channels, at the front desk.
HOW IT WORKS ?
17. Create rates centrally through a Powerful Rate Manager and sell across
distribution networks with rate parity..
20
Commission
Base Price $100
%
$30
Markup
Base Price $100
10
Margin
Base Price $100
%
Hotel
Price $100
HOW IT WORKS ?
19. Be always present where your customers are
Maximize your revenues by getting rid of Blocking/Unblocking of rooms
Positive impact on your revenues and profitability
Generate Higher Revenues
Achieve Incredible Savings
Makes your distributions absolutely simple, cost effective and efficient
Freedom from human errors and operational overheads
20. Contact Us
USA :+1 214 245 4631 Info@hotelogix.com
Download the Webinar from our resources section at
www.hotelogix.com
Editor's Notes
Welcome to this webinar on Unified Distribution, a unique and smart approach that we are professing to achieve maximum efficiency in distribution.
HMSinfotech are the makers of Hotelogix service that provides property management and distribution solution on the cloud to small and mid sized independent hospitality businesses in over 50 countries today. We are headquartered in India with local presence in over 15 countries through partners.
Hotelogix with its experience of working with small and mid sized property owners across 50 countries has come to realize of what is required by these property owners as a solution for their distribution needs. We have worked with properties as small as 4 room bed and breakfasts to 300+ rooms business hotels cutting across under developed countries to developed nations. We see commonality in the issues these businesses face in distribution and have come out with an approach that works and works well. Here we are, sharing the same with all of you.
What is unified distribution? A hotel has various sales and distribution channels through which it sells its room inventory and gives out special rates. These channels are online channels like the hotel website, the online travel sites like bookings.com, expedia etc. The GDS like the Amadeus, Galileo, Worldspan, Sabre etc. where 100s and 1000s of IATA travel agents book room nights, Social Media platforms like facebook and also referral and listing services like tripadvisor, wego etc. Then there are offline channels like the direct traditional travel agents/ tour operators that the hotel is associated with and gives special rates to, the corporates that the hotel works and has special rates and maybe some VIP guests to whom the hotel gives out special rates. All of these put together constitutes the world to whom a hotel distributes. Ofcourse, depending upon each hotel’s business dynamics, certain channels are more productive than the other and probably few of them do not exists for some. As we see, with the travellers getting online, the whole gamut of distribution has expanded and increased the opportunities for a hotel to do business with distant travellers. The increase in opportunity has also made distribution complex, and the whole marketplace has become extremely competitive. In order to remain competitive and avail of this opportunity, the suppliers of room inventory i.e. the properties, need to adopt solutions that will help them connect to all these market places and without having to deal with the complexities involved in handling each of them. They need to ensure, they are present on channels that matter to them, with the latest availabilities and rates that are ongoing. They need to ensure their brand is being positioned in a homogenous way across all the market places that they are in. Ensuring that there room availabilities are updated and rates are updated everywhere with the right brand positioning is not possible without tools that gives them the ability to manager all of this from one centralized place. A unified distribution system will allow these property owners to distribute their rates and availabilities from one console, connecting them to their entire market place with a click of a button, which makes it possible for these properties to operate efficiently and be present where there customers are at all times in real-time.Imagine that one room being booked at hotel website and the GDS or the OTA getting updated with availabilities without the hotelier making any additional manual work, a rate update based on current market dynamics gets applicable to all places where it matters with a single click, and so on and so forth. This is what unified distribution system and approach is all about. Central pool of inventory that can be distributed and shared across all the sales and distribution channels without any manual overheads. Without such solutions, when a property tries to avail all of these market opportunities, results in a lot of man hours being put in, manual errors resulting in either double bookings, or loss of potential business and rate parity issues. Also, there is a limit to the reach one can have if done manually.
What is unified distribution? A hotel has various sales and distribution channels through which it sells its room inventory and gives out special rates. These channels are online channels like the hotel website, the online travel sites like bookings.com, expedia etc. The GDS like the Amadeus, Galileo, Worldspan, Sabre etc. where 100s and 1000s of IATA travel agents book room nights, Social Media platforms like facebook and also referral and listing services like tripadvisor, wego etc. Then there are offline channels like the direct traditional travel agents/ tour operators that the hotel is associated with and gives special rates to, the corporates that the hotel works and has special rates and maybe some VIP guests to whom the hotel gives out special rates. All of these put together constitutes the world to whom a hotel distributes. Ofcourse, depending upon each hotel’s business dynamics, certain channels are more productive than the other and probably few of them do not exists for some. As we see, with the travellers getting online, the whole gamut of distribution has expanded and increased the opportunities for a hotel to do business with distant travellers. The increase in opportunity has also made distribution complex, and the whole marketplace has become extremely competitive. In order to remain competitive and avail of this opportunity, the suppliers of room inventory i.e. the properties, need to adopt solutions that will help them connect to all these market places and without having to deal with the complexities involved in handling each of them. They need to ensure, they are present on channels that matter to them, with the latest availabilities and rates that are ongoing. They need to ensure their brand is being positioned in a homogenous way across all the market places that they are in. Ensuring that there room availabilities are updated and rates are updated everywhere with the right brand positioning is not possible without tools that gives them the ability to manager all of this from one centralized place. A unified distribution system will allow these property owners to distribute their rates and availabilities from one console, connecting them to their entire market place with a click of a button, which makes it possible for these properties to operate efficiently and be present where there customers are at all times in real-time.Imagine that one room being booked at hotel website and the GDS or the OTA getting updated with availabilities without the hotelier making any additional manual work, a rate update based on current market dynamics gets applicable to all places where it matters with a single click, and so on and so forth. This is what unified distribution system and approach is all about. Central pool of inventory that can be distributed and shared across all the sales and distribution channels without any manual overheads. Without such solutions, when a property tries to avail all of these market opportunities, results in a lot of man hours being put in, manual errors resulting in either double bookings, or loss of potential business and rate parity issues. Also, there is a limit to the reach one can have if done manually.
Do I need it ,Ask these questions to yourself, Do I need to sell more rooms? And how can I do it in a simplified way? Is it possible to do it without any added burden of resources that I would need? Without any added cost of infrastructure? Are these tools available to me at a price point that are consumable. Does this reduce the cost of marketing and can I get an ROI from in quick time? and If the answers to any of the above questions is true, you need such tools, specially so because it does not require any specific skills and requires the existing understanding of the business and markets.
What are the tools that a unified distribution system has within it to give such a powerful solution set, lets go through them quickly as the concept behind them are already covered.
The underlying tools that unify on a centralize platform are the GDS connect to connect with the GDS’s we spoke about. The Channel Manager that would control all the OTAs, the booking engine on the hotels website and facebook to get direct bookings from travelers who land up on your digital assets. Travel Agent and corporate consoles that would give remote logins to these business partners of yours with whom you work directly, remote access to your sales and marketing offices to make the bookings that they get and finally the Frontdesk to make bookings for your walk-ins and call-ins. A centralized dashboard that collates all the room bookings you have got and one centralized backend to create and distribute rates, packages and allotments.
Normally with a non-unified distribution system all the elements of distribution are considered as separate entities. The traditional way of managing such a distribution system is to have a specific resource to manage these tools. For instance, OTA’s and GDS will require a dedicated channel manager to manage allotments, rates and cancellations. Web booking and social media booking will require a trained staff to manage them, A separate team to handle offline Travel agents and corporates. A non- unified distribution system lacks a centralised hub where in all this tools communicate with each other. As is it essential to have all this tools and manage it, it is equally essential to have a good centralised hub connecting all the modes of distribution.
And this is exactly what a Unified Distribution system will help you achieve. All the essential tools of distribution can be managed and controlled from a single centralised platform. No additional resources or a trained staff is required. Such a unified system will ensure that there is a perfect correlation among all the tools of distribution. Thereby giving you a simple yet very effective system to conduct your business without any hassles or complications.
Lets get a glimpse of how this all works.
This is a centralized dashboard on which you would see all the bookings coming from all your sales and distribution channels we spoke about. As you can see in the snapshot, there are bookings coming from OTAs. Social media, GDS etc. Anywhere you get a booking, the dashboard is updated in real time, and as a result it updates availabilities across everywhere you are connected to. The simple that this interface is, its understandable by anyone who has operated on front-desk or has understanding of hotel operations.
The screen here attempts to show how one can allot just one pool of inventory, in this case it is 40 rooms to be distributed and sold across all your channels of sales and distribution. We have a couple of OTA’s like expedia and Hotels.com and a GDS Sabre. Lets assume you have 40 available rooms and this is distributed across all the above mentioned channels. Now, Expedia gives you 10 bookings, hotels.com gives you 5 bookings and sabre gives you another 5 bookings. The remaining 20 rooms are now updated automatically across all your channels in real time and all this without having to invest any time or resource. You will be able to allot maximum possible inventory across all channels which will bump up your listing with quite a few OTAs that have allotments as a significant factor in deciding on the position they would give on their portals. This will further help you get better online visibility and hence better brand awareness. You will now be able to sell across all sources of distribution without blocking your room nights and get real time updates across all channels at the frontdesk.
One might agree, Rate parity issues are the biggest challenge any hotelier faces. This slides explains the different rate structures. For instance, different Travel agents, OTA’s work on different agent cost and commission structure. Few channels work on margins and a few on commissions. A hotel is expected to show similar rates for the end booker to avoid any rate parity issues. With a unified distribution system at the backend manages all this for you. The rates will be appropriately distributed according to the contract requirements and the end user i.e. your customers see the same rates being applied across all the channels. Just imagine doing this without a unified distribution system in place. Even with a very well trained and experienced staff, human errors are bound to occur and no OTA would like to see the rate cheaper on any other site, not even on the hotel’s own website.This may force OTA’s to blacklist your property for showing a higher price compared to another OTA’s and in turn lose out on potential customers who matter the most.
All of this results in the following business benefits.
Helps you get better brand awareness and always be present where your customers are. Gives you the best chance of getting the bookings. An inherent capability of updating availabilities automatically In real time maximizes your revenue by getting rid of blocking - unblocking of rooms. Enables you to get direct bookings such via booking engine on website and facebook, maximizes your profitability. Such an easy to use systems helps in quick adaption of the solution and the cloud technology help you access all of this solution with just a mere laptop and a basic internet connection Eliminates any serious infrastructure cost. Has a positive impact on your brand and helps you get rid of manual errors that directly affects your relationship with your customers.All in all this maximizes your hotel’s business and that too without incurring any additional capital expense.Let me show you a quick live demo of Hotelogix distribution system that works on the unified distribution concept.
Thank you for attending this webinar and we hope this was helpful to you. For further details please do visit our website: www.hotlogix.com or read our blogs. You can also check our Facebook page or follow us on twitter. Our contact details are info@hotelogix.com or you can also call us on +1 2142454631.This webinar will be available in the next 24 hours on our website and we look forward for your feedback. Thank you again and have a good evening.