Channel Manager and CRS

Where would people go to find a hotel? 

The answer is, that they will google it. Yes, maybe they have apps on their mobile like booking.com apps or Agoda apps. But, do they all have it? NOPE. I believe most of them will google it, even though from google, they will end up to booking.com, Agoda, Traveloka, or any other OTA, and with a little luck, they will go directly to the hotel website. And that is the simplest way to understand hotel distribution. It is how hotel distributes their hotel rooms to several channels for the guest to book their hotel. Hotels most likely will have many channels for their room distribution. And it'll be time-consuming when they have to go to each OTA to update it one by one. Therefore, here comes the Channel Manager and CRS take their part.

CM (Channel Manager)

Basically, Channel Manager is a software that connects the hotel to several OTAs (that hotel already registered) and synchronizes it all. For example, you can update your room availability and room rate only on your channel manager, then it will update to every OTA platform accordingly. It is that simple. That's their main purpose, to do the distribution update to each platform with a single input. On the other hand, of course, Channel Manager is not a free software tough, for sure there is a cost that the hotel has to pay. This means the hotel will have to pay commission to the OTA, and also to the Channel Manager provider. 

The most well-known channel manager provider is SiteMinder, CloudBed, and Staah.

CRS (Central Reservation System)

Quite similar to Channel Manager, CRS is also a Reservation Management software that allows the hotel to manage their room availability and rates. But instead only of managing the distribution from OTA, it also allows the hotel to manage the distribution from the hotel's website/booking engine, the whole-seller (or offline travel agent),  and the GDS, in addition to direct bookings.

Revenue managers are constantly looking to update prices based on the market, and with a central reservation system, this can be easily managed. They can quickly adjust prices that will be reflected across the distribution channels to ensure rate parity.

Conclusion

We may say that there’s no difference in terms of the distribution function. However, the CRS has far more functions and functionality. It allows you to manage the hotel's booking engine, GDS for Corporate bookings, become the OTAs Channel Manager, and also manage the hotel's Offline or Direct bookings (phone and email reservations). Hence, chain hotels surely have their own CRS. On the other hand, a smaller hotel with a few OTA, Channel Manager will be a great option to increase its revenue and visibility on the internet.

Hope this article can help you. Again, I will be more than happy to hear your feedback, comment, or even any critics. 

Lobby Lizard
It is okay to move slow, but make sure you move forward