What is Channel Management?

What is Channel Management?

When the Property Manager uses multiple marketing sites like VRBO, Airbnb, Etc., they may also have a reservation software that all of those sites are feeding information to. They are all configured so that when they get a booking on one of them, those dates are Blocked out on the others to prevent a double booking.

The system the Property Manager is using determines which automated method we use to pull the housekeeping schedule from the Property Manager to the Cleaner. For example, if a Property Manager is using one of the reservation software systems that we have an integration with, we connect directly to the Property Management System. The Property Management System is tied to the external marketing sites (VRBO, Airbnb, Etc.,) and we just get our feed from the Property Management System.

In the event that the Property Manager does not use a reservation software or uses one we don’t integrate with, we can connect directly to VRBO or Airbnb by pulling the reservation information through the iCal link for each property.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky, as each marketing site works a little different in the way the Blocks are shared between different systems. Even though the sites are Blocking the dates from being booked on the neighboring site, that block is placed on the front facing calendar that potential guests have access to so they are not able to double book but it IS NOT always pushed to the back end calendar where we are pulling our information from. 

For that reason, if a Property Manager is not using a reservation software, but uses both VRBO and Airbnb, we would use the iCal link for both sites to pull the information in to ResortCleaning. Some sites update to VRBO differently and depending on the site, we may determine we can use one connection instead of both but it is a case by case scenario.

I hope that doesn’t sound too complicated but that’s why it will only work if the Property Manager is involved and willing to check their ResortCleaning calendar for accuracy. If the Property Manager will take a glance on the day of departure just to make sure housekeeping is scheduled correctly, it is rare that something is wrong but doing so will guarantee a guest doesn’t show up to a dirty property.