What is a hotel distribution channel?
A hotel distribution channel is an intermediary or company that creates the reservation on behalf of the hotel. Another way to look at a channel is a specific stream of booking revenue for a property. A third-party sales website like Expedia.com or Booking.com could be refereed to as channel by the hotel.
When a hotel is utilizing multiple online distribution channels, they will use a channel manager to manage them. While there are many benefits to using a channel manager to control your hotel distribution channels, the main one is to be able to manage all of the channels in group instead of managing each channel’s extranet separately. Other channel manager features include connecting your PMS to be able to automatically update ARI information, and electronically place reservations from the channel into the PMS.