A sales channel is a connection to one booking site. Settings → Sales Channels is where you connect Booking.com, Expedia, or Google Hotels, map their rooms and rates to your accommodations, and pause or remove them. What happens day to day once a channel is live, how bookings arrive and what works differently for them, is in Channel manager.
Before you start
Channel distribution is enabled per account. If the page says the channel manager isn't enabled for your account yet, ask SERVOS. Once it is, the first step is Connect to channel manager, which creates your property in the channel manager from your organization details. Do it once. Your accommodations are mirrored to the channel manager from then on.
Adding a channel
Press Add your first channel (later Add Channel):
- Pick the "Channel" and enter the "OTA property id", the hotel id from that booking site's extranet. Choose a "Fee tax group" for fees that come from this channel, such as cancellation fees.
- "Map rooms and rates": one row per room and rate the booking site offers. Pick the accommodation that sells it, or "Don't map" to skip the row. Only accommodations already mirrored to the channel manager are offered.
Press Connect. The channel shows "Live" when it's selling.
Managing a channel
Each row's menu has Edit settings, Edit mapping, Disable (the channel shows "Paused" and stops selling; Enable resumes), and Remove, which stops selling and disconnects it.
Editing the mapping sends the complete set again. A row you leave unmapped stops selling on that channel.
Common questions
A new room type isn't offered in the mapping. It hasn't been mirrored to the channel manager yet. Check it exists and is saved under Accommodations, then reopen the mapping.
We want to stop selling on one site for the season. Disable the channel. Bookings already made stay. Enable when you're ready.
Prices on the booking site are higher than in SERVOS. By design if you have a pricing rule for that booking site, or a stay-length discount in SERVOS, which doesn't reach booking sites. See Availability and pricing.
