Channel Manager

[Andrea190]

Hallo,

Does someone know if is possible to connect Airbnb to the Channel Manager and with the instant availability on line ? As there are no tracks  on the portal, moreover there are no phone numbers, no emails, no forum, nothing to ask someone of Airbnb about this (Is it right when we hoteliers must reply and very fast, not to go down in the ranking ?). I also asked to a Channel Manager but they say that it does not work well, it is very slow and sometime you have to wait  half a day to have the availabilty renewed after the booking. Is it true ?

[Ela21]

Hi Conrad,

can you please tell me how you managed to connect your listings to Little Hotelier? I am using them for PMS, Channel Manager and also using the Booking Button on my own website, I recently signed up with them as I was offered a very good deal at £70 GBP per month for everything. 

Unfortunately, it's an absolute nightmare and so far it has proved impossible to get the rooms created and mapped via the Little Hotelier connection Wizard to appear in my Airbnb account under the Channel Manager Sync tab. The Green Tab has appeared for the past 3 weeks but no listings are ever populated despite mapping them correctly from Little hotelier and enabling updates.

Airbnb customer support is useless and so have been LittleHotelier/SiteMinder technical support team who cannot troubleshoot this.

When you mapped the rooms, did you create new listings for your property or did you choose to "Map to active listing" from the Channel Manager? 

I can see that your rooms are listed here as  "room in bed & breakfast".  Has this always been the case for your property on Airbnb even before using Little Hotelier, or is this what the merging of individual room listings looks like if it's successful?  

Also, did you start from scratch creating an Airbnb property that had individual rooms to rent on Airbnb, as opposed to using separate room listings belonging to the same host? 

To explain a bit, I have 5 rooms that I have individually listed on Airbnb and I used to sync the iCal of each of them to a corresponding room on other websites (like Booking.com, Expedia) and controlled the room rates directly in Airbnb. 

Everything changed when I signed up with a new channel manager from Little Hotelier/SiteMinder which turned out not to support iCal sync. This is very unfortunate as I am also increasing the number of rooms and converting the house into a spa retreat so I desperately need to connect the rooms to the channel manager somehow to manage rates effectively.

Any help would be appreciated, or please talk me through what you did to set it up!

I am hoping whoever reads this message has a chance to inform themselves before they choose a channel manager. I wish I had known about these issues before wasting an enormous amount of time transferring everything to Little Hotelier and setting up the property according to their requirements and putting up with them not supporting  Safari and other bits & pieces that conveniently never get disclosed at the point of sale. 

Somebody mentioned HotelRunner, I have used them before and do not recommend them unless the property requirements are very simple and you don't have to work with rates and other separate settings for channels.  However, the iCal and other functions work well on Hotel Runner and I am almost considering switching back to them unless this issue is sorted or I manage to find a better, more powerful solution for my property.

Looking forward to hear  your thoughts, 

Ela  

[Peter1221]

Hi Andrea,

Hope you were able to find a CM that works for you!

Best 

[Melanie467]

Hi all

I am a new AirBNB host having just purchased an old railway boutique hotel with 8 rooms.

I am just setting up a CM with Switch.  $99 set up fee and then $108 per annum.  They are still getting me set up with my AirBNB account so will see how they go.  I am on free two month trial so if they don't get it together I will move on to someone else.  Really worried about double booking while I am learning the ropes.

All advise from you AirBNB veterans GREATLY appreciated.

Mel

[Melanie467]

Further to this,  while I am "learning the ropes" plan to make my AirBNB settings quite tight - no IB, no same day booking, etc.

[Cristobal29]

Hello All, I've tried many channel manager there and was a lot of work. I used roomaxis, Tokeet, Cloudbeds and Smoobu. I can recommend you by far Smoobu because it's very easy to use!

Smoobu synchronizes portals such as Airbnb and Booking.com and also automates everyday tasks such as billing or communication.

If you register via the following link you will have 2 months for free!!

https://login.smoobu.com/en/login/signup?hash=R18014824

Cheers!

[Cristobal29]

I recommend you to use smoobu:

I've been used for one year and for me it's the best right now.

Usi this link and you will have 2 months free!

https://login.smoobu.com/en/login/signup?hash=R18014824