OTAs
Expedia Channel Manager—Everything Hosts Should Know
Not sure whether investing in an Expedia channel manager is worth it? In this blog, we’ll talk about what channel managers do and how they can help optimize the management of your vacation rental business.
Not sure whether investing in an Expedia channel manager is worth it? In this blog, we’ll talk about what channel managers do and how they can help optimize the management of your vacation rental business.
Since Expedia is a global online travel agency, using it to market your vacation rental can allow you to reach more travelers interested in booking a stay at your property. For vacation rentals, the way into Expedia is Vrbo, which is also part of Expedia Group. If you want to list your property on Expedia and combine it with other channels like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and your direct booking website, using a channel manager helps.
Listing your vacation rental properties on multiple channels is a smart move that can increase visibility, drive more bookings, and diversify your revenue streams. Managing bookings across various channels can be a headache if you do it manually. However, you can keep everything running smoothly by streamlining your operations with Hospitable. With our tool, you can easily manage your listings on multiple booking platforms from one place and put your business on autopilot.
What Is Expedia Channel Manager?
A channel manager is a software tool designed to help property owners and managers efficiently manage their listings across various online booking platforms. It automatically syncs and updates your nightly rates, calendar availability, and bookings across several booking websites simultaneously in real time, leaving a minimal margin for error.
For vacation rental hosts, an Expedia channel manager works a bit differently than you might expect. Expedia Group routes vacation rentals to Vrbo rather than to Expedia Partner Central, which is built for hotels. When you enable Instant Book on your Vrbo listing, it becomes eligible for Vrbo Expanded Distribution, which can show your property on Expedia, Travelocity, Trivago, and other partner sites. Placement isn’t guaranteed, but any booking you get this way lands in your Vrbo account like any other Vrbo reservation. So in practice, an Expedia channel manager is software that connects and manages your Vrbo listing. A good one also makes it easy to keep track of your bookings across different platforms, prevent double bookings, set consistent pricing, and manage all listings in one dashboard.
Why Use a Channel Manager?
For several reasons, hosts and property managers need a vacation rental channel manager.
It allows you to list your properties on multiple booking sites, reaching a wider audience of travelers who can become your potential guests. This can help you get more bookings, increase occupancy rate, and maximize revenue. Tapping into new markets is especially important during a slow season when the demand is low.
It saves you time and reduces stress. Manually updating prices and availability across all connected channels can be time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone, which may lead to double-bookings and a poor guest experience. A channel manager automates this process, so you don’t need to log into each channel’s interface many times throughout the day. This gives you more time to focus on business growth and essential hosting tasks that require a personal touch.
It operates in real time to ensure accurate and up-to-date availability and prices across all channels. This is particularly advantageous because OTAs often rank listings higher in search results when they have real-time availability, leading to better visibility and more bookings.
How Hospitable Can Help You Manage Listings on Multiple Channels Hassle-Free
Hospitable is all-in-one vacation rental software with a comprehensive set of advanced features. Our tool allows STR hosts to automate 90% of repetitive daily tasks and to list their properties on multiple channels without worrying about juggling calendars, messaging, and cleaners across bookings.
With Hospitable, you can sync your calendars on key booking channels, such as Airbnb, Agoda, Vrbo, Booking.com, and your direct booking website, and manage all your bookings from a single dashboard. Our tool will ensure your calendar is always updated to avoid double bookings, which may lead to bad reviews.
This is also how Hospitable gets your property in front of Expedia travelers. Hospitable is a certified Vrbo partner, and its Vrbo Partner connection is the same kind of direct, official integration it has with Airbnb and Booking.com. Hospitable becomes the source of truth for your Vrbo listing, from details and photos to calendar, pricing, fees, and messaging. You can also switch your Vrbo listing to Instant Book right from Hospitable, which makes it eligible for distribution on Expedia and other Expedia Group sites.
In eligible countries, Hospitable also acts as the merchant of record for your Vrbo bookings through Hospitable Payments. Hospitable collects guest payments, sends your payouts, and handles chargeback disputes for you. Where Hospitable Payments isn’t available, you can process Vrbo payments through your own Stripe account instead. You’ll find the details in our guide to Vrbo Partner payments and payouts.
Hospitable makes it easy to share the right information with guests at the right time. You can receive all messages from across platforms in one centralized inbox and never miss a booking request or a question from your guests. Hospitable’s automated, AI-powered guest communication tools can help ensure personalized communication with your guests via messages during all customer journey stages, saving you time and effort. You just need to set messaging rules.
You can create pre-written responses to common guest questions, and AI will help determine when they are asked. Then, our system will send quick responses to your guests on your behalf. You can also use AI tools to help you write detailed responses to guest messages based on the message context and booking details. AI will generate a draft message, which you can review and edit if necessary to add a personal touch before you hit send. Once you are confident in our AI algorithm, you can turn it on to respond without your review during certain time spans or 24/7.
Your guests will receive replies to their messages on the same platform from which they messaged you. They will never know Hospitable helped you respond quickly.
Hospitable offers a built-in dynamic pricing tool that automatically sets the best price for your properties based on supply, demand, seasonality, day of the week, specific dates, and other factors. The best part is that unlike most other PMS that sell dynamic pricing as an add-on, Hospitable’s dynamic pricing tool is included in the subscription cost on Host, Professional, and Mogul plans.
Our tool also offers a variety of advanced features, which you can use to streamline your routine tasks and keep your calendars in sync. With Hospitable, you can make your business more efficient and ensure a better experience for you and your guests.
