Managing Room Stock Available To Channel Managers

Stock availability for channel managers is managed via the Availability For Channel Managers page.

Navigate to Booking Channels → Availability For Channel Managers

Before setting availability in RoomBoss it is a good idea to check the default available rooms setting in your channel manager. When availability is sent from RoomBoss this will overwrite availability in your Channel Manager, however if you do not set availability (caps) in RoomBoss nothing will be sent to your Channel Manager. In most cases the default stock on the Channel Manager side should be set to zero.

To manage your Channel Manager availability via Availability For Channel Managers page, it is necessary to:

• Have a vendor connected to a Channel Manager (please contact us to set this up)

• Have access for the channel manager turned on via Navigate → Booking Channels → Access

• Be logged in as a user with “Manage Stock/Allotments/Stop Sell” permission

Set Availability for Your Channel Manager

Choose a vendor, a date range and click Show:

The above screen shot shows us an example channel manager.

For vendor Block 1 with room types 2 BDR and 3 BDR, they will have values for each day between February 1st to February 15th:

• Top Row – Free Rooms, this shows the pool availability for the room type.

• Middle Row – Cap, this row is editable and is the cap on the number of rooms to be made available to our channel manager at any time.

• Bottom Row – Available for Channel Managers, this is the number of rooms that will be made available it is the lower of the Cap and Free Rooms values.

The Cap (middle row) values can be changed individually by editing the number for each day or for the whole date range by using the box at the left hand side. The number of rooms made available to your channel manager will be the lesser of the cap and the free rooms. The free room availability in your account is the number of available rooms excluding any rooms you have allotted to a booking channel.

Once you have set the appropriate values click save to update availability on your channel manager.

Please be aware that updates are not immediate, it can take several minutes for changes in stock to propagate to your channel manager and then on from there to the channels themselves.

Notes on the Availability For Channel Managers page

• Rooms you make available to be booked by your channel manager are still available to be booked by other channels.

• Setting a cap of zero would mean that availability of zero would be sent to your channel manager.

• Setting, for example, a cap of 5 would mean that availability for the CM would be maintained at 5 until the pool availability becomes 4 or lower.

• No stock will be made available for room types for dates where no rates are present, deleting rates for a period will set the available rooms to zero for the period.

Doing any of the following will delete all stock and caps and no availability will be sent in future for the room type:

• Editing product code

• Making product inactive

• Making product active internal

• Making vendor inactive

Channel Managers and Caps FAQ

Is OTA room stock updated immediately on availability change?

When availability changes because bookings are made, changed or cancelled or you make a change to the Cap values, updates are sent from RoomBoss to your channel manager. The channel manager then sends availability on to OTAs. This process is not (and can not be) instant, there can be a delay of several minutes before availability changes reach OTAs.

Is the Cap a limit on the number of rooms that can be sold via a channel manager?

No, the Cap is a limit on the number of rooms available to the channel manager at any time. The number of rooms available to the channel will remain at the level of the Cap until the number of available rooms falls below the level of the Cap.

I don’t want to make peak dates available via my channel manager, how can I do this?

Entering a Cap of zero for the dates you do not wish to sell will mean that no rooms are made available.

What happens if I enter a Cap that is higher than the number of rooms I have?

The maximum number of rooms that will be made available to the channel manager is the number of available rooms, setting a cap higher than (or equal to) the number of rooms in the type will mean that every available room in the type will be available to the channel manager.

Can RoomBoss send my rates to the channel manager also?

RoomBoss does not send rates to channel managers, only room availability. Channel managers do not support price adjustments criteria such as stay length and stock based price adjustments which can be set inside RoomBoss. Setting rates inside your channel manager also allows setting of different rates from those used for direct bookings.

I want to turn off a particular OTA, how do I do this?

This should be done inside the channel manager.