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Revenue Management tools, Yield Management, Rate Shoppers, Channel Management, Booking Engines, and some hotel tech: PRICEMATCH.FR!

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This is a bit of updated information from an answer on Quora that I finished, and figure it could live here and help people.  Basically… What are the best booking engines, channel managers, etc.  I think if there is one thing you take away from this, it should be Price Match, the name doesn’t do justice to the revolution it provides rev and rez managers.

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I love Rate Tiger for shopping and channel management – affordable, simple, works well. EZYield is pricey. I am not a fan of RateGain, no offense.  If you distribute in any way at all, past GDS to OTA’s…. you need a shopper and channel manager.  Booking engines aren’t as simple…. as you will see below, but  *YOU MUST LOOK AT PRICE MATCH* https://www.pricematch.fr/en/website – if you distribute through GDS or OTAs in any meaningful way, this will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Price Match sits between the comp set rate shopping tools, and integrates with the PMS and all previous history from 3 years, then guages the market along with holidays, events, airline prices, and weather, etc…. then does an automatic market survey that comes back with suggested rates versus your comp set, that then *automatically* distributes through your channel manager.  It’s basically an algorithmic dynamic pricing for hotels that fully automates the shopping to yielding process.  It saves so much time… you literally press one button agreeing to their rate suggestions, and it implements them.  I recently had an AMAZING demonstration.  I think I explained it clearly?  Just astonishing.  Basically, you don’t shop or survey, and the algorithm comes back with a clear “this is what your rate should be, click this button to accept”.  It’s the future of yield management, for sure. You don’t shop. It shops. You don’t spend time figuring out what to yield, it does it for you.  It’s the evolution of revenue management, so you can get back to doing hospitality. Imagine talking to a guest, again. LOL =)
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As for booking engines – This is slightly copy and pasted from a different conversation, but will have valuable info for you…. hope this helps:

Buuteeq’s booking engine is commission free – simple, and beautiful, and was a smart stopgap method of solving people’s booking problems in remote areas with slow reservation pace… but it definitely doesn’t interface, which was surprising to me. No one wants to manage inventory like that.  But for a small hotel that can’t afford the commissions, it’s a treat, and the trade off is that you have to manage your own inventory.  I would love if they could somehow do an XML interface to make it self managing.  But for dynamic packaging, and upselling, you will need to look at the big guys:

In a 14 room hotel at 70% occupancy, a 3% commission could be around $4000 a year plus other fees, or even up to around $30K with flat rate booking fees and pass through charges, depending on your distribution model… *before* OTA commissions, etc.

The industry leader is Sabre’s Synxis. https://www.sabrehospitality.com/….  But it is *SO* spendy…. it does connect to all the GDS, and it has a great look, but there are annual fees and booking conversion fees as well.  I think it’s around $8 a booking. That feels absurd to me.

Martin Soler with Wihp Hotels has a great post about what to consider: How to choose a booking engine…

Another one that I have worked with at around 2-4% commission per reservation is Open Hospitality, and they are fair priced. Online Hotel Booking Systems.  I am pretty sure they dynamic package.

Here are a few more that handle dynamic packaging, but I am *not* vouching for them, as I have no experience with them:
But I don’t know their pricing model – I just feel like we are getting fleeced, and should somehow build our own.
And some PMS, like Northwind Maestro, have their own that work decently, as compared to Synxis. Fact is, all have idiosyncrasies, so whatever your issue with one, another will have similar issues, etc.

BUT… *if* you can change your PMS:

For a small hotel with tight margins, a booking engine matters, because those commissions add up to lots of lost revenue, and potential capital for your own projects.  If you *can*, the affordable and EPIC SIMPLE “Mirage Hotel Systems” offers a free, no commission, booking engine with their PMS.  It does all the client management you need, all the reporting, and the booking engine is beautiful…  for free!  Mirage Hotel Systems You would want to check with the guys to see if it does dynamic packaging… but honestly the commission free aspect is just unbelievable.

It’s our favorite system, and it’s definitely the only one we suggest at a property 30 rooms or less.  It can handle bigger too… but it’s a perfect fit for your property.

As of now, the only commission free booking engine I know of is buuteeq’s, which doesn’t interface and provides hurdles with inventory management.  The only interfaced to PMS, commission free booking engine that I have ever heard of or known is Mirage Hotel Systems, who built their own that they offer with their PMS, which is also my favorite.  I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it, in a heart beat.  It’s astonishing more PMS don’t do this to secure more clientele.
I know this isn’t a perfect post, but there are solutions, at least. Good luck! =)

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