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What are OTAs and which ones are on the market?

Hotel Management

April 8, 2023

What are OTAs? What is an OTA? In the tourism environment, OTAS are Online Travel Agencies. These acronyms, if we translate them from English, identify Online Travel Agencies. Now we know what OTAs are.  

We must be careful when interpreting what we are talking about when we refer to these online travel agencies. When we talk about OTAs, they are not necessarily travel agencies that sell a vacation package to Cancun.

An OTA can also be a website for booking a hotel room, such as Booking, for example. For this reason, OTAs and PMSs, which are used for hotel management, must be related.

What OTAs are on the market

There are countless OTAs or online travel agencies and we could make a very long list, but here are a few that surely sound familiar to you:

  • Booking.com
  • Airbnb
  • Expedia.
  • TripAdvisor
  • Hostelworld
  • Hotelbeds

In other words,if you sell your hotel rooms with Booking, you are using the services of an OTA, even if you didn't call it that until now. 

How to connect my hotel with several OTAs

To connect your hotel with an OTA or, to simplify, to connect your hotel with Booking, you need a channel manager. If you don't know what a channel manager is, you can read a more detailed explanation here.

But I'm already connected with Booking and I don't know anything about Channel Managers?

Are you sure? It's one thing to sell rooms on Booking and another to be connected to Booking. We explain the difference:

How to sell my hotel rooms on Booking

Once registered in Booking, you can configure the rooms you offer in your hotel and sell them according to availability. 

If every time you are booked by phone or through the hotel website you have to update the availability in Booking manually then you are NOT connected to Booking, you are simply using it to sell rooms. 

How to sell rooms in my hotel by connecting to Booking

If you want your room availability to be synchronized, you need to connect your hotel with Booking (or connect your hotel with the OTA you use). This is done with a tool called channel manager that connects your PMS with the corresponding OTA(s).

This way, when someone books a room through your website or by phone, the moment the hotel management calendar is updated, the channel manager will notify the OTAs that the room is no longer available. Wonderful, isn't it?

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Roomdoo is a hotel management system based on Odoo and designed to facilitate the administration of reservations, billing, reporting or accounting from a centralized interface.

No, Roomdoo is a cloud application and you can access it from any computer, mobile device or tablet with an internet connection.

Roomdoo offers three pricing plans:

  • Starter 1%Flexible rate of 1% of the bookings completed on a monthly basis with a minimum fee of 49 € + VAT.
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EnterpriseTailor-made plan for hotel chains or large accounts, with all Roomdoo functionalities and customization of modules and applications.

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Of course you can. But if you have questions you can always contact our support team or access the free Roomdoo Academy training.

We have a technical support team available to lend a hand with any questions, problems or incidents through tickets. Our team will help you in the registration process, property configuration, training and onboarding support for new users. In addition, Roomdoo has a 24×7 emergency service for priority assistance.

From the moment we receive your registration request, it will take a maximum of 7 days to configure your Roomdoo instance. For the delivery and start-up we will hold a joint session by videoconference where we will give an initial training session. You can add to the session the members of your team that you consider necessary. 

* The deadlines indicated do not apply to Enterprise accounts with many properties that require a more complex analysis and implementation process.

Roomdoo offers a centralized calendar that allows you to manage all bookings via drag and drop, create direct bookings, modify dates and guest data, and apply changes with a single click. It also includes an AI booking wizard that suggests next steps.

Yes, all Roomdoo rates include forever product upgrades, cloud servers, backups and database maintenance.

Yes, Roomdoo's web booking engine allows you to manage your direct online sales without commissions for each booking received. It is included in the Starter rate and helps convert traffic to your website, where you can also offer direct booking discounts or special codes to maximize your profitability. Roomdoo is also integrated with third party booking engines such as NeoBookings or Wubook.

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