Join the Distribution Revolution: What You Need to Know About Smart Distribution for Hotels

Smart Distribution is the future of managing your booking channels – driving more revenue and saving you time thanks to AI innovation and reliable automation.

The hospitality industry has become fiercely competitive and more unpredictable than ever. As guest expectations evolve, staffing costs rise and market dynamics shift rapidly, it’s getting increasingly challenging for smaller properties to stay profitable.

Enter Smart Distribution, a powerful new approach that’s transforming the way independent hotels manage their online visibility, availability and rates across different channels.

But hold on, what exactly is Smart Distribution for hotels? And how does it benefit your business?

Let’s break it down.

What is smart distribution for hotels?

Smart Distribution is an AI-driven approach to managing your hotel’s presence and strategy across multiple booking channels – all automated within one centralized platform and backed by the industry’s most trusted data. We asked Delphine Elias, Senior Product Manager at Lighthouse, to explain this game-changing innovation in a nutshell.

Smart Distribution is the next-gen Channel Manager. It allows independent hoteliers to manage pricing and distribution in one place, and leverage automation to save time while increasing revenue. The result? Always the right price on the right channel, automatically.Delphine Elias, Senior Product Manager at Lighthouse

At the heart of Smart Distribution lie advanced AI and machine learning, allowing hoteliers to make decisions faster and with better results. It’s smarter than a Channel Manager, offering rate and distribution recommendations in one place.

Key components of smart distribution for hotels:

• Dynamic pricing ensures room prices are optimized and updated instantly on all channels in response to market demand, competitors and your own performance.

• Availability recommendations determine when to open or close certain channels to maximize revenue and minimize commission costs.

• Channel optimization indicates which distribution partners to prioritize or deactivate for maximum profitability and will suggest new OTA connections to boost bookings.

• Strategic restrictions adjust your minimum length of stay (LOS) when needed to maximize revenue per available room (RevPAR).

• The centralized view simplifies effective pricing and channel management by providing an easy-to-interpret, unified interface.

• Competitor insights give you an overview of the rates applied by your main competitive set on your booking channels.

• AI-driven automation analyzes data and performs rate and availability updates across your entire distribution landscape to capture every opportunity while saving you time.

How Smart Distribution changes the game for independent hotelsThe distribution challenges you know all too well

For most independent hoteliers, managing distribution is an overwhelming juggling act. What’s more, increased online visibility is often associated with increased workload and high commission.

Even with a lot of time, thought and effort, independent hotelier strategies are still leaving money on the table. Most set their strategy once, to then never look at it again, causing them to miss out on important opportunities. Plus, confusion reigns supreme, with hundreds of OTAs to choose from nowadays.

The hotel distribution landscape has become quite complex to navigate, with a lot of channels and OTAs. These third-party booking platforms all have their own strategies that you need to be aware of, because they might not benefit your hotel.Delphine Elias, Senior Product Manager at Lighthouse

Typical challenges for independent hoteliers around selecting and managing channels include:

• No time to continuously monitor and adjust their channel mix

• Suboptimal rates that deter guests during low demand and lead to missed revenue during peak times

• Not fully leveraging each channel and its nuances

• Distribution imbalance, leading to high commissions, missed opportunities and reduced profitability

• Costly errors and mismatched pricing when updating multiple platforms manually

Much like dealing with a water leak under the bathroom sink that you want to locate and repair as fast as possible, you want to know where money is leaking in order to adjust your strategy. A flawed distribution strategy isn’t just an inconvenience – you’re systematically losing revenue and compromising your profitability.

“From our customers, we see that smaller hotels use 15+ channels on average. In an ideal world, you would have a full-time employee managing all these channels properly. Just being on there is not enough if you want to stay competitive and profitable”, Delphine Elias explains.

Managing distribution channels strategically involves much more than synchronizing rates and availability. It means:

• Closing channels with high commission fees on busy days

• Opening all channels on low-demand days to maximize occupancy

• Offering the optimal price tailored to each channel

Delphine Elias continues: “Where chains and group hotels have a dedicated Distribution Manager or Digital Manager, independent hoteliers usually don’t have the necessary resources for that. It’s simply not feasible for them to hire someone full-time or do it all on their own. That’s where Smart Distribution comes in. It allows smaller properties to compete with big brands, without needing extra staff or a degree in revenue management.”

Key benefits of Smart Distribution for hotels

Informed by Lighthouse’s industry-leading data, Smart Distribution automates optimal pricing and channel recommendations to achieve maximum profitability and efficiency, killing two birds with one stone – all in one simple view.

Key benefits of smart distribution for hotels:

• Better rates, more revenue: Always charge the right price at the right time on the right channel to avoid losing bookings and maximize revenue per available room (RevPAR).

• Time gains: Cut down hours of manual work with automated pricing and distribution updates on all your booking channels.

• Enhanced visibility: Easily manage listings across OTAs, GDSs and metasearch platforms to boost online presence without needing big marketing budgets.

• Increased bookings: Optimize occupancy levels by ensuring your hotel is always visible and competitively priced on the right channels.

• Less commission: Reduce OTA commission costs by strategically closing expensive channels when healthy occupancy is guaranteed.

• Faster connectivity: Easily connect with new partners in a few clicks thanks to intuitive mapping of room types and rate plans.

• Competitive edge: Closely watch your main competitors and stay two steps ahead to capture bookings before they do.

• Data-driven strategy: Base important decisions on industry-leading data insights instead of relying on gut feeling or outdated spreadsheets.

• Optimized channel mix: Focus on your best performing channels and adjust the ones that hurt your profitability.

• Unlocking new markets: Smart channel recommendations will allow you to tap into new source markets and guest segments.

• Transparency and control: See the reasoning behind the algorithm’s recommendations and choose whether you want to apply them automatically or not.

• No more double bookings: Avoid disappointing guests and losing revenue by keeping your availability synchronized – always, everywhere.

• Reduced errors: Avoid costly pricing and distribution errors thanks to reliable automation. Built-in checks will confirm if updates are live on the right channels to give you peace of mind.

• Simplified channel management: Access one view with all your channel pricing and availability to easily review your entire distribution strategy.

Maximum revenue thanks to optimized prices and bookings

Smart Distribution is your full-time revenue manager, working around the clock to make sure you don’t leave any money on the table and competitors don’t snag your valuable customers.

Smart Distribution delivers:

• Maximum revenue with optimized prices and bookings:
  – Strategic pricing based on accurate data – adapted to channels and room types
  – Booking channel recommendations to attract the best bookings and reduce OTA commissions

• Time-saving channel management
  – Quick responses to market fluctuations through trusted automation
  – One simple view to check your rates, competitor rates and channels

We now realize more than ever that pricing and distribution go hand in hand, and should be managed properly to increase profit. We want to help hoteliers make this process smoother and smarter, so they can maximize revenue while gaining time back to focus on what matters most: their guests! Delphine Elias, Senior Product Manager at Lighthouse

Smart Distribution is quickly becoming the new norm. No more manual effort, countless spreadsheets and endless tabs to check competitor prices – just smart room price and channel optimization you can trust.

Join the distribution revolution and outsmart your competitors

At Lighthouse, we’ve reimagined distribution for the independent hotelier, combining our industry-leading data with powerful automation to help you stay ahead.

Smart Distribution is now available as part of our award-winning AI platform for independents – one smart solution to optimize both pricing and channel distribution in the most efficient way possible.

What can you expect?

• Reach your full revenue potential: Optimize your pricing and distribution with market intelligence trusted by 75,000+ hotels around the world.

• Win back hours of your day: Rely on award-winning automation powering accurate and transparent pricing across your booking channels.

• Enjoy simplicity and hands-on support: Simplify channel management with one consolidated view, smooth onboarding and top-rated support.

With Smart Distribution, you will be able to:

• Automatically pull in and distribute optimal rates

• Get AI recommendations for LOS, availability and new channel opportunities

• Manage pricing and distribution from one intelligent, centralized view

• Gain insight into competitor strategies across booking platforms

• Verify automation delivery, ensuring updates reach all channels successfully

• Customize your level of control – choose between suggestions or full autopilot mode

The industry is moving forward, with or without you. Will you be at the forefront of the distribution revolution or will you be limping behind? The choice is yours! Request your 14-day free trial of Smart Distribution.

Laure Cremers

Laure Cremers is a content specialist at Lighthouse with a focus on hospitality technology for independent hoteliers and B&B owners. Passionate about spotting new trends in the industry, Laure simply loves translating insights into actionable tips for hospitality professionals to boost their efficiency and profitability.

About Lighthouse

Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is the leading commercial platform for the travel & hospitality industry. We transform complexity into confidence by providing actionable market insights, business intelligence, and pricing tools that maximize revenue growth. We continually innovate to deliver the best platform for hospitality professionals to price more effectively, measure performance more efficiently, and understand the market in new ways.

Trusted by over 65,000 hotels in 185 countries, Lighthouse is the only solution that provides real-time hotel and short-term rental data in a single platform. We strive to deliver the best possible experience with unmatched customer service. We consider our clients as true partners – their success is our success.

This article originally appeared on Lighthouse.