Listing your property on online travel agency (OTA) channels increases visibility and revenue—but it comes at a cost. And if you’re managing OTA bookings manually, it can cost you even more. Manually consolidating data between your property management system (PMS) and OTA channels is inefficient and prone to error. Mistakes lead to guest dissatisfaction, billing discrepancies, and conflict with OTA partners—eroding both your profits and peace of mind.
There’s a better way.
By integrating your property management system with your OTA channels, you can take full advantage of robust functionality to control and track inventory, analyze results, and ultimately drive revenue.
Most properties work with multiple OTAs, each with a different extranet to navigate. When systems aren’t connected, hoteliers must update rates, inventory, and reservations across each platform separately, creating lots of manual work and a high risk of human error.
Instead, by connecting your third-party distribution channels to your PMS, you can centralize bookings to automate reservation management, inventory updates, and commission tracking—saving time, protecting profits, and delivering a smooth guest experience.
1. Connect your PMS to your OTA channels
Whether you list your property with one or two OTAs or several via a channel manager, connecting your PMS to your OTA partners is a must. This integration allows you to control your online inventory across all booking platforms from your PMS and ensures OTA reservations are automatically sent to your PMS.
Advantages of PMS-OTA integration:
- Real-time synchronization of rates and availability across all connected channels
- Drastically reduces costly manual errors and double bookings
- Makes managing last-minute bookings and cancellations easy
- Enables faster response to demand, maximizing revenue opportunities
- Reduces rate disparity across OTAs, protecting your OTA ranking and maintaining guest trust
2. Track OTA reservations through your PMS
To effectively manage OTA bookings and commissions, you need to understand where your revenue originates. A PMS that’s integrated with your OTA channels automatically tracks bookings coming through those channels, helping you discover your most profitable sources and refine your distribution strategy.
WebRezPro PMS uses market and source codes to automatically tag OTA reservations, allowing you to monitor revenue by partner and identify trends. Booking reports make it easy to spot your most lucrative channels at a glance.
Why automated OTA tracking matters:
- Clearly identifies bookings made through third-party channels
- Provides accurate revenue breakdowns by OTA
- Helps analyze channel performance to improve strategy
- Tracks OTA booking cancellations, modifications, and no shows for dispute resolution and performance monitoring
- Identifies OTA guests for loyalty-building campaigns—like incentivising direct bookings next time
3. Generate commission reports with ease
The final piece of the puzzle is commission reconciliation. The ability to generate agency commission reports is crucial for ensuring you never pay more than you owe. Without OTA integration, reconciling OTA bookings, revenue, and commissions is a tedious and error-prone process. But with the right PMS, generating accurate commission reports is effortless.
WebRezPro’s travel agency billing report displays OTA reservations by agency and calculates the total commission owed to each. The report can be generated at any time for any dates, exported to a spreadsheet, and automatically emailed to the appropriate team member.
Automated commission reporting provides:
- Accurate commission tracking
- Control and transparency
- Confidence that you’re paying the correct amount
- Simplified dispute resolution with OTA partners
Managing OTA bookings and commissions doesn’t have to be a headache. When your PMS is integrated with your OTA channels, the benefits go far beyond saving time—unlocking greater revenue potential, a smooth guest experience, and a clear path to profitability.
WebRezPro integrates with several leading OTAs. Contact us to learn more about how our powerful, user-friendly software streamlines reservation management and boosts your bottom line.
