SiteMinder is the world’s leading channel manager that is packed with features to help hotels perform better. Some of those features includes its website builder, its ability to be integrated with 100+ property management systems (PMS) for hotels, and the ability to be connected to 200+ online travel agencies (OTAs) and other web apps to help with productivity. All of these are great for hotels to improve their overall operation. This post is going to highlight some of the other positives for SiteMinder: low transaction fees, Demand Plus, and the Insights that are available for the competition.
Low Transaction Fees
This is the one feature that will save your hotel or property the most money. If you use a competing channel manager like Sabre’s SynXis, hotels are charged a small fee for every reservation they take that goes through the channel manager. At the low end, fees are generally cheaper (maybe even free) for web bookings – reservations that are made through the hotel website. At the higher end, are fees for reservations through the GDS (travel agent booking system). In between, there are fees for bookings made through other channels, like Booking.com or Expedia. These fees cover the costs of the development of the channel manager software and integration with the PMS so reservations booked online can be entered into the PMS automatically.
The downside of these fees are they can quickly add up. Below is a sample chart of the fees based on a 33/33/33 split between web bookings, OTAs, and the GDS. To keep the math simple, let’s say there are 3,000 total reservations taken, which is a reasonable number for a 100 room hotel.
| # of Reservations | Fee | Sub-Total | |
| Web Bookings | 1000 | $5.00 | $5,000 |
| OTAs | 1000 | $7.50 | $7,500 |
| GDS | 1000 | $10.00 | $10,000 |
| Grand Total | $22,500 |
A few caveats to the above numbers, they don’t include any commissions you may be paying for the GDS bookings (usually 10%) or the commissions charged through Expedia, Booking.com, etc (around 18%). Altogether, the fees will be much higher than $22,500.
For SiteMinder, they still have a transaction fee for GDS bookings (which is charged by the GDS systems), but they waive the transaction fees for web bookings and OTAs. That produces a chart like this:
| # of Reservations | Fee | Sub-Total | |
| Web Bookings | 1000 | $0 | $0 |
| OTAs | 1000 | $0 | $0 |
| GDS | 1000 | $12 | $12,000 |
| Total | $12,000 | ||
| Difference | – $10,000 |
The general hotel is likely going to save a lot of money by switching over to SiteMinder. This does not include the potential savings from using SiteMinder’s new product for guest communication, GuestJoy, which is 25% the cost of the competing service, Guestfolio. And, of course, there will be opportunities to earn more through SiteMinder.
Demand Plus
Last year, Google announced a change to their Business Profiles for hotels which allowed hotels to enter in their own rates and link to their website. I thought it was a great addition to the product for hotels.
What I did not realize at the time, however, was the hotel link tended to be buried underneath all the advertising services, namely Booking.com, TripAdvisor, trivago, etc. This can change with SiteMinder’s Demand Plus service.
With Demand Plus, hotels get boosted to the top of the listings. It still marks the hotel as the official site, and will show the lowest rate available on the website, not the BAR/RACK rate, which allows hotels to advertise a lower rate than Booking.com to gain some direct business. There is a minor commission fee attached to these bookings, but the major plus to these bookings is you receive the guest’s full information. No masking of email addresses, phone numbers, or credit card numbers, allowing you to take ownership of that guest experience from the time of booking through to checkout. More opportunities for room upsells, other products at the hotel to book, and to retain them as a guest in the future directly rather than a OTA service.
Each month, you will receive a statement to verify the bookings. Hotels aren’t charged for no shows or cancellations, only for stays at the hotel.
Direct Plus also offers quick analytics for reservations. It will tell you how many times it has been viewed, the clicks, reservations made, and the revenue from the Google profile, trivago, and TripAdvisor.
Insights
So far, you have seen ways that SiteMinder can help you save money and earn more bookings online, but it can also help you earn more money on all your reservations, online or at the hotel level. Insights offers different views of the hotel operation from the online bookings. A lot of this information is likely similar to the hotel’s overall reservations, but presented in a easily understood graphic manner. There are different charts for booking performance compared to the same period last year, channel mix (direct, different OTAs, GDS bookings), country mix, and room and rate type mix. The last two items offer a lot more information with a charts about ADR, average length of stay, and average lead time. That information can help determine if a certain room type should be priced higher if it is more in demand, or whether to offer rate discounts for longer stays.
The next section is a pace report, which can help track how well the hotel is performing with its reservations compared to previous years. You can filter down to a set period of time to compare to a similar period (i.e. to compare holiday weekends that may change each year) or to the same period (month vs same month a year ago).
The final two areas of the Insight section are going to be very useful.
Rate parity is going to help keep track of your rates being pushed out to the OTAs. The one benefit of a channel manager is the rates that are sent to the OTAs should be the same. There can be errors with the information, so it is useful to check. The rate for Direct Booking is currently the lowest available rate for the hotel.
Competitors rate is a monthly view of the rates pulled from Booking.com. It compares the hotel rate with the median hotel rate of a comp set that you select. You are able to select up to 10 other hotels to include within your comp set. The monthly view shows you whether your hotel is higher or lower than the median rate (arrows are for +/- 10%).
Clicking on a date, gives you a way to drill down to each day to see the competition in a easier way. It brings in the lowest rate, room type, plus has the median rate at the top for quick comparison.
This feature alone will save a lot of clicking around on Booking.com. The monthly view will help General Managers and Revenue Managers set their room rates for several months to come as well.
Summary
This is only a slice of how SiteMinder can help your hotel, motel, or vacation rental business improve the operation and save money.
Switching to SiteMinder will require some work with the setup. If you are currently using a channel manager, there will be a lot of copying and pasting of descriptions and policies. Because of the time involved with switching over, I am offering my time and expertise in SiteMinder to help you get setup more quickly and more smoothly.
Fill out the form below to get started.