The new versatile Channel Manager feature gives a venue the ability to control prices and content visibility on different distribution channels under the MeetingPackage GDS.
Landing page
You can find the Channel Manager from the side menu under “Channel Manager”.
When opening the landing page, you will see two sub-menus: “Venue view” and “Channel view”. Under these pages, you will have different selection options when editing the channel configuration.
Venue view
You can select one or more venues and configure their channels on the venue view. You can see all venues you have distribution rights to edit by opening the dropdown menu.
The table shows every channel with the following information:
- Prices for meeting rooms, packages and catalog items
- Payment options
- Visibility
By default, all prices are the same as defined in the Rates and Products. The default payment type is “Pay on-site”. However, you can change the payment type to credit card if you have Stripe integration. The visibility can have three states: “Visible”, “Not visible” or “Pending”.
By clicking on the “Edit” button, you will see the configuration options for that venue and channel. Here you can specify the price increase or discount for the meeting rooms, packages or catalog items in the selected venue. Please use a + positive or - negative value to increase or decrease the current rack rate. The visibility toggle allows you to show or hide your venue on the selected channel.
When editing multiple venues you can configure the prices and the visibility. You can also see the venues and channels you selected.
Channel view
On the “Channel view”, you can select one channel at a time and configure the pricing and visibility for one or multiple venues. The configuration is done the same way as on the “Venue view” page: click the edit button to see the configuration page or select multiple venues to open the modal.
Licences and permissions
With the launch of the Channel Manager, we are introducing a new Professional Distribution licence and a Distribution permission to MeetingPackage.
Distribution permission: Venue administrators have Distribution permission by default. With this, they can access the Channel Manager and make changes to the pricing, visibility and all other configuration options. Administrators can give or revoke the Distribution permissions from other users for their venue.
Professional Distribution Licence: Venues and venue users need a Professional Distribution Licence to see and edit the channel configuration. Without the licence, only the list of channels is visible, and users cannot modify them. Users can request the Professional Distribution Licence from their Key Account Manager.
