What is hotel management software?

Hotel management software is the set of tools an accommodation provider uses to run the commercial side of the property. At its core it covers a property management system for reservations and housekeeping, a channel manager to keep rates and availability in sync across every booking site, and a booking engine that takes commission-free reservations on your own website. Larger suites add payments, reporting and revenue tools. For most small to mid-size properties the practical question is not which single product to buy, but how well these parts connect.

What is the difference between a PMS, a channel manager and a booking engine?

A property management system, or PMS, is the operational hub where you manage reservations, guests, housekeeping and the daily running of the property. A channel manager sits above your distribution and keeps rates and availability matched across Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb and your own site. A booking engine is the checkout on your own website that converts a visitor into a direct, commission-free reservation. They do different jobs, and the value comes from having them talk to one another automatically.

How much does hotel management software cost?

Pricing varies by model. Some vendors charge a flat monthly subscription, some charge per room, and some take a commission on the direct bookings they generate. A flat or per-room fee is predictable and rewards you as your direct business grows, while a commission model has no upfront cost but scales with your success. When comparing quotes, add up the true annual cost at your real booking volume rather than the headline monthly figure, and check what setup, support and integrations are included.

Do small properties really need hotel management software?

Yes, and often more than large ones. A small property rarely has a dedicated revenue or distribution team, so the owner or manager absorbs the manual work of updating rates and availability across channels. That is exactly the work software removes. Even a handful of rooms sold across three or four booking sites creates enough repetition and overbooking risk to justify a connected system that updates everything from one screen.

Should I choose an all-in-one platform or separate best-of-breed tools?

For most small to mid-size operators the practical answer is a proven combination rather than a single vendor for everything. Keep the property management system that suits how you run the property, then pair it with a channel manager and booking engine that connect to it by a supported API, so rates and availability move between the systems without double handling. The questions to ask are which PMSs are connected, how deep each connection goes and who you call when something falls between the two. Whichever route you take, the integrations matter more than any single feature list.

How hard is it to switch hotel management software?

Switching is very manageable when it is planned. The work is mostly in the setup: mapping your room types and rate plans correctly, connecting your channels, and testing that availability moves the way it should before you go live. A good provider handles this mapping with you and runs the changeover so there is no gap in your distribution. Choose a quieter period to switch, keep the old system readable until the new one is proven, and the transition is a few days of care rather than a crisis.

How do I log in to the Booking.com extranet?

Go to admin.booking.com and sign in with your property username and password. Booking.com uses two-factor verification, so you will usually confirm a code sent to your phone or authenticator app. If you manage more than one property, you can switch between them once inside the extranet.

How do I update rates and availability on Booking.com?

Open the Rates and Availability calendar in the extranet, select the room type and dates, and edit the price, the number of rooms open, and any restrictions such as minimum stay. Changes go live within minutes. If you sell on more than one channel, a channel manager pushes these updates everywhere at once instead of you editing each extranet by hand.

Can I connect the Booking.com extranet to other systems?

Yes. Booking.com supports connectivity with channel managers and property management systems through its Connectivity Partner programme. Once connected, availability, rates and reservations flow automatically between Booking.com and your other tools, which removes double data entry and the risk of overbookings.

How much time does a channel manager actually save?

It varies with how many channels you sell on, but the saving is real. Every rate change and availability update you would otherwise make separately in each extranet becomes a single action, and the overbookings caused by manual updating disappear. For a property selling on three or four channels, that commonly returns several hours a week.

What is the most important SEO factor for hotels in 2026?

Semantic richness is the most important factor. Search engines now treat hotels as entities defined by their attributes, location, and relationships to nearby landmarks. Properties that publish detailed, structured information about their amenities, experiences, and local context are more likely to be cited in AI Overviews and matched to specific traveller intent.

How can independent hotels reduce dependency on OTAs?

Independent hotels reduce OTA dependency through three combined moves: a fully optimised Google Business Profile with live rates pushed via Free Booking Links, a fast and mobile-first website with an integrated booking engine, and content that demonstrates first-hand local expertise. This combination intercepts travellers at the discovery stage before they default to OTA platforms.

What is an AI Overview and why does it matter for hotels?

An AI Overview is a generative summary that appears at the top of Google search results, synthesising information from across the web to answer a query instantly. For hotels, being cited in these overviews captures attention before users scroll to traditional results or OTA listings, making it one of the highest-leverage visibility opportunities in 2026.

How does schema markup help a hotel website rank?

Schema markup is structured data that tells search engines exactly what each piece of content means. For hotels, advanced Hotel and Offer schema enables rich snippets including review stars, prices, and availability directly in search results. This improves click-through rate and signals trustworthiness to AI models and human users alike.

Why are Core Web Vitals important for hotel websites?

Core Web Vitals measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. They are confirmed Google ranking factors and directly affect conversion. A hotel website that loads slowly on mobile loses bookings to OTAs in seconds, regardless of how compelling the content is. Technical performance is now inseparable from commercial performance.

Levart

How to Choose Hotel Management Software: The No-Nonsense Guide for Small to Mid-Size Properties

levart — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:00:00 +0000

How to Choose Hotel Management Software: A No-Nonsense Guide | Levart

Industry Briefing · August 2026

How to Choose Hotel Management Software: The No-Nonsense Guide for Small to Mid-Size Properties

Every vendor promises to run your whole property. This guide cuts through the feature lists and shows you what the software actually needs to do, how the pieces fit together, and the questions that separate a good buy from an expensive mistake.

12 min read Hotel Software Levart Insights

Choosing hotel management software is one of those decisions that feels enormous while you are making it and obvious a year later. Get it right and the software fades into the background, quietly running your reservations, your rates and your bookings while you get on with looking after guests. Get it wrong and you inherit a second job: reconciling systems that do not talk to each other, chasing overbookings, and paying for features you never use.

If you run a hotel, a motel, a set of serviced apartments or a small group of properties, you are almost certainly the person who has to make this call, and you are probably making it without a dedicated IT team behind you. The good news is that the decision is far more straightforward than the marketing suggests. This guide sets out what hotel management software really is, the handful of parts that matter, how the pricing works, and the mistakes that catch operators out when they switch. No jargon for its own sake, and no pretending every property needs the same thing.

What Hotel Management Software Actually Is

Strip away the branding and hotel management software is the collection of tools that runs the commercial and operational side of an accommodation business. It is not one monolithic product so much as a small family of connected systems, each doing a specific job. Some vendors sell those pieces separately, some bundle them into a single platform, and a great deal of the confusion in the market comes from everyone using slightly different names for the same things.

For a property owner, the useful way to think about it is by the work the software takes off your plate. It manages who is staying and when. It keeps your prices and your available rooms correct everywhere they are sold. It lets guests book you directly, without a middleman taking a cut. And it tells you, honestly, how the business is performing. Everything else is a variation on those four themes. A modern connected hotel platform brings them together so a change in one place flows through to the others automatically, which is the whole point.

Where operators go wrong is treating the buying decision as a hunt for the longest feature list. The number of features barely matters. What matters is whether the parts you will actually use are done well and whether they connect cleanly, both to each other and to the outside world of booking sites and payment providers.

The Core Parts, and What Each One Does

Almost every serious offering is built from the same building blocks. Understanding them individually makes it far easier to compare two platforms that describe themselves in completely different language.

The Property Management System (PMS)

The property management system is the operational hub. It is where reservations live, where you check guests in and out, where housekeeping sees which rooms need turning over, and where the day-to-day running of the property is coordinated. If the rest of the software is about selling rooms, the PMS is about delivering the stay. For a small property this can be lightweight, but it still needs to be the single, trusted record of who is arriving and when.

The Channel Manager

The channel manager is the piece that keeps you sane once you sell on more than one site. It sits above Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Agoda and your own website, and keeps rates and availability matched across all of them. Sell the last room anywhere and it closes that room everywhere at once. For most operators this is the single highest-value component, because it removes both the daily data entry and the overbooking risk that come with managing each booking channel by hand. If you are weighing up software and only have appetite to get one thing right, get this one right.

The Booking Engine

The booking engine is the checkout on your own website. It turns a visitor who has already found you into a confirmed reservation without an online travel agency taking a commission. A good one is fast, works on a phone, shows live availability, and holds the guest's attention all the way to a paid booking. This is where your margin is protected, so a clunky or slow engine quietly costs you money every day it is live. Pairing it with a book direct message that reassures guests they are getting the best price makes the case at the exact moment they are deciding.

Payments, Rates and Reporting

Around those three sit the supporting tools. Integrated payments take the friction out of checkout and pull the money side into the same system. Automated rate management adjusts your pricing to demand so you are not manually chasing the calendar. And clear reporting shows you where your bookings come from, what they cost you and which channels are worth the commission. You will not need every one of these on day one, but you should check they exist and connect before you commit.

The best software is not the one with the most features. It is the one where the parts you use every day talk to each other without you in the middle.

Levart Advantage

Levart provides the channel manager and booking engine and connects them by API to the property management systems most Australian operators already run, so a booking on any channel updates your availability everywhere and a rate change is entered once. The depth of that connection varies by PMS, so ask which one you use and we will tell you exactly what flows between the systems before you commit.

Why the Integrations Matter More Than the Features

Here is the point that vendors talking up their feature counts would rather you skipped over. A property runs on more than one system, and the value is created in the joins. Your channel manager has to speak fluently to Booking.com and Expedia. Your booking engine has to hand a payment to a processor and a reservation to your PMS. Your rates have to reach Google so guests comparing prices see your live availability, not a stale number.

When those connections are solid, the software genuinely runs itself. When they are not, you become the integration, copying details from one screen to another and reconciling numbers that should have matched automatically. That is the hidden tax of a poorly connected stack, and it does not appear on any pricing page. Before you buy, ask precisely which booking sites, payment providers and Google surfaces a platform connects to, and how those connections are supported. A platform's list of supported integrations tells you more about whether it will work for you than any feature comparison.

15-25%

Typical OTA Commission

3-5

Channels a Property Sells On

Entry Point For Rates & Availability

The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong

The price of the wrong software is rarely the subscription. It is the time and the lost bookings that come with a system that does not fit. Picture the property running three disconnected tools: a basic PMS, a channel manager bolted on afterwards, and a website booking form that emails you a request rather than taking a live reservation. Every rate change gets entered more than once. Every busy weekend carries a real risk that two guests book the last room on two sites before anyone reconciles the calendar. And the direct bookings that should carry no commission leak back to the online travel agencies because the website checkout is too slow or too fiddly to trust.

None of that shows up when you are comparing monthly prices, which is exactly why it catches people out. The cheapest platform that does not connect properly is almost always more expensive than the one that does, once you count the hours and the overbookings. This is the case for thinking about the whole system rather than shopping for the individual pieces, and it is why a strong property website feeding a live engine belongs in the same decision as the PMS, not as an afterthought bought a year later.

Matching the Software to Your Property

There is no single best hotel management software, only the best fit for the size and shape of your operation. A twelve-room motel, a block of serviced apartments and a hundred-room resort have genuinely different needs, and a platform that suits one may be overkill or underpowered for another.

The practical test is to start from how you actually sell. If most of your business already comes through the OTAs and you want to claw some of it back, weight your decision toward a strong channel manager and a booking engine that can win the direct sale. If you run several sites under one owner, prioritise a system that manages them together rather than forcing a separate login per property. And if you are a specialist, a group of holiday homes or a campground rather than a traditional hotel, look for a provider that understands that model. Levart publishes solutions by property type for exactly this reason, because the right configuration for a motel is not the right configuration for a resort or a group of chalets.

Buyer's Checklist

Five non-negotiables before you sign for any platform

Confirm the channel manager connects to every booking site you actually sell on, not just the big two
Test the booking engine on a phone yourself - if it is slow or awkward, your direct bookings will suffer
Check that rates and availability sync automatically between the PMS, the channels and your website
Add up the true annual cost at your real booking volume, including setup, support and payment fees
Ask who runs the setup and the switch, and what support looks like when something breaks at 9pm on a Friday

See It On Your Own Property

One connection for your channels, your direct bookings and your PMS.

Levart brings the channel manager and booking engine together and connects them to your property management system, so your rates and availability stay in sync everywhere and your website takes commission-free bookings. Let us walk you through it on your own rooms, channels and PMS.

Book a Free Demo

How the Pricing Actually Works

Software pricing in this market comes in three broad shapes, and knowing them makes a quote far easier to read. Some vendors charge a flat monthly subscription regardless of how much you sell. Some charge per room, so the cost scales with the size of your property. And some take a commission on the direct bookings they generate for you, meaning there is little or no upfront fee but the platform earns a slice of your success.

Each model suits a different situation. A flat or per-room fee is predictable and rewards you as your direct business grows, because the cost does not rise with your bookings. A commission model lowers the barrier to starting and aligns the vendor with your results, but it can become the more expensive option once your direct volume climbs. The mistake is comparing headline monthly figures. Instead, model the true annual cost at your real occupancy, then add the things that are easy to forget: setup, training, ongoing support and any per-transaction payment fees. The right comparison is total cost of ownership over a year, not the number on the pricing page. A short conversation with a provider's onboarding team will usually surface the costs a website never quite spells out.

Common Mistakes When Switching Platforms

Most of the pain operators report with hotel management software comes not from the software itself but from how they chose or switched it. A few mistakes come up again and again, and all of them are avoidable once you know to watch for them.

The first is buying on features rather than fit, chasing a long capability list instead of checking that the handful of things you do daily are done well and connect properly. The second is underestimating the switch and treating go-live as a flick of a switch rather than a mapped, tested changeover, then being surprised when room types do not line up. The third is neglecting the direct channel, choosing a platform with a strong OTA connection but a weak booking engine, which keeps you dependent on commission. The fourth is ignoring support until you need it, only to discover the help desk is a form and a two-day wait. And the fifth is forgetting about visibility, buying good distribution software but never pushing live rates into Google's travel results where guests are actually comparing prices, or extending that reach with Google Hotel Ads.

Switching itself is very manageable when it is planned. The bulk of the work is the initial mapping, matching every room type and rate plan in the new system to the equivalent in your channels so that when a room closes, the right room closes. Do that carefully, with your provider alongside you, choose a quieter period to make the move, and keep the old system readable until the new one has proven itself over a few real booking cycles. Handled that way, a switch is a few days of care rather than a crisis.

Making the Decision With Confidence

When it comes to committing, resist the urge to score every platform against a fifty-line spreadsheet. Narrow it to the questions that decide whether the software will actually serve your property. Does the channel manager cover the sites you sell on today and the ones you plan to add. Is the booking engine fast and convincing enough to win the direct sale. Do the parts sync automatically so you enter a change once. Is the total annual cost sensible at your real volume. And is there a human on the other end when you need one. If a platform answers those five well, the finer feature differences rarely matter.

It is also worth being honest about the goal. The point of hotel management software is not technology for its own sake. It is to give you back the hours you currently spend on repetitive admin and to shift more of your business toward the direct, commission-free bookings that protect your margin. A platform that does that quietly, reliably and at a fair price is doing its job, however modest its feature list looks next to a flashier competitor.

The best way to judge any of this is to see the software running on your own rates and your own channels rather than in a generic demo. When you are ready to compare properly, get in touch and we will show you exactly how it would work for your property, with no obligation and no jargon.

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The post How to Choose Hotel Management Software: The No-Nonsense Guide for Small to Mid-Size Properties appeared first on Levart.

The Booking.com Extranet Explained – A Complete Guide for Property Managers

levart — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:28:17 +0000

The Booking.com Extranet Explained: A Complete Guide for Property Managers | Levart

Industry Briefing · July 2026

The Booking.com Extranet Explained: A Complete Guide for Property Managers

The extranet runs your Booking.com listing behind the scenes. Here is what every part of it does, the jobs you will use it for most, and how to stop repeating that work on every other channel you sell on.

11 min read Channel Management Levart Insights

If you take bookings on Booking.com, you already live in the extranet, even if you have never stopped to think about what it actually is. It is the dashboard behind your listing: the place where rates go up, availability gets closed, reservations land and reviews get answered. Used well, it is a powerful commercial tool. Used by hand, several times a week, across several websites, it quietly becomes one of the largest time sinks in running a property.

This guide walks through what the Booking.com extranet does, so you can get more out of it, and then shows where the real efficiency comes from. Whether you run a single set of holiday apartments or manage a portfolio of motels, the extranet is where a large share of your revenue is controlled, and knowing your way around it is not optional.

What Is the Booking.com Extranet?

The Booking.com extranet is the secure online control panel that property owners and managers use to run their presence on Booking.com. You reach it at admin.booking.com, sign in with your property login, and confirm a verification code, because Booking.com requires two-factor authentication. Once inside, everything about how your property sells on the platform is in your hands.

Think of it as the engine room. Guests see the polished listing with its photos and reviews. You see the controls: the calendar, the pricing, the reservations, the messages and the performance data. If the listing is the shopfront, the extranet is the back office. It is also only one of several back offices, which is the tension this guide is really about, and the reason channel management exists as a category at all.

The extranet manages one channel brilliantly. The problem is that you do not have one channel.

The Parts You Will Use Most

The extranet is broad, but day to day most managers live in a handful of areas. These are the ones worth mastering properly.

Rates and Availability

This is the calendar at the heart of everything. Here you open and close rooms, set the nightly price by room type and date, and apply restrictions such as minimum length of stay or closed-to-arrival rules. It is where you respond to demand, drop rates to fill a quiet midweek, or lift them for a long weekend or a local event. Changes typically go live within minutes, which makes it genuinely responsive if you stay on top of it. For properties that would rather not touch the calendar daily, automated rate management can carry much of that load.

Reservations

Every booking, modification and cancellation flows through the Reservations tab. From here you view guest details, check arrival dates, mark no-shows and handle changes. For properties still working manually, this is also where the day begins and ends: checking what came in overnight and making sure nothing has been missed.

Promotions and Opportunities

Booking.com pushes hard on its promotional tools, and the extranet is where you switch them on: early-booker deals, last-minute rates, mobile-only discounts, and country or campaign-based offers. The Opportunities section suggests changes the platform believes will lift your visibility and conversion. These can be useful, but they are designed to grow Booking.com's share of your business, so weigh each one against your own margins rather than accepting them all.

Inbox, Reviews and Analytics

Guest messaging, review responses and your performance dashboard round out the daily kit. Replying to messages quickly and to reviews graciously both feed your ranking on the platform, and the Analytics section shows your visibility, conversion and how you compare to your local competitor set. It is worth a weekly look even when everything seems to be ticking along.

Quick Tip

Keep your cancellation policies, photos and property facilities current in the extranet, not just your rates. Booking.com's ranking rewards complete, accurate listings, and an out-of-date facilities list is one of the most common and most fixable reasons a good property under-performs.

Getting Your Rates and Restrictions Right

Rates and Availability is where most of your revenue is won or lost, so it pays to go beyond simply typing in a nightly price. Inside the extranet you can build multiple rate plans against the same room: a flexible rate, a non-refundable rate at a small discount, and longer-stay or advance-purchase rates, each with its own conditions. Layering these lets you capture both the guest who wants the cheapest locked-in price and the guest who will pay more for the freedom to cancel, without discounting to everyone.

The restrictions matter just as much as the number. A minimum length of stay smooths out awkward one-night gaps over busy weekends, a closed-to-arrival rule protects housekeeping on changeover days, and release periods stop last-minute bookings you cannot service. Used well, these settings shape demand rather than merely responding to it. Left switched on and forgotten, they quietly strangle your availability. Review them whenever your season or your staffing changes, and never assume a rule you set months ago still fits today.

Visibility Tools: Genius, the Opportunity Centre and Deals

Beyond day-to-day pricing, the extranet is also where Booking.com sells you visibility. The Genius loyalty programme offers a discount to Booking.com's frequent guests in exchange for a ranking and exposure boost, and options such as the Preferred Partner Programme and the Visibility Booster let you trade a higher commission for a higher position in search results. The Opportunity Centre, meanwhile, feeds you a steady stream of suggested deals and settings.

All of these can work, but every one of them is designed to grow Booking.com's slice of your business, usually by giving away margin or paying more commission. Treat them as levers you pull deliberately, not boxes to tick because the extranet asked. Know your true cost per booking on the channel, compare it with what a direct booking through your own booking engine costs you, and buy only the visibility that genuinely pays for itself.

15-25%

Typical OTA Commission

3-5

Channels a Property Sells On

Screen With a Channel Manager

The Hidden Cost: Doing It All Again on Every Channel

Here is where the story turns. The extranet is fine when Booking.com is the only place you sell. Almost no property is in that position. Most also list on Expedia, perhaps Airbnb, maybe Agoda, and, ideally, take direct bookings through their own website. Each of those has its own extranet, its own calendar and its own logins.

Manage them all by hand and two problems appear. The first is time: the same rate change, entered five times, five days a week, is hours a month you will never get back. The second is risk. The moment two guests book the last room on two different sites before you have updated the second one, you have an overbooking, an unhappy guest and a dent in your rating. The more channels you add, the worse both problems get.

Where a Channel Manager Comes In

A channel manager solves exactly this. It sits above all your listings, Booking.com included, and keeps rates and availability in sync across every one of them from a single screen. Sell the last room anywhere and it closes that room everywhere, instantly. Change a rate once and it updates the lot. Booking.com is built for this: through its Connectivity Partner programme, an approved channel manager connects directly to your extranet so availability, pricing and reservations flow automatically, with no double entry.

This is the work Levart's channel manager is designed to take off your plate, and our interface guide sets out exactly which systems it talks to. Instead of logging in to each platform in turn, you manage your whole distribution in one place and let the extranets look after themselves. For a busy property, it is the difference between spending your mornings on data entry and spending them on your guests.

Extranet Foundations

Five non-negotiables for running Booking.com properly

Keep the listing complete and current - photos, facilities and policies drive ranking, not just price
Build layered rate plans, and review your restrictions every time the season or staffing changes
Treat Genius, Preferred Partner and the Opportunity Centre as margin decisions, not default settings
Never manage availability by hand across multiple channels - that is the overbooking trap
Connect a channel manager so one change reaches every channel, including your own website

Connecting the Extranet: How a Channel Manager Plugs In

If you have never connected your extranet to anything, the idea can sound technical, but the process is well worn. You request the connection, confirm it inside the extranet, and from that point availability, rates and reservations pass automatically between Booking.com and your channel manager over a secure link.

The one part that needs care is the initial mapping. Each room type and rate plan in Booking.com has to be matched to the equivalent room and rate in your channel manager, so that when the manager closes a room, it closes the right one. Get this right at setup, with a hand from your provider, and it simply runs. From then on, a booking that lands on Booking.com immediately reduces availability everywhere else, and a rate you change once reaches every channel in moments. The daily logins stop, and the double entry stops with them. Our support team handles this mapping with every new property, precisely because it is the step that determines whether the rest runs smoothly.

Stop Logging In Everywhere

Manage every channel, and your own website, from one screen.

Levart connects your Booking.com extranet with your other OTAs and your direct booking engine, syncing rates and availability automatically so you never enter the same change twice or risk an overbooking.

Book a Free Demo

Common Booking.com Extranet Mistakes to Avoid

Even experienced operators lose bookings and money to a handful of avoidable extranet habits. The most common are worth naming so you can check your own account against them.

The first is letting the listing go stale. Old photos, a thin description and an out-of-date facilities list all quietly suppress your ranking. The second is leaving restrictions on by accident: a minimum-stay rule set for one busy weekend and never removed will block bookings for months. The third is managing availability by hand across channels, which is the classic overbooking trap. The fourth is accepting every Opportunity, eroding your margin one click at a time. And the fifth is ignoring reviews and messages, which hurts both the guest experience and your position in search.

None of these are complicated to fix. They need a system and a little discipline, which is precisely what moving the repetitive work into one place buys you. The same discipline applies to your own site, where a well-built property website and a clear booking path do the equivalent job for direct business.

There is a sixth mistake worth adding, and it is the quietest one: treating the extranet as a set-and-forget tool. Booking.com changes its programmes, its ranking signals and its promotional offers regularly, and a listing that was well optimised eighteen months ago may now be leaving money on the table. Put a recurring half hour in the diary each month to review your rate plans, your restrictions, the Opportunity Centre and your Analytics against the local competitor set. That small, regular habit catches drift long before it shows up in your occupancy.

Turning Extranet Work Into Direct Bookings

Mastering the extranet is a defensive move. It keeps your biggest channel healthy. The offensive move is using the time you win back to grow the bookings that carry no commission at all.

That starts with being visible where guests actually look. Pushing live rates and availability into Google's travel results through Free Booking Links puts your official price alongside the OTAs at the exact moment a guest is comparing, and Google Hotel Ads extends that reach further. From there, a book direct widget makes the case on your own site, and integrated payments remove the final friction at checkout. Each of these is a small step, and together they shift the mix of your business away from commission and toward margin.

It is worth being clear-eyed about the goal here. Booking.com is not the enemy, and very few properties should try to leave it. It is a superb acquisition channel that puts you in front of travellers you would never otherwise reach, and it deserves to be run well. What it should not be is your only channel, or the default destination for guests who were already looking for you by name. The aim is balance: let the OTA do what it is genuinely good at, and make sure the guest who has decided on your property can book with you directly, quickly and at the best available price.

None of it works if your team is still spending its mornings copying rates between extranets. That is the real argument for connecting the extranet rather than merely mastering it.

Getting the Most Out of Both

None of this means abandoning the extranet. You will still use it for Booking.com-specific tasks: replying to guests, managing reviews, reading the platform's analytics and deciding which promotions to run. What changes is that the repetitive, error-prone work, the rates and the availability, moves up into a single system that handles every channel together. You keep the control, and you lose the busywork.

If you are running more than one channel by hand today, that is the single highest-value change you can make to how your property operates. It pays for itself in reclaimed hours and prevented overbookings, usually within the first busy season. Whether you run a hotel, a motel, an apartment block, a resort or a group of holiday homes, the maths is the same, and our solutions by property type set out how it applies to yours. If the bigger question is which system should sit underneath all of this, start with our guide to choosing hotel management software for small to mid-size properties.

When you are ready to see how it would work for your property, get in touch and we will walk you through it on your own rates and your own channels.

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The post The Booking.com Extranet Explained – A Complete Guide for Property Managers appeared first on Levart.

Hotel SEO in 2026 – The Definitive Strategy for Visibility and Direct Growth

levart — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:44:34 +0000

Hotel SEO in 2026: The Definitive Strategy for Visibility and Direct Growth | Levart

Industry Briefing · April 2026

Hotel SEO in 2026: The Definitive Strategy for Visibility and Direct Growth

Search engines no longer act as directories - they are sophisticated digital concierges. Here is how independent hotels and resorts can reclaim their digital real estate from the OTAs.

10 min read Direct Bookings Levart Insights

The hospitality industry has entered an era where search engines act less like directories and more like sophisticated digital concierges. For any property owner or manager, the challenge has shifted from simply appearing in a list of results to becoming the definitive answer for a traveller's intent. In 2026, the traditional reliance on Online Travel Agencies is no longer a necessary evil but a strategic choice that can be mitigated through a robust, technically sound SEO strategy.

The goal of this guide is to provide a comprehensive roadmap for hotels, resorts, and boutique stays to reclaim their digital real estate. By focusing on semantic richness, technical excellence, and user-centric content, properties can secure a future where direct bookings are the primary driver of revenue.

The Evolution of Search: From Keywords to Entities

Search engines have moved beyond matching words on a page to understanding the "entity" of your hotel. An entity is a uniquely identifiable object - in this case, your property - defined by its attributes, location, and relationship to other entities like local landmarks or events. When a user searches for "quiet boutique hotel near Sydney Harbour with a rooftop bar," Google's AI models are not just looking for those words; they are looking for a property entity that satisfies every one of those specific conditions.

To rank well in this environment, your website must provide clear, structured data that defines these attributes. This is where many independent properties fall behind. While OTAs are experts at structured data, independent hotels often have fragmented information. Levart helps bridge this gap by ensuring that the core data powering your booking engine is mirrored in a way that search engines can easily digest, turning your property into a high-confidence entity in the eyes of Google.

Search engines are no longer matching words on a page. They are matching entities to traveller intent - and your property either is one or it isn't.

Semantic SEO and the Rise of AI Overviews

In 2026, the top of the search results page is frequently occupied by an AI Overview. This is a generative summary that synthesises information from across the web to answer a user's query instantly. If your property is not being cited in these overviews, you are essentially invisible to a large portion of the market.

Ranking for AI Overviews requires "semantically rich" content. This means moving away from thin, repetitive descriptions and toward deep, authoritative information. Instead of just listing "Free Wi-Fi," describe the connectivity as "high-speed fibre-optic internet suitable for video conferencing and remote work throughout the property." This provides the context that AI models need to match your property with specific traveller needs.

The key is to answer the questions your guests haven't even asked yet. By anticipating the nuances of a guest's stay, you provide the semantic depth that search engines crave. This level of detail doesn't just help with rankings; it builds immediate trust with the human reader who is looking for more than just a bed.

The Google Travel Ecosystem and Local Dominance

For hotels, the Google Business Profile is the most important piece of digital real estate outside of their own website. It is the gateway to Google Maps and Google Travel. A fully optimised profile is a prerequisite for any direct booking strategy.

Visibility in the "Local Pack" - the map results that appear for location-based searches - is determined by relevance, distance, and prominence. While you cannot change your distance from a user, you can significantly influence relevance and prominence. This involves ensuring your attributes are hyper-accurate. Does your hotel have a "no-contact check-in" or "sustainable sourcing" for its restaurant? These attributes are frequently used as filters by modern travellers.

Levart Advantage

A major advantage for Levart clients is the ability to integrate live rates and availability directly into the Google Travel interface via Free Booking Links. This ensures that when a guest finds your property on Google Maps, the "Official Site" price is displayed prominently alongside the OTAs - often the single most effective way to intercept a booking before it moves to a high-commission platform.

Technical SEO: The Foundation of User Experience

You can have the most compelling narrative in the world, but if your site takes five seconds to load on a mobile device, that story will never be read. In 2026, technical SEO is synonymous with user experience. Google's Core Web Vitals - metrics that measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability - are now critical ranking factors.

A fast, responsive website is a signal to search engines that your property is professional and reliable. For many independent operators, maintaining this level of technical performance is a challenge. This is why we focus on providing a technical foundation that handles the heavy lifting of optimisation. When the underlying architecture of a site is built for speed, the property can focus on what it does best - hospitality.

Mobile-first indexing is no longer a trend; it is the standard. Most travel research and a growing percentage of bookings occur on smartphones. A mobile-friendly site must be more than just "responsive." It must be "thumb-friendly," with clear call-to-action buttons, simplified navigation, and a booking process that requires minimal input. If a guest has to pinch and zoom to find your contact details, you have already lost them to an OTA.

Mobile Load Threshold

68%

Travel Research on Mobile

15-25%

Typical OTA Commission

Structured Data: Speaking the Language of Search Engines

Schema markup is the hidden layer of your website that speaks directly to search engine crawlers. It is a standardised vocabulary that tells Google exactly what a piece of information means. For a hotel, this includes everything from your physical address and phone number to your star rating, price range, and individual room types.

By implementing advanced "Hotel" and "Offer" schema, you increase the likelihood of your site appearing with "Rich Snippets." These are the enhanced search results that show your review stars, price, and availability directly on the results page. This not only improves your ranking but also significantly increases your click-through rate.

Levart's approach to visibility involves ensuring that this structured data is automatically generated and updated. When you change a price or update a room description in your management system, that information should flow through to your website's schema. This consistency is a powerful signal of trustworthiness to both AI models and human users.

Content Strategy: E-E-A-T and Hyper-Local Authority

Google evaluates content based on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. For a hotel, this means your content should reflect your unique position as a local expert.

Generic travel guides are a thing of the past. To rank in 2026, you need to provide value that an AI cannot easily replicate. This means creating content based on first-hand experience. Instead of a "Guide to Melbourne," create a "Walking Tour of Southbank's Hidden Art Galleries Starting from Our Lobby." This shows both the user and the search engine that you have genuine, local expertise.

Content should be structured to answer specific "long-tail" queries. These are longer, more specific search terms that often have a higher intent to book. For example, "best pet-friendly hotels in Adelaide with an enclosed garden" is a query that a well-optimised blog post or landing page can capture. By targeting these specific needs, you attract high-quality traffic that is more likely to convert into a direct booking.

The 2026 SEO Foundations

Five non-negotiables for hotels building direct booking authority

Treat your property as an entity, not a list of keywords - publish detailed, structured attributes
Optimise for AI Overviews with semantically rich, first-hand content
Push live rates to Google Travel via Free Booking Links to compete directly with OTAs
Build for Core Web Vitals - sub-three-second mobile load is now table stakes
Use Hotel and Offer schema to power rich snippets and feed AI models

The Psychology of the Direct Booking

SEO gets the user to your site, but Conversion Rate Optimisation ensures they stay there. The biggest obstacle to direct bookings is the perceived "safety" and "ease" of an OTA. To combat this, your website must offer a superior experience.

This begins with price transparency. If a guest suspects they can find a better deal elsewhere, they will leave your site to check. By using tools that display a live price comparison on your own site, you keep the guest within your ecosystem. Furthermore, highlighting the benefits of booking direct - such as a complimentary drink, late checkout, or more flexible cancellation policies - provides the emotional and logical incentive needed to bypass the OTA.

The booking engine itself is the final hurdle. It must be a seamless extension of your brand. A jarring transition from a beautiful website to a clunky, third-party booking interface is a major red flag for guests. We work with our clients to ensure that the transition to the Levart booking engine is invisible, maintaining the trust that has been built through the SEO and content journey.

Built for Direct Bookings

Levart's booking engine is built to convert SEO traffic, not lose it.

An invisible transition from website to booking engine. Live rates pushed to Google Travel. The infrastructure to preserve and grow your SEO authority over time. This is what direct booking foundations look like in 2026.

Book a Free Demo

Reputation Management as a Ranking Signal

In 2026, your online reputation is a primary SEO signal. Search engines use natural language processing to analyse the sentiment of your reviews across multiple platforms. If guests consistently praise your "exceptional service" and "quiet rooms," search engines will associate those positive attributes with your entity, making you more likely to appear for those specific searches.

Responding to reviews is not just good manners; it is an SEO necessity. A property that actively engages with its guests is seen as more authoritative and trustworthy. When responding, incorporate keywords naturally. If a guest mentions the "stunning view of the beach," your response might include, "We are so glad you enjoyed the panoramic beach views from your private balcony." This reinforces the semantic connection between your property and those desirable features.

Breaking the OTA Dependency: A Long-Term Vision

The ultimate goal of Hotel SEO is to build a sustainable, independent digital presence. While OTAs can be a useful tool for filling last-minute gaps, they should not be the primary source of your business. The commissions paid to these platforms are a direct hit to your bottom line - money that could be reinvested into property improvements or your own marketing efforts.

By investing in a long-term SEO strategy, you are building an asset that you own. Unlike paid advertising, which stops delivering results the moment you stop paying, SEO provides a cumulative benefit. A well-written article or an optimised landing page can continue to drive direct bookings for years.

Levart's mission is to empower independent properties with the same level of technical sophistication as the global chains. We help our clients move from a position of dependency to one of digital sovereignty. When your website is technically flawless, your data is structured for AI, and your content reflects your local expertise, you become the master of your own distribution.

Navigating the Future of Search

The world of search will continue to evolve, with voice search, visual search, and AI-driven discovery becoming even more integrated into the traveller's journey. However, the fundamentals of good SEO remain the same: be relevant, be fast, and be trustworthy.

Properties that embrace these changes and view their website as their most important sales tool will find themselves at the top of the rankings. By focusing on a holistic approach that combines technical excellence with authentic storytelling, you can ensure that your property is not just a choice on an OTA list, but the destination that travellers find and book directly.

In the end, Hotel SEO is about more than just algorithms; it is about hospitality. It is about making sure that when a traveller is looking for an experience like the one you offer, you are there to meet them with the right information at the right time. That is the path to visibility, and more importantly, the path to a thriving, independent future.

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Hotel Tech Stacks: The Swiss Army Knife Versus The Scalpel

levart — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:44:07 +0000

At Levart, we speak with accommodation operators every single day. From regional motels to multi-property resort groups, they all face the exact same operational choice. Do you buy an All-in-One property management system to handle absolutely everything? Or do you build a specialist tech stack using dedicated tools?

For years, software vendors sold hoteliers on the dream of a single login. It sounded incredibly easy. However, the digital travel market has changed. Online distribution is complex. Guests expect flawless online experiences. The limitations of a single-vendor system are now glaringly obvious. Let us explore exactly why independent operators are moving to specialist software and why this modular approach makes better financial sense.

Hotel Tech Stacks: The Swiss Army Knife Versus The Scalpel

To understand the difference between these two approaches, look at the tools themselves. An All-in-One system is a digital Swiss Army Knife. It has a tool for every possible job. You get a blade, a corkscrew, and a saw. It is highly convenient. However, upon closer inspection, the scissors are tiny. The screwdriver is awkward to handle. It manages basic utility but fails at precision work.

A specialist tech stack provides your team with professional instruments. When you pair a reliable core property management system with a dedicated distribution engine like Levart, you get a scalpel. This structural difference creates immediate operational advantages.

How Focused R&D Creates Better Hotel Software

Software development requires strict budget allocation. Companies that build unified systems must spread their engineering teams incredibly thin. They must simultaneously update the front desk interface, debug the accounting module, and build housekeeping applications. They also have to patch the booking engine. Because they are spread so thin, deep feature innovation rarely happens.

Specialist technology providers operate under a different model. At Levart, we focus our engineering budget entirely on distribution and direct conversions. We do not build restaurant point-of-sale systems. We do not build staff rostering modules. This intense focus means we offer complex yield rules and dynamic derived rates. Generalist systems simply skip these advanced features because they lack the development time.

Why Specialist Software Drives More Direct Hotel Bookings

Your booking engine has one primary job. It must capture commission-free revenue. Specialist booking engines are built by e-commerce experts. They load instantly. They look like a natural extension of your brand. Every single button and text box is tested to maximise conversion.

Because a specialist booking engine is judged on conversion alone, its layout and styling matter as much as its speed, so it helps to begin with accommodation booking systems built to convert rather than a generic template dropped onto your site. A booking screen that looks and feels like the rest of your website keeps guests moving toward a direct booking instead of drifting to an OTA.

Booking engines bundled into monolithic platforms are frequently built as an afterthought. They are functional but often feel clunky. They can look completely disjointed from your main website. In the digital travel market, even a minor point of friction leads to cart abandonment.

Let us look at a practical example. A corporate traveller is on a train in Sydney trying to book a room on their smartphone. A generalist booking engine forces them through four slow screens just to see a price. The calendar tool is hard to tap. They get frustrated and leave your site. They open an online travel agency app and reserve your exact room in three taps. You still get the guest. However, you just lost 15 percent of your revenue to a commission fee simply because of a poor interface.

Protecting Your Hotel Property From Vendor Lock-In

Procuring software is a serious risk management exercise. Relying on a single vendor for every function creates structural vulnerabilities. Vendor lock-in is a genuine threat to your business.

When one provider controls your property management system, your channel manager, and your website, they own your operation. Imagine your single vendor decides to increase their monthly fees by 30 percent next year. You have zero leverage. Extracting your property from their ecosystem means migrating your front desk, rebuilding your website, and reconnecting all your channels simultaneously. It is a costly nightmare.

A specialist tech stack protects you through modularity. If a new pricing tool enters the market, you simply connect it via an application programming interface. You do not need to replace your entire core system. The individual vendors in a specialist stack must earn your business every day. They know they are replaceable. This keeps pricing competitive and support responsive.

Preventing Catastrophic Hotel System Outages

Cloud software will occasionally experience downtime. It is an unavoidable reality of modern computing. However, your technical architecture dictates the blast radius of that outage.

Imagine a busy Friday afternoon at four o’clock. The lobby is full of arriving guests. If your All-in-One server crashes, your entire hotel stops. The front desk screen freezes. Your native website goes offline. Your online travel agency connections sever. You risk massive overbookings because inventory is not updating. You cannot check guests in securely.

A modular setup localises the failure. If your specialist channel manager has a temporary outage, your core property management system stays online. Your front desk staff can still issue room keys and process payments. You maintain business continuity. Your staff are not left apologising to angry guests in the lobby.

Improving Front Desk Operations and Reducing Staff Training

Software is only as good as the people using it. Specialist tools are designed specifically for the roles that use them. This leads to higher staff satisfaction and fewer operational errors.

In a unified system, one dashboard tries to serve everyone. The general manager, the receptionist, and the revenue director all use the same interface. The screen is clustered with irrelevant buttons. This causes menu fatigue and accidental data entry errors.

Consider a new nineteen-year-old receptionist working the night shift. They need a stripped-back, fast screen just to check guests in. A marketing manager needs a complex grid to analyse rate parity. Forcing both staff members to use the same cluttered interface slows everyone down.

A specialist setup provides task-specific speed. High staff turnover is a known reality in hospitality. Training a new hire on a focused tool takes a few hours. Teaching them a bloated, generic system takes weeks.

Direct Feature Comparison: Specialist Stacks Versus All-in-One PMS

Looking at specific features side by side makes the operational differences clear.

Direct Booking Engine Conversion Rates A specialist stack provides a high-conversion environment. It uses tailored booking pathways that minimise clicks and keep the user securely on your native domain. The All-in-One approach often relies on a generic template. This setup can feel like a separate site, directly leading to higher bounce rates and lost trust.

Rate Strategy and Automated Yielding The specialist route offers detailed control. It supports complex derived rates and deep, automated yield rules. The monolithic alternative manages basic rate updates well. However, it frequently lacks the conditional automation necessary for advanced yield strategies.

Inventory Distribution Speed Specialist software uses dedicated server architectures. It is built to push high volumes of data to hundreds of niche websites instantly. Integrated unified systems are generally reliable for major global channels. They often struggle or become significantly slower when connecting to regional distribution networks.

Long-Stay and Extended Booking Support A specialist platform provides native weekly and monthly rate settings. It is built to capture the digital nomad market. Generalist systems usually force you to invent dummy room types or complex promo codes just to offer a fourteen-night discount. This creates reporting headaches for your accounting team.

The Levart Advantage for Australian and Oceanian Accommodation

If you decide to build a specialist stack, the components you choose matter immensely. Levart offers local advantages that global platforms miss.

Many leading All-in-One systems are massive entities based in North America or Europe. Their default settings reflect those demographics. Levart is built specifically for the Australian, New Zealand, and Oceanian markets. Our software features deep local DNA.

Choosing the right components is easier when the platform already understands how your property runs, which is why local operators lean on software for hotels, motels and apartments built for the Australian market. A system tuned to local surcharging, time zones and distribution removes the manual workarounds a global all-in-one forces on you.

Credit card surcharging is a perfect practical example. Passing merchant banking fees to guests is standard practice in our region. It is essential to protect your profit margins. It also requires strict compliance with local consumer laws. Global platforms often require messy manual workarounds to handle this. Levart processes these surcharges natively and securely. Furthermore, our support teams operate in your exact time zones. You speak to local distribution experts, not a generalist help desk reading from a script.

Increasing Length of Stay With The Levart Booking Grid

Many software platforms treat direct bookings as a secondary priority. At Levart, we prioritise direct revenue above all else. Our proprietary Booking Grid clearly demonstrates this focus.

Generic systems typically use a linear search list. Guests must input exact dates blindly to see if a room is available. If their chosen dates are sold out, they see a blank screen. This is a restrictive way to shop for accommodation.

The Levart grid allows guests to visually inspect multiple days and room types simultaneously. Imagine a guest searching for a Tuesday and Wednesday night. The grid clearly shows them that staying Thursday as well is only an extra one hundred and fifty dollars. They see the value instantly. This visual transparency actively reduces friction and naturally increases your average length of stay.

Using Automated Yield Rules to Cut OTA Commissions

Perhaps the most practical tool in the Levart system is our advanced yield rules engine. Revenue optimisation requires dynamic automation. You need an invisible manager working around the clock.

You can set a rule that acts on its own. You can configure the system to say that if you have exactly two rooms left for this coming Saturday, automatically close Expedia and Agoda. The rule instructs the system to leave your direct website open. The software makes this decision at two in the morning while you are asleep.

Most generalist systems simply cannot handle this level of channel-specific restriction. They force you to manually monitor your inventory at all hours. Alternatively, you end up paying hefty 15 percent commission fees on your final, most valuable remaining rooms. Yielding those last few rooms correctly often covers the entire cost of our software for the year.

Capturing Digital Nomads With Native Long-Stay Features

The remote worker segment is incredibly lucrative right now. Hotels need the right tools to compete directly with alternative accommodation platforms like Airbnb.

Levart provides native, out-of-the-box support for weekly and monthly rates. You can easily target the long-stay market. Generalist systems are usually tied rigidly to nightly rack rates. To offer a four-week discount, your revenue managers have to invent confusing promo codes. We make extended-stay pricing simple and completely automated for both the guest and your staff.

The True Financial Cost of All-in-One Hotel Software

We must acknowledge the main selling point of the consolidated approach. It offers distinct simplicity.

For a basic ten-room regional motel with static pricing and no desire to grow online revenue, an All-in-One system makes perfect sense. You get one monthly bill. You get one staff login. It feels much easier on day one.

However, as your property scales, this simplicity rapidly becomes a false economy. The convenience of a single vendor is quickly wiped out by the compounding cost of average features.

Let us look at the actual numbers. Imagine a clunky booking engine costs your property just three direct bookings a week. If those bookings are worth five hundred dollars each, a 15 percent commission to an online travel agency means you lose two hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. That is over eleven thousand dollars a year vanished. Those commission payouts easily dwarf your software subscription savings.

If your staff spend three hours a week fixing rate parity errors manually, you are wasting expensive labour. An All-in-One system forces your hotel to adapt to the software. A specialist tech stack adapts to your specific business needs.

Making a Grounded Tech Decision for Your Property

Choosing between a unified system and a modular tech stack is a highly practical business decision. If basic administration is your absolute only priority, a single vendor will likely suffice.

But if your goal is to maximise your revenue, reduce manual staff errors, and take full control of your digital distribution, you need professional tools. Building a specialist tech stack with an agile property management system and a dedicated conversion platform like Levart puts the control back in your hands.

It protects your business from massive server outages. It stops the threat of vendor lock-in. Most importantly, it gives your marketing and front desk teams the precise instruments they need to turn potential guests into direct, commission-free bookings.

Evaluate your current software setup closely this week. Ask your front desk staff how easy it is to fix a rate error. Try booking a room on your own website using your mobile phone. See exactly how many clicks it takes. If you feel like your software is holding your revenue back, it is time to make a change. Put down the Swiss Army Knife and pick up the right tool for the job. If you are weighing up a change, our guide on how to choose hotel management software walks through the core parts, the integrations that matter and the real cost of getting it wrong.

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Master Your Rates, Maximise Your Revenue: The Levart & Room Price Genie Power Play 🚀

Craig Simmonds — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 03:50:37 +0000

In today’s dynamic hospitality landscape, setting the right room rate isn’t just about covering costs – it’s about optimising every single booking to drive maximum commission-free revenue and secure a competitive edge.

At Levart, we understand this deeply. While our integrated platform already empowers hotels to manage availability and pricing with remarkable precision, the true challenge remains: How to increase hotel direct bookings and automate hotel revenue management effectively?

This is where the seamless integration of Levart and Room Price Genie becomes an absolute game-changer for hoteliers. Learn more about the integration on the Room Price Genie – Levart interface page.

Unlock Dynamic Pricing with Automated Intelligence

You already know the challenge: manually adjusting rates across all your channels is a time-consuming, often reactive process. While Levart’s sophisticated channel management and direct booking engine give you unparalleled control, imagine a system that automatically calculates the perfect price for every room, every night, on every channel.

Room Price Genie, when integrated with Levart, does exactly that. It leverages advanced algorithms to analyse critical data points, ensuring your rates are always optimised.

Room Price Genie is always working to perfect your rates by:

Tracking Competitors: Understanding and reacting to changing market dynamics.
Monitoring Booking Performance: Identifying real-time demand patterns and booking pace.
Maximising Profit: Optimising your prices to maximise your profit.
Capturing Local Demand: Ensuring you never miss important local events that drive high demand.

This intelligent automation ensures your rates are always sharp, converting lookers into bookers across your Levart-powered website and all connected OTAs.

Reclaim Your Time and Boost Your Direct Bookings

One of the most significant advantages of automating hotel revenue management is the significant time savings. For a busy independent hotel, the hours spent on manual rate adjustments can quickly add up.

This integration allows you to:

Reclaim Your Time: Automate your dynamic pricing strategy and free your team from tedious administrative tasks.
Boost Direct Bookings: Build guest confidence with intelligent, competitive rates shown directly on your Levart booking engine.
Increase Profitability: Reduce reliance on third-party channels and capture more commission-free revenue.

By automating your pricing, your team is freed to focus on what truly matters: enhancing the guest experience. Furthermore, consistent and optimal pricing across all your online touchpoints strengthens trust and reduces guest reliance on third-party channels.

How it Works: Seamless Integration, Powerful Results

The Levart and Room Price Genie integration is designed for simplicity and effectiveness. Room Price Genie continuously feeds its dynamically calculated rates directly into your Levart system.

Levart then ensures these optimised rates are instantly reflected across your:

Levart Booking Engine: Empowering your direct website visitors with the best possible pricing.
Levart Channel Manager: Distributing the perfect rates across all your chosen online travel agencies (OTAs) and metasearch channels.

Beyond the Basics: Proactive Hotel Revenue Management

While Levart’s own calendar with its intuitive rate and inventory controls is a powerful tool, the addition of Room Price Genie transforms your pricing from reactive to proactive. It’s about more than just filling rooms; it’s about filling them at the most profitable rate possible. This integration makes enterprise-level revenue management accessible and actionable for any hotel.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is Room Price Genie? A: Room Price Genie is an intelligent revenue management system that automatically calculates the most profitable rate for your rooms based on market demand, competitor pricing, booking pace, and other key factors.

Q: Will I lose control of my pricing with automation? A: No. This integration gives you the best of both worlds. You set the rules, define price floors, and approve the overall strategy, while the automation handles the tedious, hour-by-hour adjustments based on real-time data.

Stop Guessing, Start Optimising

See exactly how much revenue and time you could save. Request your free, no-obligation consultation with a Levart hotel revenue expert today!

Email: sales@levart.com.au or request a demo

The post Master Your Rates, Maximise Your Revenue: The Levart & Room Price Genie Power Play 🚀 appeared first on Levart.

A guide to Black Friday and Boxing Day sales for hotels

levart — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 02:34:32 +0000

Australians have been taking advantage of Boxing Day sales for years, but thanks to the substantial growth of online shopping the traditionally American Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales have also become large events in the Australian shopping calendar. They are also not restricted to a single day anymore, often continuing throughout the next week.

No longer confined to retail stores, all businesses with an online presence can take advantage of people looking for deals. For hotels and accommodation providers, Black Friday sales can kick off the festive season, while Boxing Day can give you a last minute boost before the end of the calendar year. It’s important to plan ahead so your deals are ready to go live and you can create awareness with your customers.

For 2022 the dates are:

Black Friday – Friday, 25 November

Cyber Monday – Monday, 28 November

Boxing Day – Monday, 26 December

See our tips below on how to plan and execute your sales.

Use your email marketing database and social media following

Having a newsletter sign up or pop-up widget on your website to entice people to enter their email address helps you build a marketing database. You can then use this database to alert customers to the specials once they are live. Using an email marketing tool such as My Guest List or Mail Chimp allows you to schedule a specific day and time for the email to be sent out, so you can have everything ready and scheduled to go in advance.

Creating a social media presence with regular posting is another great tool so you can target potential guests who are already following you.

Create discounts through Promo Codes and Special Offers

Promo codes allow you to create “secret” discounts which are only available to people who have been given the code or link. You can create unique codes for different platforms, allowing you to track how many bookings you get from each advertising channel (e.g. email, Facebook or Instagram).

Special offers are public discounts which anyone making a booking on your website can access, as long as they are searching for the correct dates.

Offer additional add-ons to the bookings

Sales don’t have to simply be discounts only. You can offer additional inclusions such as free breakfast, a spa voucher or wine and cheese in the room on arrival. Carefully curated packages can give the guest great value for money without needing to slash your rates too much.

Create a landing page

Making a unique landing page to advertise your specials and packages will help grab the attention of people visiting your website and generate a link you can put in your marketing campaigns. This sends the guest to a specific page with all the information they need to know about the special deal. It also helps maintain guest focus by allowing them to book your special rates directly on that page.

Use scarcity tactics

Highlighting that there is only a limited amount of time that this offer is available creates urgency and encourages people to book quickly. Using a countdown clock is a great way to clearly show how much time is left and give the user an extra push to book now!

In Levart you have the ability to set your special offers and promo codes to automatically activate and expire on certain dates, so you can rest assured you don’t need to remember to manually turn them on or off.

Promotions are easiest to run when the rest of the stack is already talking to itself. Levart brings the booking engine, channel manager and rate management together as hotel accommodation management software, so a Black Friday rate you set once appears everywhere it should. That is what stops a sale turning into a morning of manual updates.

Summary

Black Friday and Boxing Day are both great opportunities to maximise your occupancy while shoppers are on high alert for good deals. Make sure you plan ahead and have everything set up and ready to go so you are not rushing on the day. Building up a marketing database and social media following gives you a great opportunity to market these deals to people who may have already stayed (or considered staying) at your accommodation in the past.

The post A guide to Black Friday and Boxing Day sales for hotels appeared first on Levart.

Levart Has A Solution For All Types Of Accommodation Providers

levart — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 03:54:50 +0000

We know your property is unique and we know your hospitality software requirements are unique too. That’s why we believe it’s important to ensure your channel manager, booking software, website and digital marketing solutions are tailored to your property and your budget. We believe that modern booking systems should be flexible enough to scale with your specific property type. Whether you operate a boutique motel or a large resort, finding the right accommodation booking system helps streamline your daily reservations and minimises manual administrative work.

Hotels, Motels & Apartments

Despite being one of the most common types of accommodation property, hotels, motels and apartments are not without their own unique set of distribution software requirements. Levart is adaptable to suit a huge range of hotels, motels and apartments; from large hotel chains to boutique independents. Whether your property services largely a business market, predominantly leisure travellers or a mix of both, we can find the right channels to connect you with, help optimise your booking engine or create a stunning website to drive direct bookings.

Resorts

Resorts offer so much more than accommodation. From stunning wedding venues and luxury spa treatments to high energy water parks for the kids, resorts need an integrated platform where guests can discover and book their many amenities in one place.

Holiday Homes

Levart has created unique solutions for our clients with holiday home properties. Whether you have one holiday home or a series of homes across separate locations, we can create the right set-up for your business. Some of our clients operate multiple homes bookable through a singular website, and some choose to have individual websites for each location. By implementing a unified reservation management system, property owners can focus more on the guest experience rather than backend administration.

Bed & Breakfast, Chalets & Villas

With fewer rooms and often set in stunning locations, we can help these types of properties find the right distribution channels to sell your rooms. Optimising your website and entire online presence to communicate an authentic personal experience to guests is easy with Levart.

Holiday Parks & Campgrounds

Levart’s flexible software makes it easy to sell your different types of campsites and accommodation. Whether you operate sites for camping and caravans, glamping tents, standalone chalets or a mix of everything, you can tailor the Levart system to streamline your operations.

Student & Long-stay Accommodation

Long stay accommodation has especially unique hospitality software requirements in terms of booking functionality. We have developed a sophisticated yet easy-to-use system to enable UniLodge, one of the biggest student accommodation providers in Australia and New Zealand, to effectively distribute long stay accommodation to students.

The post Levart Has A Solution For All Types Of Accommodation Providers appeared first on Levart.

How To Make The Most Of Online Travel Agents

levart — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 06:53:07 +0000

In an ideal world, all hotel bookings would be made direct on your own website with no commission needing to be paid. However, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are still widely used by guests making their bookings online. You can make the most of OTAs to ensure you have exposure to your target market while also enticing people to book direct on your website. While OTAs are vital, leveraging direct booking software ensures you capture more commission-free revenue through your own website.

Should I list on as many OTAs as possible?

When it comes to how many OTAs you list your property on, more is not always better. Every OTA you connect to requires time to set up and keep content and photos up-to-date. It is best to find which ones get you enough bookings to be worthwhile and invest your time into those, rather than connect to many which may only yield one or two extra bookings a year.

It is important to understand your target market when deciding what OTAs to use. If you run a hotel, you will see bookings come in from popular sites such as Booking.com and Expedia. If you manage holiday houses, your target market is likely to be looking on sites such as AirBnB and VRBO (Stayz).

Google is also rising as a large player in the meta-search area. Using Google Hotel Ads or the Google Free Booking Link can bring in more direct bookings instead of sending potential guests to OTAs instead.

Hold back rooms in peak periods

During peak periods such as Christmas and school holidays you can hold back rooms from being sent to OTAs. This may be in the form of a buffer so the OTA receives less rooms than you actually have or a complete stop sell so you are only accepting direct bookings during these times. Doing this allows you to still have a presence on third party sites but reduce the amount of commission you pay over periods you know you will sell out regardless.

Juggling several OTAs, your own website and your rates by hand gets harder as you add channels, which is why many operators run everything from one platform instead. Levart’s hotel and motel management software keeps availability and pricing in sync across every channel, so a booking on one site updates the rest automatically. That single view of your inventory is what makes the direct-booking tactics below far easier to pull off.

Entice people to book direct

Some guests may use OTAs during their initial search to narrow down their choice of accommodation before checking your direct website. Using a popup on your website such as Levart’s Why Book Direct Widget shows guests what benefits they’ll receive for booking direct. You can offer a discounted price or additional items such as late checkout, room upgrades or a free bottle of wine.

You can also send your rates to OTAs at a set percentage higher. This not only always makes your website prices cheaper, but also helps offset the commission for guests that do book through the third party.

Reward loyalty for returning guests

Once a guest is staying at your property you can encourage them to return by offering a loyalty promo code with a discount. This could be placed on a card in the room with a link to your website or in a post- checkout email that you send once they guest has left.

The post How To Make The Most Of Online Travel Agents appeared first on Levart.

Is a Mobile Responsive Site Really That Important?

levart — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 02:32:56 +0000

Internet users are accessing the web from multiple types of devices nowadays. This includes desktops, mobiles and tablets, all of which have different screen sizes. To ensure your website visitors have the best possible experience, your website needs to look good on all screens no matter the shape or size. A responsive website design is the best solution for you to make sure all your potential guests can easily make a booking regardless of the size of their screen and this helps bookings and supplements our leading hotel booking engine online.

What is a responsive site?

A responsive website will automatically adjust and scale its content to any screen size. This means if you have large photos or blocks of text, they won’t be larger than the device’s screen width. If a visitor is using a mobile phone or other small device, they shouldn’t have to rotate their screen, pinch in to zoom or scroll horizontally. Creating unnecessary work for your users can cause frustration if they have to figure out how to do something.

For example, a website viewed on desktop may have a horizontal menu across the screen while on mobile it is vertical and hidden behind a menu link. The links will also be bigger on mobile so you can “click” by tapping with your finger.

A responsive site is also a vital tool to help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as Google gives preference to mobile friendly websites. Google even has a Mobile Friendly Test you can run to check how mobile accessible your website is.

Importance for hotels and accommodation providers

As an accommodation provider, your most important feature is that the guest can easily make a booking. They should be able to find a booking panel or link on the Home Page after landing on the website instead of clicking through multiple pages trying to find how to book.

You are also competing with well-established apps such as Booking.com and AirBnB so your guest should not want to give up and book on a site they’re more familiar with. This is particularly valuable for the guest that is already traveling and is only using their mobile device.

It is also important that your contact details are easy to find on a mobile website. A click-to-call phone number or button in a prominent spot means your guest can call if they need more information. Integrating Maps also allows the guest to easily get directions to your property.

Levart’s responsive websites

Getting your own responsive website doesn’t have to be hard or overwhelming! All of Levart’s stunning website designs are already completely responsive and made specifically for Accommodation Providers. We’ve taken all the hard work out, all you need to do is add your own content and rest assured it will look great on all devices!

A responsive layout does its job only when the booking step is just as easy on a phone, so it pays to choose accommodation booking software that is designed mobile-first from the start. That way the guest who found you on a phone can select dates and pay without pinching, zooming or giving up.

The post Is a Mobile Responsive Site Really That Important? appeared first on Levart.

How an Auto Rate Management System Can Optimise Your Revenue

levart — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 01:36:56 +0000

If you are spending too much time manually adjusting your rates based on the level of occupancy, you should consider using an Auto Rate Management tool (also known as a Revenue Management System).

What does an Auto Rate Management tool do?

An Automatic Rate Management System is a powerful tool for hoteliers, assisting with automatically adjusting rates based on the occupancy level and lead time for every future date. You are in charge and set the rules to increase or decrease rates based on both numbers of days lead and level of occupancy.

The tool will respond to real time changes in inventory, so if you suddenly receive numerous bookings for a future date and your prices need to be increased the Auto Rate Manager will make the adjustments accordingly. Alternatively, if you have a period of low occupancy, decreasing the prices can attract more guests.

Why is Rate Management important?

Rate management is important to ensure that you are reaching your maximum potential revenue, regardless of whether you are in a period of low or high demand. Rather than just setting and forgetting your seasonal rates, rate management allows you to optimise your revenue earning potential.

Auto rate management is only one piece of the puzzle, and it works best inside a single platform that also handles your bookings, channels and payments. Operators weighing up their options can see how the parts fit together in Levart’s accommodation management software for hotels, motels and apartments, where rates, availability and distribution all run from one system. Bringing everything under one roof is what removes the double handling that quietly eats into a small team’s week.

Why should I use an Auto Rate Manager instead of doing it manually?

Having your rates adjusted automatically will simplify and streamline the process so you don’t spend countless hours manually reviewing the inventory and calculating new prices. A dedicated revenue manager likely only works Monday – Friday during business hours whilst Levart’s Auto Rate Manager updates the rates every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and allows your staff to focus on other areas.

If you would like more information on whether an Auto Rate Manager will work for your property you can request a free consultation with Levart here.

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