Prairie Guest House Sync Online Bookings & Save Time By Upgrading Their Channel Manager

John and Karen Newton are the Owner-Innkeepers of The Prairie Guest House, an inn which features a mid-1800’s Gothic farmhouse with 10 large rooms, an early 1900’s cottage just across the courtyard, and an on-site yoga studio.

As John and Karen manage the day-to-day operations of the inn, their time is very valuable. Not only do they manage reservations, housekeeping, food, and the yoga studio, but they also host events such as barn weddings, brunches, and teas.

It wasn’t long before they came to realize that their time was being poorly spent. Here’s how they solved that problem.

1. Find the source of wasted time

John and Karen realized that a lot of their time was being spent on tedious administrative tasks related to online reservations.

“We had to manually update our availability because our channel manager only worked with some of our online sales channels. 60% of our inventory was connected, but 40% of it wasn’t, so it was very high maintenance. Any time we received a reservation it took 10 minutes to update inventory everywhere.”

The way their current booking process was set up didn’t allow them the peace of mind they needed.

“It was cumbersome because I would have to double-check on every reservation… and on busy weekends we would sometimes oversell our rooms by accident.”

Double booked rooms meant that John and Karen had to spend even more time (and money) in trying to rectify the situation.

“Sometimes we would have to upgrade guests because we over-sold our cheapest room. That error made me uncomfortable, because it would be bad for our business.”

2. Research possible solutions

These kinds of errors needed to be stopped. John and Karen felt that it was time to upgrade their channel manager.

“We were tired of the maintenance that came with our previous channel manager. We knew that there had to be a better way to do it.”

In particular, their new solution needed to

• Connect to more booking sites;
• Be more user-friendly;
• Collect more information on the booking form; and,
• Contain a better automated email function.

“We searched extensively and looked at 20 different packages.”

3. Pick a solution

After searching far and wide for the perfect channel manager for their bed and breakfast, John and Karen settled on Little Hotelier’s all-in-one system.

The Little Hotelier package comes with a booking engine, front desk system, and channel manager to take the hassle out of running a small accommodation business.

“In the end, we selected Little Hotelier because it had what we were looking for at the right price.”

4. Reap the benefits

Little Hotelier has allowed John and Karen to free up their time by automating all of the inventory-related administrative tasks.

“Managing our online inventory is much easier. Instead of checking on every reservation, I trust that it’s taken care of because it’s automated. We estimate that Little Hotelier has saved us half an hour a day.”