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Go live on a new channel

Catalog and content first, then connect, map and certify, then the first ARI push, the first ingested booking, and the money coming back.

อัปเดตล่าสุด

Who this is for: Owner — connecting and mapping requires crs.channel.manage and pushing ARI requires crs.availability.write, and the default Manager bundle carries neither. A Manager can do everything up to the connection itself. Where: Reservations → Channels

By the end of this a channel is selling your rooms, its bookings are landing on the rack as ordinary stays, and what it owes you is recorded where your accountant will find it.

Connecting a channel is the highest-friction task in the product, and the middle of it is a fixed order: connect, then map, then certify. The steps before that order exist to make it survivable — a channel certified against a half-built catalog certifies exactly the half you built.

หมายเหตุ

On staging every channel runs against an in-process stub. Connections, mappings, certification, pushes, bookings, messages and reviews all behave as specified and their delivery states are real — nothing reaches a live OTA, and no OTA credentials are involved.

Get the catalog ready#

  1. Have the room categories and rate plans you intend to sell — room categories and rate plans. Set derived plans up as derived rather than as independent numbers; a channel mapping multiplies every price you have to maintain by hand.
  2. Set the distribution profile, and the price guards in particular — distribution settings and the availability series. The guards are the backstop against a mis-derived or recommended price reaching a channel at a number nobody approved. Do it before anything can push.
  3. Know which restrictions apply, and which derived plans inherit them — restrictions and stop-sell. Stop-sell inheritance is opt-in per plan, so closing a parent can leave a child selling the date.

Publish what a guest reads#

  1. Write the description, photos, facilities and policies, then publish them — property content. Do it before connecting rather than after: these are the fields the channel advertises, and a dispute is settled against what was published, not against what you meant.

Decide what the channel is selling#

  1. Whole hotel, or one storefront? — listings and vanity properties. A channel bound to a listing sees only that listing's room categories. Decide it now, because rebinding a channel afterwards means mapping and certifying it again.

Connect, map, certify#

  1. Connect the channel — connecting a channel. A code and a name, no credentials at this step. The card appears uncertified: connected and selling nothing.
  2. Map every room and rate you intend to sell there. Use Discover options so you are mapping against the channel's real ids rather than ids typed from a spreadsheet. Map all of them — an unmapped room or rate does not fail at push time, it fails when a guest books it.
  3. Certify. Certification is refused while mappings are missing or invalid, and that refusal is the feature. Re-certify after any change to the mapped catalog.

หมายเหตุ

If an external channel manager is connected, it masters mappings, ARI, or both. The affected screens render read-only with a banner saying which facts are involved — map and distribute in that system instead. There is never more than one writer to a fact.

Push, and watch it land#

  1. Queue your first ARI change and watch a row reach delivered — availability and ARI distribution. Do not take the connection on trust; watch one delivery succeed so you know what healthy looks like on that card.
  2. Learn what a failure looks like now rather than at short notice. A failed push means the channel is still selling the old truth, and a failed stop-sell is the expensive version of that — it is the one where the gap costs you a room you cannot honour.

Take the first booking#

  1. Find it on Bookings — bookings from every channel. Read channel-collect or property-collect first: it decides whether the desk takes money at check-out, and it is carried onto the folio so the answer travels with the stay.
  2. Check the repair queue. A booking whose room or rate is unmapped is held rather than guessed at — it exists, and it is not on the rack. Add the mapping and it replays.
  3. Confirm it became a stay — it should be on the room rack and in arrivals like any other booking. From here it is an ordinary arrival.

Reconcile the money and the correspondence#

  1. Record what a channel-collect booking leaves you owed — accounts receivable and the city ledger. The guest paid the OTA; the OTA remits later, and the balance sits on the city ledger until it does.
  2. Clear the remittance when it arrives, one counterparty at a time — reconciliation is per receivable and in full.
  3. Pick up the guest-facing tail — guest messaging from OTAs and reviews. The review reply window closes on the channel's deadline, so work the unreplied ones oldest first.

You're done when…#

The channel card carries connected and certified, an ARI row has reached delivered, a booking from that channel is on the rack as an ordinary stay with its payment-collection method on the folio, and the first balance it owes you is recorded on receivables.

What's next#