Mews Channel Manager is the successor to the older direct Booking.com and Expedia integrations in Mews. If you are on one of those direct integrations today, you can now move to Mews Channel Manager on your own, without contacting Mews. This article explains what you gain by moving, the trade-offs to be aware of, and what happens to your existing direct integration when you enable Mews Channel Manager.

 

In this article, you can learn about:

• How to move from a direct integration to Mews Channel Manager

  • Why move to Mews Channel Manager

  • Trade-offs to be aware of before you move

  • What happens to your existing direct integration

  • How to move to Mews Channel Manager

  • What to do next

 

How to move from a direct integration to Mews Channel Manager

Why move to Mews Channel Manager

Mews Channel Manager, powered by SiteMinder, is a more capable distribution setup than the direct Booking.com and Expedia integrations. Moving gives you:

• Access to 400+ booking channels. Beyond Booking.com and Expedia, you can connect regional online travel agencies, wholesalers, and metasearch partners from a single screen. See Channels supported by Mews Channel Manager.

• Automated room rate mapping. Most channels support automatic reading of their room rates, so Mews reads them and suggests best-guess matches instead of you setting up every mapping by hand. See Understanding room rate mapping scenarios in Mews Channel Manager.

• A single overview of your distribution. The Channels screen, the Channel status widget on the Revenue overview, and the Channel Performance dashboard give you distribution and channel health in one place. See Monitoring channel status in Mews Channel Manager and Understanding the Channel Performance dashboard in Mews Business Intelligence.

• Distribution and revenue management side by side. Because Mews Channel Manager lives in the Revenue workspace alongside Pricing, Rates, and Restrictions, the path from a pricing decision to a channel is shorter. See Navigating the Revenue workspace in Mews Operations

• Your Mews direct booking engine treated as a channel. Your direct booking engine sits alongside your online travel agencies on the Channels screen, so you compare and manage them the same way.

For the full list of what launched with Mews Channel Manager, see the Mews Channel Manager release note.

Trade-offs to be aware of before you move

Mews Channel Manager is more powerful overall, but there are a small number of capabilities in the direct integrations that Mews Channel Manager does not yet offer:

• Reporting invalid credit cards to Booking.com from Mews. The direct Booking.com integration lets you report an invalid credit card on a Booking.com reservation directly from Mews. This is not available in Mews Channel Manager. If you rely on this workflow, you need to report invalid credit cards through the Booking.com extranet instead once you move.

• One account per channel per property. Mews Channel Manager supports one Booking.com account and one Expedia account per Mews property. If you currently have more than one direct integration for the same channel on the same property, for example, because you sell different room inventory through separate Booking.com accounts, you cannot move to Mews Channel Manager yet. Support for multiple accounts per channel on the same property is planned for the future.

• Prepaid reservation flag on Booking.com reservations. With the direct Booking.com integration, Mews recognizes whether a reservation is prepaid and marks it accordingly. Some billing automations use this status, for example, to route prepaid charges to a separate bill. SiteMinder does not support this flag, so Booking.com reservations that arrive through Mews Channel Manager are not marked as prepaid. If your billing automations rely on the prepaid status of Booking.com reservations, review them before you move. See How to create a billing automation in Mews Operations.

What happens to your existing direct integration

You do not need to disconnect your direct integration before or during the move. The disablement happens automatically as a result of setting up Mews Channel Manager, in this sequence:

1. You set up your channel in Mews Channel Manager and switch the connectivity provider on the channel extranet from Mews to SiteMinder.

2. Mews loses access to the channel through the direct integration, because SiteMinder is now the authorised connectivity provider.

3. The next inventory update from Mews to the channel triggers an authorisation error, and Mews disables the direct integration's operations. No more inventory or reservations flow through the direct integration.

4. Mews sends an authorisation notification email to the address noted in your direct integration settings.

5. You can then delete the direct integration from your marketplace subscriptions at any point, without affecting anything.

Any bookings already in Mews are unaffected, and any reservations in flight at the moment of the switch continue to be processed normally.

How to move to Mews Channel Manager

To move from a direct Booking.com or Expedia integration to Mews Channel Manager:

1. In Mews, in the side navigation menu, click Revenue > Tools > Channels.

2. Select Set up Mews Channel Manager to enable Mews Channel Manager for your property.

3. Start the channel setup for Booking.com, Expedia, or both. See How to set up an OTA channel in Mews Channel Manager.

4. Work through the setup steps in order, and switch the connectivity provider on the channel extranet from Mews to SiteMinder when you reach Step 2. See Confirming the connectivity partner on your channel extranet in Mews Channel Manager.

5. Complete the remaining setup steps and enable the channel.

6. Once the channel is live in Mews Channel Manager, monitor its sync status on the Revenue overview and its performance in the Channel Performance dashboard.

Note: Once you switch the connectivity provider from Mews to SiteMinder, the direct integration is effectively inactive. Complete the remaining setup steps in Mews Channel Manager quickly so your rates, availability, and restrictions on the channel stay up to date.

What to do next

1. Review the trade-offs above and confirm you can handle them, in particular, invalid credit card reporting on Booking.com and the one-account-per-channel-per-property limit.

2. Read Understanding Mews Channel Manager to get an orientation to the product.

3. Read Comparing Mews Channel Manager Core and Pro to choose the right plan for your property.

4. Enable Mews Channel Manager and work through the setup for each channel.

5. If you need help at any point, contact the Mews Support Team by submitting a support ticket through the Mews Digital Assistant.

 

With Mews Channel Manager enabled and your channels connected, your distribution setup catches up with the platform your revenue tools already sit on. This means you have a shorter path from pricing decisions to the channels selling your rooms.