How to manage rates and availability across channels

The channel manager is the plumbing — once connected, the day-to-day question is operations: keep prices right, keep availability honest, push out the right restrictions, and don't accidentally undercut yourself or oversell. This guide is the playbook.

The single-source-of-truth rule

Every rate, restriction, and availability change happens in HotelBee. The channel manager pushes them outward to every connected OTA. If you edit Booking.com's extranet directly, your change disappears the next time HotelBee pushes — usually within minutes. Train your team: "if it isn't in HotelBee, it doesn't exist." The exception is OTA-internal promotions (Booking.com Genius, Expedia Member rates) which live inside the OTA program and are applied on top of your sent rate.

The daily routine

1. Open Channel Manager → Rate Calendar. The grid shows date columns × room/rate rows, each cell with rate, availability, and restrictions.
2. Scan today + the next 14 days. Look for: (a) sold-out days you forgot to close, (b) low-occupancy days where you'd lower the rate, (c) high-demand days where the rate is still at base.
3. For one-off edits, click the cell and change rate/availability inline.
4. For range edits (a 3-week shoulder season, a holiday block), use bulk edit. See the bulk edit section below.
5. Save. The change is queued to the channel manager and pushed to every OTA in seconds.

Rate calendar shortcodes

The cells in the rate calendar use compact codes — knowing them speeds up scanning:

• RATE — the nightly rate the OTA sees.
• AVL — availability (rooms left to sell on this date).
• MSA — minimum stay on arrival (guest arriving on this date must stay ≥ N nights).
• MAL — minimum length of stay across the booking, regardless of arrival night.
• MXS — maximum stay.
• SS — stop-sell. Closes the room to bookings without zeroing availability.
• CTA — closed to arrival. Guest cannot start a stay on this date but can be mid-stay.
• CTD — closed to departure. Guest cannot check out on this date.
• AVO — advance offset (book at least N days before arrival).

Bulk edit (the time saver)

Bulk edit is what makes seasonal pricing tractable. Open it from the rate calendar toolbar, then:

1. Pick a date range (e.g. Jul 1 — Aug 31).
2. Pick weekdays inside the range (Mon-Sun checkboxes). Apply only to Fri+Sat for weekend pricing.
3. Pick which room types and rate plans this affects.
4. Toggle which fields to update (rate, availability, MSA, etc.) and enter values. Untoggled fields stay as they are.
5. Apply. Review the diff, save, and the changes push to every connected channel.

Stop-sell vs close-out vs zero availability

Three ways to keep a room from being booked, used in different situations:

• Stop-sell (SS): you've decided not to sell that night across all channels (renovation, owner block, no staff). Reversible — flip SS off and inventory comes back.
• Zero availability (AVL=0): all rooms are sold (or you're saying so). The OTA shows the date as fully booked.
• CTA / CTD: tactical — close arrivals/departures on a specific day to shape your length-of-stay mix without losing the date entirely (e.g. close Sat departures to push 2-night weekenders).

Per-channel overrides (use sparingly)

If your contract allows it, you can push a different rate to one channel. The mechanism: create a separate rate plan in HotelBee, map it to that channel only, set its derived rate (e.g. base − 8%). Useful for Booking.com mobile-only or Expedia Member rates. Don't override on the main public rate plan — that breaks parity and can get you delisted.

Verifying a push went through

1. Make the change in HotelBee, save.
2. Wait 1–3 minutes.
3. Open the embedded Channex Inventory page (Channel Manager → Channex tab) and confirm the same value appears.
4. For Booking.com specifically, the OTA cache can lag another 2–10 minutes — check the public listing as final confirmation.
5. If the push didn't go through, run Channex → Send Inventory manually. See the Channex daily operations article.