Hotel-tech glossary
Booking Engine
The reservation widget on a hotel's direct website that converts visitors to bookings.
A booking engine is the software that powers reservations from a property's direct website (rather than from an OTA). It pulls live availability from the PMS, displays rate plans, processes payment, and writes the resulting booking back to the PMS. Conversion-rate differences between booking engines are material; a poor booking engine can lose 30-40% of would-be direct bookings to OTA channels.
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Related terms
OTA
Online Travel Agency. Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Hotels.com, etc.
Direct Booking
A reservation made directly with the hotel rather than through an OTA.
PMS
Property Management System. The core software that runs hotel operations and reservations.
Channel Manager
Software that syncs rates and inventory across multiple OTAs from one place.
Part of the hotel-tech glossary. Maintained by Maciej Dudziak, founder of Guestivo.