I bet you already read a lot about channels managers for the hotels. The impact of the channel managers is hard to overestimate, it’s definitely worth a try one of them. I’m sure that within few months you will realise that your sales are boosted and you have much more time to focus on your business instead of opening and closing rooms in various ОТА and calculating discounts and updating the rates. Every time, when you run into something new you have doubts. Without any personal experience, it’s hard to predict which features suits your needs and which is not. Since the first steps you will be attacked with massive ads campaigns from hundreds of vendors. Tons of supported channels, huge variety of features, different pricing models, special offers and discounts. It’s all fine, if you have a strong and clear understanding of your needs, otherwise, it’s like wandering in the dark. So what you really have to do, is to start using the basic functionality of channel manager and get your own feelings about it. Preferably without breaking your budget. That’s it! Since you realized this fact it will be much easier for you to make the right choice for your first steps in hotel automation. Let me be more specific and give you an idea how you can choose you first channel manager. Mostly all of the channel managers has the same basic functionality – update the booking channels and synchronize them between each other as well as update the rates. So, I went through the web sites of the most popular channel managers around, and write down their offers to the table below. As you can see, in most cases the Trial period is just 2 weeks, which is actually not enough, to understand how the channel manager is working. Cloud Beds and Little Hotelier offers 1 month, which is for sure much better than 2 weeks. And the absolute winner is Effective Tours channel manager for the hotels with . In many regions hotel business depends from the season, half year high, half year low. So 6 month is very fair offer to get a real experience about the product. Pricing is a very complicated area, that’s why I took a quotation for 10 rooms guest house. Subscription fees striking in its diversity and there is an explanation for that. As I mentioned in the beginning, there may be many unique features that are worth the price if you really need them. But in the event that you take the first steps, it’s just money to the wind. And the final winner is no doubt – Effective Tours with the 10$ monthly fee and free trial for 6 month. Trust the facts not the ads. In case if you already using a channel; manager, I advise you to take a look at your annual expenses for it. Is it really worth it ? Are you sure you are using all of the features of your existing provider ? This is a very good question, since overpaying a $1000 per year should have a serious reason, especially for a hotel of 10 rooms