Room mapping is an important step for connecting your channels (OTA's) with myallocator. This guide will walk you through the details involved with room mapping and how to make sure you're practicing one-to-one mapping.
Note: This is a critical step for ensuring your property is set up correctly. Please pay special attention to this process and follow our recommendations closely.
The mapping process involves three levels:
- Your PMS (if applicable)
- Myallocator (Your Channel Manager)
- Your Distribution Channel (OTA’s like Booking.com)
To make sure that all your rates, availability, and reservations pass accurately between these different levels, it is very important to make sure the settings in each are as consistent as possible.
We highly recommended only mapping one room-type in an OTA to one matching room-type in myallocator. Any other mapping configurations done by a property can unfortunately lead to overbookings, lost reservations, and other miscommunication between the systems.
Within each system (your PMS, Myallocator and OTAS), rooms can either be setup as:
1. Individual Rooms
Or
2. Room Types (Recommended)
Examples of these two different methods are shown below:
Problems can arise if there is a mismatch between Individual Rooms and Room Types between your PMS, myallocator, and/or your distribution channel.
Since most distribution channels are separate, the way to connect them is to “map” or “link” your rooms between them.
The ideal solution is to have all rooms setup as Room Types between all systems. This is the simplest configuration, all rooms are mapped perfectly with less confusion and administration.
Here is an example of how this might look in the myallocator channel mapping page:
Keep in mind, that while the room names in this example are not exactly the same, we do recommend keeping them consistent as well.
Detailed Infographic:
This configuration is possible when only using channels that do not require Room Types, such as Hostelworld, Airbnb, or Flipkey.
Most OTA’s, such as booking.com and Expedia, require that properties use Room Types. If you are using any distribution channel that requires Room Types, you must use room types for all of your myallocator account.
Attempting to map room types to individual rooms can cause overbookings and lost reservations. We strongly recommend only using room types.
Here is an example of how this might look in the myallocator distribution screen:
Detailed Infographic
Once you are ready to connect your channels and map your rooms, read this article that will walk you through the entire process:
Step 4: Connect Your Channels and map your rooms
Hello everyone - I have updated this article to include some additional screenshots of the mapping process and what it looks like within the myallocator system. Enjoy!