Change prices in the Booking.com extranet or in your PMS? One source of truth for your B&B

It almost always happens the same way. You have finally connected a channel manager, the calendars are in sync and double bookings are a thing of the past. A few weeks later, on a Saturday evening, you notice your room for the autumn holidays is priced too low. Out of habit you open the Booking.com extranet, raise the price and close your laptop. On Monday the old price is back. Or, more annoyingly: the new price is on Booking.com, but not in your own booking system or on Airbnb, and nobody knows which price is the right one anymore.

This article explains why that happens, which things you now only change in your PMS, what still belongs in the extranet, and how to track down a price mismatch quickly without retyping everything in a panic.

How a channel connection actually works

A channel manager is not a mirror that looks both ways. For prices, availability and restrictions, the traffic is in practice one-way: your PMS is the source, and the channel manager pushes that data to Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and the rest. Only bookings, modifications and cancellations travel in the other direction, from the platform to your PMS.

That has an important consequence that few owners are told when they connect: what you change directly in the extranet is not read back by your PMS. The system does not know you changed that price. At the next push, and that may be triggered by a new booking, by a change to another date or simply by a periodic full sync, the price from your PMS overwrites it again. Sometimes within the hour, sometimes only after a week. That unpredictability is exactly what makes it so confusing: it looks as if Booking.com resets prices "for no reason".

The same applies to availability. Close a room in the extranet and your PMS may reopen it at the next sync, with a double booking as a possible result. Precisely the problem you bought the channel manager to solve.

The one rule to remember

One source of truth. Everything that affects a guest in the search results and at the moment of booking, you manage in one place: your PMS. Concretely:

• Prices per night, per room type, per rate plan.
• Availability: rooms open or closed, including when you block a room for your own use or maintenance.
• Restrictions: minimum stay, no arrival on certain days, no departure on certain days.
• Surcharges attached to the room price, such as the price for an extra person.

Want to raise the price for the autumn holidays? You do it in your PMS and let the channel manager do the work towards all channels at once. That is also the only moment you can be sure your rate parity holds: the same price leaves for every platform and for your own booking module.

It is a small change of habit, but one you have to make deliberately. For us it helped to simply delete the bookmark to the extranet and keep only the PMS calendar open. Whoever does not see the extranet does not change anything in it.

What still belongs in the extranet

The extranet does not become useless. There are things no channel manager takes over for you, and which you therefore keep doing directly at Booking.com:

• Content: photos, description, facilities, house rules, the map of your area.
• Policies: your cancellation conditions, payment settings, child and pet policy.
• Promotions and programmes: Genius, mobile rates, country rates, seasonal deals. You switch those on in the extranet; the channel manager sends the base price and Booking.com deducts the discount itself.
• Reviews and the commission invoices.
• Messages to guests, unless your PMS centralises them.

The rule of thumb: if it is on your B&B's page and rarely changes, it belongs in the extranet. If it changes per date, it belongs in your PMS.

The trap of derived rate plans

One thing deserves extra attention, because it is the most common cause of "the price is wrong". Booking.com lets you derive one rate plan from another: the non-refundable rate, for instance, sits ten percent below the flexible rate. You set that up once in the extranet.

But if your PMS also has a non-refundable rate with its own discount, and you map both plans, the discount is applied twice: first in your PMS, then again at Booking.com. The result is a rate twenty percent lower than you intended, and you only notice when the payout arrives.

The solution is simple, but you have to choose it consciously when connecting: either your PMS sends every rate plan separately with its own price and you switch off the derivation in the extranet, or you send only the base price and let Booking.com derive. Not both. Check it after connecting by searching for your own B&B as a guest and placing the two rates side by side.

Airbnb too: switch off Smart Pricing

Airbnb has its own version of this problem. Smart Pricing adjusts your prices automatically based on demand, on top of what your channel manager sends. Two systems trying to set the same price, and Airbnb usually wins. If you use a PMS as your price source, switch Smart Pricing off and let Airbnb only receive. If you do want dynamic pricing, do it in your PMS, where the logic then applies to all channels and not just Airbnb.

Tracking down a price mismatch in five minutes

Despite everything, one day you will see a price that is wrong. Do not do what your instinct says (quickly correct it in the extranet), but work through the list:

1. Look in your PMS at the date and room type. Is the price right there? If not, correct it there and wait for the sync.
2. Look at the sync log of your channel manager. Any decent connection shows when the last push to Booking.com happened and whether it succeeded. A failed push, for instance because Booking.com was briefly unreachable, is a common cause.
3. Check the rate plan. Are you looking at the flexible rate or the non-refundable one on Booking.com? At the price for one person or for two? The difference is more often in the comparison than in the data.
4. Check promotions. A Genius discount or a mobile rate explains a price ten to fifteen percent below what you send.
5. Only then force a full sync from your PMS. That pushes all prices, availability and restrictions to all channels again and also cleans up whatever someone once changed in the extranet.

What you do not do: change the price in the extranet and in your PMS. Then you lose track of what comes from where, and the story starts all over again.

Switch-over day: do it in the right order

Connecting a channel manager for the first time, or switching from another system? Then the order matters. First set your prices and restrictions for the next twelve to eighteen months in your PMS, for the whole period your calendar is open. Then map room types and rate plans one to one. Run a full sync and afterwards check three random dates as a guest, on Booking.com and on your own website: a weekend in high season, a weekday night in low season and a public holiday. If those three are right, the rest usually is too.

In BedFlow PMS you manage prices, availability and restrictions in one calendar, and the built-in channel manager sends them to Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and your own booking module. Per channel you see when the last sync ran and whether it succeeded, and you can start a full resync with one click. How that works is in the documentation.

In short

• A channel connection is one-way for prices and availability: the PMS sends, the extranet receives. What you change in the extranet gets overwritten sooner or later.
• Prices, availability, restrictions and surcharges are managed exclusively in your PMS.
• Content, policies, promotions, reviews and invoices stay in the extranet.
• Watch out for derived rate plans and Airbnb Smart Pricing: one system may give a discount, not two.
• Price wrong? PMS first, then the sync log, then rate plan and promotions, and only then a full resync.

Want one calendar that feeds every channel, with a sync log showing what was sent when? Try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days, no card details required. The prices are out in the open on one page.