Welcome to another installment of Brance's expert blog series, in which we meticulously evaluate leading channel managers in hospitality. 

In this edition, we're zooming in on Profitroom, a channel manager making waves among hoteliers. In short, the tool does what it says on the tin: price, ease of use, and operation management are where it shines apart from all the other tools: it gets a whopping 84%, 93%, and 83% for all of them, respectively.      

For a complete take, jump into the full review below. Among other things, we look at how Profitroom stacks up against the essential parameters that impact your hotel's success.

Our Channel Manager Reviews You Can Trust

As part of our review policy, we’d like to state that our reviews were created with the help of AI analysis. Then, we parsed the whole review for any inaccuracies before editing it for clarity and crispness.

Moreover, we’ve picked specific parameters, like ‘Integration,’ for example, that we believe best demonstrate the performance of a channel manager. We then judged based on the channel manager's performance against these parameters.

Here are all the parameters we have picked:

‍Parameter | Positive | Negative | Ok

--- | --- | --- | ---

Ease of Use | 93% | 4% | 3%

Technical Reliability | 46% | 28% | 26%

Customer Support | 79% | 14% | 7%

Price | 84% | 16% | 0%

Operations Management | 83% | 13% | 5%

Integration | 87% | 9% | 4%

Revenue Management | 86% | 11% | 3%

Marketing Visibility | 85% | 15% | 0%

Reporting Analytics | 61% | 29% | 10%

So with the parameters cleared up, let’s jump into the complete review below.

1. Ease of Use

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 93%  | 4%       | 3%  | 

Positives: 

When it comes to ease of use, Profitroom beats almost every channel manager out there. It gets a staggering 93% positive score, and users rave about its intuitive and user-friendly interface. 

Moreover, it also significantly simplifies training for new employees and streamlines daily operations. 

The centralized management of various aspects like the website, booking engine, and OTA sales enhances efficiency, reducing the risk of overbookings and simplifying price and availability management. At the same time the platform also facilitates quick and easy management of pricing, special offers, and reservation conditions; in short, automating correspondence with guests and offers massive upselling opportunities. 

Its comprehensive suite of revenue management tools, including ongoing price monitoring, supports direct reservation entry into the PMS, streamlining the booking process.‍

Negatives: 

Despite its high ease of use score, Profitroom faces some challenges. The admin environment changes frequently, complicating the structure over time. Website management lacks intuitiveness, making content editing and offer creation difficult. 

Content translation is cumbersome, requiring navigation between different sections, and the photo cropping tool is imprecise, often necessitating multiple attempts. Text changes demand manual translation updates, reducing efficiency. 

The website creation process is lengthy and complex, and the planner tab is not intuitive, posing challenges for inexperienced users. 

2. Technical Reliability

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 46%  | 28%      | 26% |

Positives:

Profitroom's technical reliability does pretty well in technical reliability. It scores a moderate 46% of positive reviews for this, suggesting that while the tool does well enough, there’s enough room for improvement. 

One of its positive points, for example, is that it reduces overbookings to almost zero and offers real-time synchronization of room availability and rates across various platforms. The seamless integration with the new PMS and efficient one-page check-out, along with a reliable two-way connection between RMS and PMS, CRS, CRM, and booking engine, are notable strengths. 

Similarly, the channel manager has not experienced any failures over an extended period, indicating system reliability and stability.‍

Negatives: ‍

With 28% for negative reviews and 26% for its satisfactory performance, it's obvious that Profitroom's technical reliability is not without its flaws. 

To give you just one example, the system frequently encounters errors when sending offers and changing prices. Similarly, the overall system operation and update speed need significant improvement.

So, as a whole, the technical support is inadequate and needs enhancement.

3. Customer Support

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 79%  | 14%      | 7%  | 

Positives: ‍

Profitroom's customer support is highly regarded, as is evident from its 79% positive score. 

In specifics, the responsive and professional support team provides prompt issue resolution, and customer success managers are proactive, offering valuable advice. The support department offers quick and transparent responses, including video calls, and is committed to continuous system improvements and readiness to assist in any situation. 

Moreover, the help desk's resolution of technical problems and personalized approach from onboarding to ongoing support is very efficient and, for this reason, highly appreciated. ‍

Negatives: ‍

The negative and satisfactory reviews, which total 14% and 7%, respectively, show room for improvement.

A host of things need to be refined here. For example. long response times to support inquiries and problem resolution, lack of direct telephone support for urgent issues, and inadequate communication about live updates necessitating prior notice are significant concerns that jump vividly at your face.

Similarly, the technical support staff can sometimes lack sufficient knowledge, and high staff turnover and lack of accountability in the support team are additional issues. 

4. Price

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 84%  | 16%      | 0%  |‍

Positives: ‍

Profitroom's pricing model receives an 84% positive score, highlighting its value. 

The ability to change prices according to occupancy enhances revenue management, and transparent pricing with a clear list available on the website is appreciated. The platform saves OTA commission, reduces operational costs, and offers competitive pricing for website design services—all on its own.

The commission-based billing aligns interests with the hotel's success, encouraging direct bookings and helping to save money.

Negatives: 

There are straightforward points of dissatisfaction with the pricing, though, as depicted by the dip in positive reviews. 

Concerns include charging for reconfiguring the channel manager and the investment in WHIP not yielding a satisfactory return on investment. A suggestion to offer lower prices for regular customers also indicates room for improvement in pricing strategies to enhance customer loyalty.

5. Operations Management

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 83%  | 13%      | 5%  |

Positives: 

Profitroom scores highly in operations management, with an 83% positive score. 

As the collective reviews online put it, it eliminates overbooking and allows viewing all reservations in one place, automates sales channels, and manages pricing strategy effectively. 

Apart from this, the platform saves time in daily hotel operations and fosters growth by centralizing data and operations and enabling collective updates of prices and availability. 

It facilitates direct online reservations on the hotel's website, offers comprehensive sales and inventory management systems, and provides a self-service area for customers to manage their bookings. ‍

Negatives: ‍

The outdated panel for handling prices for extra beds, the online check-in process requiring improvements, and accounting features needing enhancement are notable issues in Profitroom’s channel manager.

As the collective online reviews put it, discounts incorrectly applied to extra beds, the inability to limit room quantity automatically for high occupancy dates, and minimum price display issues with added extras are additional concerns. 

Similarly, challenges in changing the order of photos in the gallery and inefficiency in confirming multiple rooms simultaneously highlight the need for further enhancements in operations management.

6. Integration

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 87%  | 9%       | 4%  |

Positives: 

Integration is another avenue where the Profitroom knocks it out of the park; it clocks a collective 87% positive score here, with more room for improvement being obvious.  

Moreover, the tool is an all-in-one provider for websites, booking engines, and channel managers. 

It offers direct reservation entry into the PMS system, eliminating overbooking and efficiently distributing rooms and prices. The comprehensive integration with various systems, including PMS, CRS, CRM, and the booking engine, increases conversions and direct bookings. 

The channel manager supports a wide range of OTA channels, and continuous development of Profitroom tools with innovative solutions for online sales is highly valued.

Negatives:‍

However, there are integration challenges. Package offers cannot be combined, limiting promotional flexibility, and the lack of integration with Despegar and Hopper limits market reach in certain regions. The absence of a multi-property booking engine hinders hotel chain operations, and professionalism and responsibility delineation issues affect service quality. Inadequate clarity in additional services presentation can confuse customers, and client database management and automated messaging functionalities are insufficient. 

Limited connections with channel managers and online distribution agencies restrict sales channels, indicating areas for improvement in integration capabilities.

7. Revenue Management

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 86%  | 11%      | 3%  |

Positives: 

Profitroom's revenue management is highly effective, with an 86% positive score. 

It facilitates efficient price management across OTA channels, simplifies regulation of prices and availability, and provides helpful sales statistics for better pricing strategies. The platform centralizes management for ongoing price monitoring and enables dynamic pricing based on occupancy and special offers; all of this collectively increases direct bookings through the Profitroom booking engine. 

It offers comprehensive sales management and advanced booking metrics, supports the creation of compelling package offers and room upgrades, includes marketing tools that adapt to property needs and improve reach, and features a reporting system that aids revenue management.

Negatives:‍

Despite its strengths, there are areas for improvement in revenue management. A small price window complicates price management, and the lack of simultaneous visibility of price levels and restrictions are concerns. 

The booking engine is better suited for holiday hotels, not city/business hotels, and the rate shopper feature is too essential. 

There is a need for a more sophisticated pricing tool, and the offer creator requires improvements. Similarly, the absence of automatic revenue management features, CRM tools for upselling and personalization, and a loyalty program lacking clear, transparent profit display are additional issues. 

The promotion tab needs enhancements for managing rate plans and cancellation policies, and the system should allow guests to extend stays without calling, indicating areas for enhancement in revenue management capabilities. 

8. Marketing Visibility

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 85%  | 15%      | 0%  |

Positives:‍

Profitroom significantly increases direct bookings through its booking engine, with an 85% positive score in marketing visibility. 

The CRM system allows quick sending of professional offers to guests, and marketing and after-sales services enhance marketing visibility. Email marketing is facilitated by AI with clear campaign reporting, and website design and CRO improve booking conversion rates. 

Tools for creating newsletters and stay packages are highly valued, along with recommendations for website optimization and customer engagement improvements. 

Negatives: ‍

However, as is always the case, there are challenges in marketing visibility. 

The website service is unintuitive for adding and modifying content, and there are limited design options for mailing and newsletters. No email marketing tools are provided, and the lack of WhatsApp integration in Mexico is a drawback, as our collected reviews show.

Insufficient attention to small properties in promotional materials, a limited range of available hotels or locations, and CRM translation for marketing newsletters needing improvement are additional concerns, indicating areas for improvement in marketing visibility.

9. Reporting Analytics

| Positive | Negative | Ok  |

|----------|----------|-----|

| 61%  | 29%      | 10%  |

Positives: 

Profitroom's reporting analytics are highly valued, with a 61% positive score. Sales statistics and reporting capabilities have seen significant improvements, for example. 

The reports are clear and legible and offer a high level of transparency and quality. Similarly, the reporting panel allows for effective performance tracking and aids in conversion analysis, and extensive reporting options enable the export and sharing of critical reports. 

The channel manager provides exciting and varied reports, and continuous enhancements to the reports section focus on completeness and usefulness. 

Negatives:‍

There are clear areas for improvement in reporting analytics. 

For one, booking summaries on commission invoices need better grouping and should include decoded guest names. The platform lacks analytical reports and the ability to filter offers by type/name. 

Similarly, the Profitroom channel manager requires automatic translations for messages and ready-made layouts for automated messages. The CRM functionality is also limited, as it is unable to compare periods of stay and send offers when rooms are unavailable. The channel manager's price corrections are not immediately visible, and it lacks global surcharge modification capability. 

CRM and email database management require improvements for better personalization and removal of duplicated contacts. 

Similarly, system emails lack full guest names, necessitating additional login for verification, indicating areas for enhancement in reporting analytics.

Should You Be Using Profitroom Channel Manager?

So that’s all about the Profitroom channel manager. In a nutshell, the tool is known for its ease of use, revenue management, and marketing visibility. It stands explicitly out for additional services like web design, one-click PMS integration, and quick customer service resolutions. 

We recommend you try the tool first, through its free demo, and then make your purchase decision. 

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