We were looking for one product with which to manage our inventory for several different OTAs. This is what SiteMinder does beautifully. We are also able to offer unique specials on our own site by using Channel Manager as our booking engine.

The only criticism is minor. When using the calendar feature in the RESERVATIONS menu to jump to a specific date, after entering the start date, you must also go back to the last calender and page forward to the required finish date. For example, if it is Feb and you want to look at arrivals in August, after selecting the "From Date" of 08/01, the "To Date" does not automatically change to August, but remains in Feb until manually moved to August.

There are some incompatibilities to the Brazilian market, which limited our possibilities to the Siteminder partners, but it is a selfserviced channel manager with a good structure and amazing support.

The easy way of different types of settings for pricing, variations and additional rates.

The limited options of restrictions and the need of creating the properties anywhere and then connect, it is not so practical at all.

We have been using Little Hotelier with Siteminder (same company) for almost a year. For a company of it's size, the lack of support is astounding. I am constantly chasing them up for answers for the most simple issues. Even after going to the head of the department, issues are still just left or put in the too hard basket. Aside from the lack of support, the biggest frustration has been how amateurish the system is. A simple thing like putting your own image as an invoice header has been ignored by them. To me, this is simple programming that could be done in a day at the most. Also, there is no guest profile or blacklist facility. To find previous guests you have to look at reservations, each reservation listed separately, not collating information. They brought in a function to add multiple guest names on a booking, not important. They really need to focus on what customers want, not what they want to do. The latest issue for us is the lack of reports. They provide a few but none of them match each other. Some include payments when others don't, some include extra items when others don't, none include credit card fees. Their response to this was trying to get us to sign up to their payment system. If you can't get the basic system right, why would we do that? We are looking at other systems to replace this one as even though we are only a small hotel, we expect much more than this basic system for the money we pay each month. Do your research before signing up to this software. The basic bones are there but the support is terrible and the functionality is very basic.

It puts bookings into the system via channel manager as it should, well most of the information but not all.

The lack of support and it not being able to do basic things like reports.

Many. 1. The channel manager is very stable!! We have less than 1% of issues and even then there emails or the Siteminder extranet that we can easily double check. 2. Prophet is easy to use and pretty accurate. The weekly summary could have some improvements, like a percentage of rate increase or decrease of each of our designated competitors. 3. Booking button - That it is tied into the Channel Manager and Canvas makes it so easy. It is specific for hotels so it has all of the data needed. Super easy to build out a promotion or edit content. One suggestion, the ability to note a price drop, right on the rate. 4. Canvas - Again very easy to use!! Because it is designed specifically for hotels it has all of the necessary pages and some. 5. Siteminder has also recently partnered with TripTease-a website chat, pop-up promotion and rate comparison tool that you paste a script that Triptease provides onto your Canvas webpages. It's another added bonus. I have definitely seen an increase in reservations since we implemented it.

Having the entire SiteMinder suite of products has reduced our time spent managing reservations and has provided a brand presence that truly reflects our vision of a boutique hotel. Canvas has also improved the quality of guest interaction with our website, they are spending more time in areas like rooms, gallery and attractions. The pages are right there on the homepage easy for them to find and the layout is cleaner and more inviting to browse.

Overall I like SiteMinder's channel manager and always recommend it to my clients (large 4 & 5 star hotels).

In my capacity as a revenue management consultant, I have used many different channel managers. Siteminder definitely is my favourite channel manager as it's easy to use, integrates with all the major OTAs and has very good customer service.

It can be a bit overwhelming when just starting out, but once you've got the hang of it you'll be fine.