Channel manager¶
Sells your rooms on Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and other OTAs without you keeping three calendars in your head. Zitlin pushes availability and rates out to every connected channel, and pulls their bookings back in as real bookings on your front desk.
The point is that you keep working in one place. When reception takes a walk-in, the OTAs lose that room within about a minute. When Booking.com sells a room, it appears on your calendar with a folio already made.
This is a Zitlin Pro feature that we set up for you
Unlike the rest of the app, you do not connect the channel manager yourself. Zitlin provisions the connection, maps your categories and links each OTA. Open Channel Manager in the menu and use Contact Support to start.
The Channel Manager screen is not available in the iOS app. Use the web app or Android.
What syncs, and which way¶
| Direction | Carries | How fast |
|---|---|---|
| Zitlin → OTAs | Availability, nightly rates, restrictions | About a minute after the change |
| OTAs → Zitlin | Bookings, changes and cancellations | Seconds, via an instant notification |
Zitlin pushes roughly 500 days ahead, so next season is already on sale.
What does not sync: guest ID documents, folio charges you add after arrival, restaurant bills, and housekeeping. Those stay in Zitlin.
Rates on OTAs come from your Zitlin pricing
The nightly rate pushed to every channel is the same one your own booking engine quotes — category rate, then seasonal and weekday multipliers. See Pricing.
So a weekday multiplier you set for your own website also moves your Booking.com rate. If you want a different price on an OTA, that is a markup, and markups are set up by Zitlin as part of your connection — tell support what you want rather than distorting your base rates.
Before you connect¶
Zitlin does the technical work, but the answers have to come from you. Having these ready turns the setup into one conversation instead of five.
Rates and channels
- Which OTAs you want to sell on, and whether you already have listings there.
- Whether you want a markup on any channel, and how much.
- Do your OTA rates include tax? This is the one that goes wrong most often — get it wrong and your invoices will not match what the guest paid.
- Per channel: does the OTA collect payment, or does the guest pay you at the desk?
- Whether any rate includes meals, and whether any are non-refundable.
Rooms
- Which categories should sell on OTAs, and which stay direct-only.
- Base and max occupancy, and your extra-guest surcharge, per category — see Property setup.
- That your room counts are right.
Your listing content
Property description, hotel policy, cancellation policy, facilities, address, phone and email all get pushed to the channels. Fill them in properly under Settings → Admin → Property Listing first — see Property setup.
Your currency must match what the OTA pays you in
Currency comes from your property's country. If an OTA sends a booking in a different currency, Zitlin will not record the payment automatically — it writes a note on the folio instead and leaves the amount for you to enter by hand. Sort this out with support before you go live.
Choosing which categories sell online¶
Settings → Property → Categories → Advanced settings → Sync with Channel Manager
On by default. Turn it off for a category you want to keep for direct and walk-in business only.
This toggle locks once you are live
While the channel manager is active the switch is greyed out, because adding or removing a category from the channels needs Zitlin to re-map it. Set it how you want it before going live; afterwards, ask support.
Reading the status screen¶
Channel Manager in the main menu. It is read-only — a health display, not a control panel. Pull down or press Refresh to update it.
Connection¶
| Shows | Means |
|---|---|
| Connected | Live and selling. |
| Not connected | Enabled on your account but not yet provisioned. Zitlin is still working on it. |
| Disabled | Not active on your account. |
| Connection: Linked / Offline | Whether the link to the channel service is up. |
| Webhook: Registered / Missing | Whether OTAs can notify Zitlin instantly. Missing means bookings still arrive, but on a delay rather than in seconds — worth reporting. |
| Last rates & availability push | When Zitlin last sent your calendar out. |
The three counters¶
| Counter | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Rooms synced | Mapped categories out of those set to sync. Anything short of the full count needs attention. |
| Pending | Changes queued to go out. Briefly non-zero after you edit prices or take a booking. |
| Failed | Pushes that did not go through. Should be 0. |
A few pending is normal — a growing number is not
Every booking and price edit queues a push, drained about once a minute. If Pending keeps climbing over several refreshes, or Failed is above zero, your OTA calendar is drifting out of date. Contact support.
Room type mapping¶
| Label | Means |
|---|---|
| Syncing | Mapped and selling. |
| Paused | Mapped, but Sync with Channel Manager is off. Pushed to the OTAs as zero availability, so it stops selling without losing its mapping. |
| Not mapped / Not provisioned | Set to sync but the channels have never been told about it. It is not selling. |
\"Not selling on OTAs\" is the one warning to act on
A category you added after going live shows here as Not provisioned and silently earns nothing. Zitlin shows a warning banner at the top of the screen when this happens — contact support to have it mapped.
Recent pushes and Recent bookings¶
Recent pushes is the outbound log: a date range and a done or failed
status per batch. You do not need to read it day to day; it is there so support
can diagnose a problem with you.
Recent bookings is the last ten OTA reservations:
| Label | Means |
|---|---|
| In folio | Booked and on your calendar. Normal. |
| Unlinked | Received but not yet turned into a booking. |
| Error | Could not be processed — the reason is shown. Call support; the guest thinks they have a room. |
When an OTA booking arrives¶
You do not have to do anything. Zitlin creates the folio and the booking automatically, with the guest's name, dates, meal plan and guest counts, priced at the OTA's own nightly prices.
If the OTA collected the money, Zitlin records it as a third-party advance on the folio, so the balance due at check-out is right without you keying anything in.
If the guest pays you, no advance is recorded and you collect as usual.
| The guest does this | Zitlin does this |
|---|---|
| Changes their booking | Cancels the old booking and creates the new one, carrying the payment across. |
| Cancels | Cancels the booking, frees the nights back to every channel, and emails your administrators. |
Money is never deleted automatically
When a prepaid booking is cancelled, Zitlin keeps the recorded payment and adds a note to the folio asking you to verify the refund or payout. Whether the guest gets their money back is between you and the OTA, so it is deliberately left as a human decision. Check the folio note.
Check the first booking on each channel against the invoice
Generate the invoice for your first real OTA booking and compare the total with what the guest actually paid. If it is out by exactly the tax amount, the tax setting for that channel is the wrong way round — tell support and they will flip it.
Restrictions¶
Settings → Property → Restrictions
Rules about when a category can be booked, as opposed to what it costs. Use them to protect a peak weekend, stop arrivals on a day you have no staff, or close a category on the channels without deleting it.
Each rule covers a date range and either one category or the whole property.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Applies to | One category, or All room types (whole property). |
| From / To | The dates covered. Both inclusive. |
| Min stay on arrival | Fewest nights bookable when arriving on a covered date. 0 = no rule. |
| Min stay through | Fewest nights when merely staying through a covered date. Sent to OTAs only. |
| Max stay | Most nights bookable. 0 = no limit. |
| Closed to arrival (CTA) | Guests cannot check in on a covered date. |
| Closed to departure (CTD) | Guests cannot check out on a covered date. |
| Stop sell | Stops the category selling on the OTAs only. |
Restrictions do not apply to your own front desk
They are enforced on your direct booking engine and pushed to the OTAs. Staff bookings ignore them entirely and always have — reception can take a one-night stay inside a two-night minimum without an override.
That is deliberate: a rule meant to stop a bad online booking should never stop you saying yes to a guest on the phone.
Where each rule actually bites
| Rule | Your booking engine | OTAs |
|---|---|---|
| Min stay on arrival | Enforced | Sent |
| Max stay | Enforced | Sent |
| Closed to arrival / departure | Enforced | Sent |
| Min stay through | — | Sent |
| Stop sell | — | Sent |
Stop sell is the useful one to remember: it closes the OTAs while leaving your own website free to sell. It is how you keep the last few rooms for direct business.
Overlapping rules¶
Where two rules cover the same night, the strictest combination applies — they are not merged politely and the newer one does not win:
- Minimum stays: the longest applies.
- Maximum stays: the shortest applies.
- CTA, CTD and stop sell: on if any covering rule has it on.
So a whole-property rule and a category rule on the same dates both bite. To relax a date you have to edit or delete the rule that restricts it, not add a looser one on top.
Deleting a rule releases the dates
Removing a restriction pushes the freed dates back out to the channels on the next sync. You do not need to create a replacement rule with everything set to zero.
Calendar sync — the lighter alternative¶
Separately from the full channel manager, Zitlin can read an OTA's calendar feed and block those dates on your front desk. It is one-way and dates-only.
| Channel manager | Calendar sync | |
|---|---|---|
| Availability out to OTAs | Yes | No |
| Rates out to OTAs | Yes | No |
| Restrictions out to OTAs | Yes | No |
| Bookings in | Full booking, guest and payment | Blocked dates only |
| Speed | Near-instant | Whenever the OTA publishes |
Blocked dates appear on the front-desk calendar as OTA Bookings. Tap one for the channel, unit and dates, then Convert to Booking to turn it into a real Zitlin booking with a guest and a folio.
Support sets these feeds up for you as well. A property runs one mechanism or the other, not both.
Calendar sync will not prevent every double booking
The OTA decides how often it publishes its calendar, and it is usually tens of minutes. Two guests can book the same room inside that window. If you sell the same rooms on several channels at once, you want the full channel manager.
Common questions¶
I changed a price in Zitlin. When will the OTAs show it?
Within about a minute. A price change re-sends the whole 500-day window, so Pending may sit above zero briefly. If it has not cleared after a few refreshes, contact support.
A category is not selling on Booking.com
Check the Room type mapping section. Paused means its Sync with Channel Manager switch is off. Not provisioned means it was never mapped — support has to do that. Also check you have no stop sell restriction covering those dates.
The OTA total does not match my invoice
Almost always the tax setting for that channel. If the difference is exactly the tax, tell support and they will correct it. Compare against a single booking rather than a day's takings — it is much easier to see.
Can I close out a date on OTAs but keep selling it myself?
Yes — that is exactly what stop sell does. Add a restriction for those dates with stop sell on, and your own booking engine and front desk carry on selling.
A guest cancelled on the OTA but the money is still on the folio
That is intended. Zitlin never deletes a payment record on its own. Read the note it added to the folio, settle the refund or payout with the OTA, and then adjust the folio yourself.
Do I still log into the OTA extranets?
For content, photos, promotions and disputes, yes. For availability, rates and restrictions, no — change them in Zitlin, or the next sync will overwrite what you typed in the extranet.