Extranet routine: what to check on booking sites every morning

A hotel extranet is the private web area where each booking site lets a hotel manage its listing: rooms, rates, availability, policies, messages and invoices. The morning routine is a fifteen-minute pass over five things: new and changed bookings, rates and availability on sample dates, promotions the site applied, guest messages and reviews, and payment notices.

The channel manager says the rate was sent and the room is open. The guest searching the site sees a different price, a closed date, or a booking the hotel never received. The extranet is where that gap becomes visible, and it only becomes visible if someone looks every morning. This article gives you that look as a routine: five daily checks, one weekly deeper pass, each with an owner and a time.

What is a hotel extranet, and why does it need a person when a channel manager runs?#

An extranet is the booking site's own private control panel for your property, reached through a login the site issues. A channel manager pushes rates and availability into it, but it cannot read back everything the site does with them.

One login per property per booking site, separate from the public listing a guest sees and separate from the hotel's own system. The channel manager sends room types, rate plans, availability and restrictions to each connected site from one place, so nobody retypes them, and it delivers the reservations the site creates into the hotel system. It does not show the site's own promotions, messages, policy wording or payment notices.

The extranet holds what the channel manager never carries: the site's own promotions and discount programs, the exact wording of cancellation and child policies, guest messages, the full reservation list including bookings that failed to reach the hotel, and invoices and payment notices. The site also adds its own layer on top of the hotel's numbers, and that layer is only visible here.

Four failures are common: a rate sent correctly but a site promotion applied on top, a booking created on the site but never delivered, a room type closed on the site only, and a policy edited months ago and forgotten. The working rule is simple. The hotel system is the record of the stay, the extranet is the record of the sale, and the morning routine is the join between them.

The routine is the same on any booking site, whichever one you log into first.

Which bookings should you check first every morning?#

Start with the reservations the site created since your last check, then the ones it changed or cancelled, and compare each one against the hotel system before you do anything else.

Sort the site's reservation list by creation date, not arrival date. Yesterday's arrivals are already in house, but yesterday's new bookings are the ones nobody has verified. Compare four fields per booking: guest name, dates, room and rate plan, and total amount. A total that differs usually means a promotion, a currency conversion or a tax display difference.

Treat a modification as a cancel plus a new booking. Check that the old dates were released and the new ones are blocked, otherwise the same room is held twice. Check cancellations both ways: the room must return to inventory in the hotel system, and it must also be open on the site again. A room blocked in one place and open in the other is exactly how double bookings across channels start.

The booking that never arrived is still a sale. If the site has it and the hotel system does not, create it by hand from the site's record first, because the guest already holds a confirmation, then log the cause. The reverse case, a booking in the hotel system with no site record, is usually a manual entry or a duplicate: reconcile it rather than deleting it. Name the owner and the time: reservations, five minutes, before the morning meeting.

How do you check rates and availability the way a guest sees them?#

Search your own property on the site in a private browser window, for the same four fixed dates every day, in the currency and language a real guest would use, and compare what you see with what you set.

Fix the sample dates so comparisons mean something: one date this week, one about a month out, one known high-demand date, and one date you have deliberately closed. Use a private window with no login and no loyalty account, and set the search location to a real source market, because both can change the price and the room types shown.

Compare four things, not one: the displayed price, what it includes (breakfast, taxes, fees payable at the property), the cancellation policy wording, and the room name. Test availability in both directions: a closed date must show no rooms, and an open date must show at least one bookable room type. A date that shows nothing when it should be open is lost revenue you will never see in a report.

Watch the currency. The site may display in the guest's currency, so the number you set is not the number they see. Know the conversion and who carries it. Fix in the right place: rates and availability in the channel manager, policies and content in the extranet, then repeat the same search to confirm the fix. Keep the parity question separate: matching your own website against the site is a weekly routine, not a morning one, covered in our rate parity check routine.

Which promotions and programs did the site apply, and did the hotel agree?#

Booking sites run their own discounts, campaigns and loyalty programs on top of your rates. The morning check is whether each one is still something the hotel agreed to, at the price the hotel agreed.

Separate three things that look alike: promotions you created yourself in the extranet, programs you opted into once and that keep running, and site campaigns the hotel is invited to join. Find the effective price by comparing the sample-date search with the price you set. The difference is the site's layer, and it matters most when the discount comes out of the hotel's own net rather than the site's.

Check the end date on every promotion. A campaign that renews by default is one way a hotel discovers in July that it has been discounting since spring. Check the policy attached to each promotional rate: a non-refundable rate that displays a flexible cancellation policy is a dispute waiting for its first guest. Check the content the promotion points at too: photos, description, facilities, child and extra-bed policy, check-in times. A wrong facility claim becomes a complaint the hotel pays for.

Do not chase ranking. Nobody outside the site knows how its ordering works, and the levers a hotel actually controls are content accuracy, price and availability. Set the cadence: price and promotion checks daily, content and policy review weekly, with e-commerce as the owner.

What do guest messages, special requests and reviews need each morning?#

Answer guest messages within the same working day, move every special request into the hotel system, and reply to new reviews while the stay is still recent enough for the reply to be useful.

Route messages to one inbox with one owner. Messages split across several staff logins are messages that get answered twice or not at all. Sort by what the guest needs: pre-arrival questions (transfer, late check-in, crib, parking), in-stay problems, and post-stay requests such as invoices or lost property.

Copy every special request into the reservation in the hotel system, in plain words. A request that lives only in the extranet is a request housekeeping and the front desk never see. Treat response time as part of the listing, because guests can see it on some sites, and a slow reply is read as a preview of the stay.

Answer reviews on substance, not score: the reply is written for the next guest deciding whether to book, not for the last one. Match the reply to the complaint type rather than sending the same paragraph to everyone; our guide on replying to hotel reviews gives example replies by complaint type. Keep money out of public threads: refunds, chargebacks and compensation belong in the private message channel. Report suspected fake or extortionate messages through the site's own reporting route and do not negotiate with them.

What do payments, virtual cards and invoices need each morning?#

Check that every new reservation has a valid payment method attached, that the amount matches what the hotel expects to receive, and that any invoice the site asks for carries the reference it asks for.

Know which payment model each booking uses: the hotel collects at the property, the site collects and pays out later, or the site issues a virtual card the hotel charges on a set date. For virtual cards, check four things: activation date, amount, currency and expiry. A card charged after it expires, or charged for the wrong amount, is a booking the hotel may not be paid for.

Expect an amount gap and understand it. The card or payout may be net of the site's commission or of a promotion the hotel funded, so the reservation total and the money received are not meant to be equal. Check the invoice requirements: the site may need the invoice issued to a specific entity with a specific reservation reference, and a missing reference delays payment for weeks. Reconcile weekly rather than monthly, matching the site's reservation list against the hotel's guest bills while the stays are still easy to remember.

What belongs in the weekly deeper check and the log?#

Once a week, go past the daily pass: test the whole path from search to confirmation, review what was fixed and why, and check who still has access to the account.

Make one real test booking on a far date, follow it into the hotel system, then cancel it and confirm the room returns to inventory on both sides. Review the room type and rate plan mapping between the channel manager and the site, because a mapping that drifted produces bookings on the wrong rate; our guide to channel manager mapping explains how to test it.

Read the log for the week: what was wrong, where it was fixed, who fixed it, and when it was re-checked. A repeated line is a process problem, not a person problem. Review access: list everyone with an extranet login, remove leavers in the same week, and turn on two-step sign-in wherever the site offers it. Look ahead to the next high-demand period and re-check minimum stays, closed-to-arrival settings and policies before the demand arrives, not during it.

What to do next#

Write the five daily items and the seven weekly items on one page, put a name and a time next to each line, and run it for two weeks before changing anything. The extranet is the booking site's record of the sale and the hotel system is your record of the stay; this routine is the join between them, and its value comes from being repeated on the same dates, by the same people, with the fixes written down.