Reach more guests with channel management

Sell your tickets through the travel sites and trade partners your guests already book with, and show up when they search Google for things to do, with every booking, price and session in ROLLER. The advanced channel management add-on connects your venue to online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Viator and GetYourGuide, and gives the hotels, tour operators and travel agents you work with a reseller portal of their own to book your tickets at the rates you've agreed. Google Things to do puts your tickets on Google Search and Maps at no extra cost with ROLLER Payments.

Advanced channel management add-on

Sell through OTAs and resellers with every booking recorded in Venue Manager. Available on all plans with the advanced channel management add-on. To add it, contact your customer success manager or the support team.

Learn more

Compare your options

Use one channel or all three. They share your availability, so a session sold through one channel is no longer available through the others.

Who channel management is for

Channel management suits venues that sell to visitors as well as locals. It's worth adding if:

• Travelers and tourists are a large share of your guests.

• You want to show up when people search Google for things to do nearby.

• You already sell through hotels, tour operators, travel agents or concierges, or want to.

• Reseller bookings reach you by email or phone and you track them in a spreadsheet.

• You list on an OTA through another booking system (eg Rezdy) and want those bookings in ROLLER instead.

Once it's set up, reservations staff can book for resellers in Venue Manager when they call, and your finance team can reconcile OTA and reseller sales.

Sell your tickets on OTAs

Travelers planning a trip browse OTAs to decide what to do. An OTA connection puts your tickets there, with live availability from ROLLER, and brings every OTA booking into Venue Manager.

Use OTA connections to:

• List your experiences on the OTAs your guests use, including Tripadvisor through your Viator listing.

• Keep OTA availability in step with your sessions and capacity, so the OTA can't sell a time you no longer have.

• Set what guests pay the OTA and what the OTA pays you, variation by variation.

• Hold back part of your capacity for OTAs, with a resource that caps OTA sales while still counting toward your venue's total capacity.

• See OTA sales in the Booking Item Sales by Channel Partner and Product Sales by Channel Partner reports, and filter other reports by the OTA's company record.

How OTA connections work

1. You create a supplier account with the OTA.

2. You activate the OTA from Settings > Integrations > Channel partners in Venue Manager. Most OTAs then give you an API key.

3. You set up the products you'll sell there as session passes or standard passes, priced tax-inclusive, and turn on Sell for each variation.

4. The OTA maps your ROLLER products to its listings, using your API key.

5. You run a test booking and go live.

Availability changes can take up to an hour to show on the OTA. Guests can't book a time that's no longer available in ROLLER.

To set one up, see the guide Get started with OTA connections.

Let resellers book for their guests

Resellers can be a large part of your ticket sales, but that channel often runs outside your booking system, with emails, spreadsheets and capacity set aside by hand. The reseller portal moves it into ROLLER. Each reseller signs in to your reseller checkout, sees only the products you've given them at the rate you've agreed and books against your live availability.

Use the reseller portal when:

• A hotel concierge wants to book tickets for a guest at the front desk without calling or emailing you.

• A tour operator needs to book a group into a session and know the places are held.

• A travel agent on credit terms books through the month and you invoice them for the period.

• A reseller still prefers to call. Your team books for them in Venue Manager at their rate, and the booking sits with the rest of that reseller's bookings.

What you can set for each reseller:

• Products. Give resellers access by product tag, so a new product you tag later reaches every reseller who has that tag. Include add-ons in the tag too, since a reseller sees an add-on only when it's assigned to them.

• Rates. Put each reseller on a pricing tier in your reseller price rules.

• Payment terms. Pre-pay required or Credit account, and the payment options they can use at checkout.

• Contacts. Everyone at the reseller who books signs in with their own email address or mobile number, with a verification code and no password.

• Access. Suspend a reseller to pause new bookings, or deactivate them when the relationship ends. Their booking history stays in ROLLER.

Resellers can add their own booking reference so the booking matches their records.

How the reseller portal works

1. You set your global reseller settings: terms, contact details and payment instructions.

2. You create reseller price rules with a tier for each rate you've agreed.

3. You build your reseller products and tag them by group.

4. You create a record for each reseller, with their products, tier, payment terms and contacts.

5. You create your reseller checkout and send its address to your reseller contacts. ROLLER doesn't notify them.

To set it up, see the guide Get started with the reseller portal. To send your resellers booking instructions, see Book through a venue's reseller portal.

Show your tickets on Google

Guests searching for things to do near them often book straight from Google. Google Things to do adds your tickets to your venue's listing on Google, and guests book in your own ROLLER checkout.

Use Google Things to do to:

• Show your tickets on Google Search, Maps and Travel, with your venue name, price and an Official Site tag.

• Send guests straight to the product in your online checkout, so they book at your price with no commission to pay.

• See which bookings came from Google in the Bookings report, where the Referral Source column shows Google.

• Use your listings in Google Ads Travel campaigns.

How Google Things to do works

1. Your venue's account owner contact activates the integration from Settings > Integrations > Channel partners > Google Things to do and accepts Google's terms.

2. You enter your venue location, so your tickets link to your venue on Google Maps.

3. You turn on Google Things to do for each session pass or standard pass you want to list, and choose one Adult or general admission variation and the checkout to send guests to.

4. Google reviews your listings, which can take up to five business days.

5. Your tickets appear on Google, and guests who select them book in your checkout.

To set it up, see the guide ROLLER + Google Things to do integration.

What changes for your team

• Fewer emails and manual entries. Guests on OTAs and Google, and resellers in the portal, book for themselves, and the bookings arrive in Venue Manager.

• One set of availability. Every channel books against the same sessions and capacity, so there's no allocation to update by hand.

• Agreed terms applied at checkout. Each reseller gets their rate and payment options without anyone checking a spreadsheet.

• One place to report. OTA, reseller and Google bookings sit alongside the rest of your bookings in Venue Manager.

Choose where to start

• To show up on Google Search and Maps at no extra cost, start with Google Things to do.

• To reach travelers who haven't heard of you, start with an OTA connection.

• To move existing trade partners out of email and spreadsheets, start with the reseller portal.

You can set up the reseller portal and OTA connections in either order. Create separate products for each channel, so you can price and manage their availability separately.

FAQs