Before starting make sure to review the following steps
List your property on the distribution channels that you want to work with
Before you can connect your myfrontdesk account to distribution channels (OTAs), your property must be active and already listed on the channel.
In other words, if you want to sell on Booking.com, Expedia, Hostelworld, etc, your property must be bookable on their site.
Signing up with an OTA normally involves signing a negotiated contract. Because of this, myfrontdesk cannot create a new OTA account for you. You must first setup your property at each channel before it can be connected.
To learn more, take a look at our article: Recommended OTAs and Distribution Channels
Rates & Availability
You should have your complete rates and availability stored centrally in either myallocator (if you already have one with us) or a document stored online (Ex: Evernote, Google docs, Office365, etc).
Because myfrontdesk is a PMS (Property Management System), it does not upload or import rates and availability from other systems, so having this information now will be helpful when it's time to input your rates and availability in a little while.
If you're changing PMS providers
- Keep in mind that any direct reservations made in your previous PMS provider's system (booking engine, walk-ins, email) will need to be transferred over manually or using our bulk import feature
- Begin preparing to disconnect your previous PMS system. You will not need to fully do this until you reach Step 3: Distribution, but you should let your previous PMS provider know immediately in case there's a required wait period on your contract with them.
If you currently have a myallocator account
- Make sure that the number of accommodations in your myallocator account is the same as the number you signed up for with myfrontdesk. If it's not, please inform your onboarding coach
- Check that your rooms are currently set up as room-types and that you're practicing one-to-one mapping. If you're not sure what this, please take a look at our distribution mapping guidelines
- To have future credit card payment details for your reservations forwarded from Booking.com and Expedia, make sure you have a credit credit password set.
Any bookings previously received by myallocator can be automatically imported into myfrontdesk by our Reservation Import team once the mandatory information has been completed in the setup process.
- If you choose to import from myallocator, make sure you have not already manually added these bookings to myfrontdesk. Doing this will create duplicate copies of the reservation that will cause your availability to believe it has overbookings.
- Your myallocator credit card password needs to be up to date to before requesting for reservations to be imported. If the password is not the current one, credit card payment details will not be transferred in compliance with financial security standards.
