Overview: What is a Channel Manager?
This integration with ExperienceBank, a leading Channel Manager, simplifies the distribution of your tickets to global and regional booking platforms (OTAs – Online Travel Agencies). It creates a seamless connection, allowing you to manage your product inventory, availability, and bookings from the Convious platform.
This means you can control tickets and capacity from your Control Panel, eliminating fragmentation and centralizing all your sales data in one place.
Supported OTAs
ExperienceBank connects you to a wide range of platforms, including but not limited to:
BLS Schifffahrt
Cariboo Demo
Civitatis
Davos Ferienshop
Day Out With The Kids
Engadin Tourismus AG
Expedia
Fjord Tours
Get Local
GetYourGuide
Gloogs
Golden Tours
GoTo HUB
Graubünden360
Grayline
Gurtenbahn
Headout
Holibob
Klook
Love to Visit
Manawa (by Adrenaline Hunter)
Musement
Picniq
Project Expedition
Swiss Activities
SWISStours
Tiqets
TOMAS
TourDesk
TXGB
VELTRA
Viator
How to Activate a Channel
Setting up an OTA channel requires coordination between your team and Convious Support to ensure correct mapping and capacity syncing.
Prerequisites (Partner's Responsibility):
Contract: You must have an active contract signed with the respective OTA you want to connect to. Additionally, you need an active contract with Convious for OTA sales.
Product Category: Create a separate product category within your Control Panel for OTA products. This category should be set up so it is not visible in your public online checkout. Add the specific products you intend to sell on the OTA to this category.
Activation Steps (Requires Convious Support):
Step | Owner | Description | Estimated Timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|
1. Enable Integration | Convious Support | Contact our Support team to request the ExperienceBank integration be enabled for your venue. | 1 day |
2. Share Product IDs | Partner | Once the integration is enabled, Support will ask you to share the specific OTA Product ID list (the location of this list is specific to each OTA). | Variable |
3. Mapping & Settings | Convious Support | Using the Product IDs, our team maps your Convious products to the OTA products and enables critical synchronization settings. | 1 day |
4. OTA Configuration | Partner / Support | Settings need to be finalized in the OTA’s environment/platform (these vary per OTA). You can either: | Variable |
A) Add a user for our Support team to access and configure your OTA environment. | |||
B) Be guided by our Support team through the necessary configuration changes. | |||
5. Go Live | Convious Support | Once all settings are correct, the products are live, and bookings can flow through the OTA. | Live |
⚠️ Important Operational Notes
Topic | Operational Requirement |
|---|---|
Partner Contracts | Each Partner must have an active contract with the OTAs they wish to connect to. |
Payments | All payments are handled by the OTA. Convious and ExperienceBank act only as booking intermediaries. |
Dynamic Pricing | Dynamic pricing is currently not supported. Prices must be set and managed directly within the OTA platform. |
Price Syncing | Prices are NOT synced automatically. You must ensure the prices configured in the OTA platform align with the expected price in Convious for accurate reporting. |
Refunds | Convious is not responsible for refund handling. Refunds are managed directly by the OTA or the supplier. |
Cancellations | Cancellations made in Convious do not sync to OTAs. Convious and ExperienceBank act as the system of record (source of truth), meaning capacity is updated in Convious. Cancellations in Convious are only for internal management (e.g., no-shows). |
Barcodes | Only specific barcode types are supported: QR_CODE, BARCODE_39, and BARCODE_128. |
Time Slots | If you use time slots, the validity shown on the OTA website comes from the time slot availability of the product, not the product’s general validity. |
Sync Frequency | ExperienceBank syncs product availability and booking data every 1 hour. |
Availability Control | Once set up, you can control the product availability for different OTAs directly from your Control Panel. |
Reporting
All bookings made through the integrated OTAs will flow into your Convious dashboards. You can:
View sales data alongside your direct sales in the Sales & Finance Dashboard.
Filter by the specific OTA (sales channel details) to analyze performance.
The system acts as a single source of truth for all sales volume and capacity consumption.
A screenshot of the Transactions table showing an OTA as the Sales Channel will appear here.