SiteMinder Erfahrungen

Viel versprochen, wenig gehalten

Kommentare: Wir wurden bei Beginn der Zusammenarbeit mit SiteMinder darauf hingewiesen, dass eine Umsatzsteigerung von 20-30% normal sei. Leider blieb dieses Versprechen unerfüllt. Auch durch die Anbindung an andere Buchungsplattformen war über einen Zeitraum von fünf Monaten keine Veränderung zu spüren. Hinzu kamen zahlreiche Fehler bei der Übermittlung ins Buchungssystem, wie z.B. Fehlbuchungen, nicht durchgegangene Stornierungen und fehlerhafte Übertragungen von Namen, die keine Seltenheit waren. Nachdem wir beschlossen hatten, unseren Vertrag zu kündigen, wurden wir über zwei Monate lang hingehalten und es wurde uns sogar noch einmal zu viel Geld abgezogen. Man vertröstete uns mit der Begründung, dass Sie viel zu tun hätten und eine Kündigung momentan nicht möglich sei, bzw. ungern bearbeitet werde, da dafür keine Kapazitäten seien. Uns wurden drei Freimonate angeboten, um uns zum Bleiben zu bewegen. Trotz unserer Ablehnung dieses Angebots wurde weiter Zeit geschunden. Nach erneuter Nachfrage nach 1,5 Monaten wurde unser Wunsch endlich ernst genommen, jedoch folgte daraufhin ein wettbewerbsschädigendes Verhalten. Gegen 18 Uhr, als das Büro nicht mehr erreichbar war, wurde die Kündigung bestätigt und alle Schnittstellen sofort getrennt. Dies geschah ohne Vorwarnung oder Mitteilung, sodass wir keine Zeit hatten, uns auf die Trennung der Schnittstelle vorzubereiten oder einen neuen Anbieter zu suchen. Dieses Verhalten finde ich höchst unprofessionell und inakzeptabel, insbesondere angesichts der Beträge, die wir an diesen Anbieter gezahlt haben. Es steht in keiner Relation zu den Leistungen, die SiteMinder erbracht hat.

Vorteile:

-viele Schnittstellen zu Portalen -freundliches Personal bei der Kundengewinnung -eigene Website möglich

Nachteile:

-Support Team nicht wirklich kompetent -auf Antworten müssen Sie min. 2-3 Tage warten was bei einem Standartpreis von 175EUR nicht sein sollte -nach Integration kein Deutscher Support mehr -langes Delay bis Buchungen im Buchungssystem ist

Zuverlässiger Channel Manager, der jedoch noch Verbesserungspotential hat

Kommentare: Funktionell aber deutlich verbesserbar und sehr kostenspielig.Kundenservice ist leider nicht so gut und lässt sich ewig Zeit für Anfragen und Support....schade für dieses Geld

Vorteile:

Die Synchronisation der Verfügbarkeiten in Zusammenspiel mit unserer Hotelsoftware 3RPMS läuft seit einem Jahr vollkommen reibungslos und ohne Fehler. Das macht der Channel Manager wirklich absolut top!SiteMinder bietet eine riesen Anzahl an Schnittstellen und Apps, das ist natürlich ihr großer Pluspunkt.

Nachteile:

Die Software und die Bedienung hat schön öfters kleinere Bugs gehabt, für die sich der Entwickler aber nicht weiter interessiert. Das fängt bei Rechtschreibfehler der deutschen Benutzeroberfläche an und hört bei Einstellungs-Bugs auf. Fehler, die man vom selbsternannten größten Channel Manager Anbieter der Welt, nicht haben dürfte.Es gab auch schon schwerwiegendere Fehler, wie die plötzlich falsche Übermittlung der Stornofrist zu dem OTA....also auch SiteMinder ist bei weitem nicht perfekt und lässt einige Features vermissen, die sogar kleinere Anbieter anbieten.Auch müssen Sie sich als Hotelier über den hohen Preis im klaren sein. Über die Sinnhaftigkeit von über 400 OTA Anbindungen kann man definitiv streiten, bei einer derartigen Monopolstellung von Booking.com, Expedia etc.Die Benutzeroberfläche ist relativ übersichtlich, aber die Software an sich sogar mit einer 1000Mbit Leitung ziemlich träge und langsam....das geht besser.Umlaute werden immer falsch ins PMS übertragen....Gäste stehen vor der Tür als Muller heißen aber in Wahrheit Müller. Wie peinlich das als Hotelier ist, kann sich wohl jeder denken. Dieses Problem wurde von mir im August 2022 angemerkt und seitdem hat sich absolut nichts geändert. Immer wieder wird man vertröstet, das Problem wäre auf der Warteliste aber in der Prioritätenliste gäbe es andere Entwicklungen, die Vorrang hätten. Peinlich, dass ein derartiger Bug es berhaupt in die fertige Software geschafft hat.

Macht was es soll - ohne viel „Schnick-Snack“

Kommentare: gut in der Praxisalltag integrierbar - lässt sich auch auf mobilen Endgeräten noch gut bedienen

Vorteile:

- ansprechende/intuitive Benutzeroberfläche - sehr guter (schnell + kompetenter) Support - Support-Antworten auch per E-Mail - faires Preis-Leistungsverhältnis - läuft sehr stabil / zuverlässig

Nachteile:

- z.T. würden wir uns schnellere Synchronisationszeiten wünschen da es vereinzelt zu Überbuchungen kommt - nicht alle Restriktionen können für alle Reisemittler und Portale übertragen werden (liegt teils jedoch an den OTA's selbst) - FAQ-Artikel sind leider nicht durchgehend ins Deutsche lokalisiert

Ich war nicht zufrieden

Kommentare: Im Verkaufsgespräch wurde alles versprochen und danach wurde man nur so durch den Integrationsprozess gehetzt und man wurde gefühlt alleine gelassen. Es wurden hohes IT Verständnis Voraus gesetzt. Für einfache Eigentümer geführte Hotels meines Erachtens nicht zu empfehlen.

Vorteile:

Das Verkaufsgespräch . Mehr Erfahrungen konnte ich nicht sammeln, weil es nicht funktionierte.

Nachteile:

Die Integration und als die Website nicht mehr funktioniert hat, sollte man sich selber darum kümmern.

Support

Kommentare: Sehr guter Support und Hilfestellung.

Vorteile:

Übersichtlich............................

Nachteile:

keine, da finde ich jetzt zum Beispiel nicht gut, dass ich hier mehr schreiben muss als ich möchte

Einbindungsprozess über Monate

Kommentare: Der Auftrag wurde verzögert, wir haben nun 21 Monate auf die Anbindung gewartet

Vorteile:

Es wäre eine mögliche Ergänzung im CM Bereich gewesen

Nachteile:

Der Support vom Siteminder ist nicht hilfreich

Works as expected, tons of integrations

Kommentare: Simplifies my life, a lot.

Vorteile:

Tons of integrations, at a pretty much fixed price. Lots of others charges per reservation, per connection, or whatever, but Siteminder only charges per room. Nothing else. It's super clear and transparent. Interface is fairly easy to use. I especially like that you can choose to resend a failed reservation, which usually fixes any problems. In general, Siteminder rarely causes problems, and there's very little I need to contact support about.

Nachteile:

It still functions as a middle-man. Lots of new PMSs are offering integrated Channel Managers, and they will be more native, which will inherently have an advantage over traditional Channel Managers. Another thing is there support is super slow. You have to submit a ticket and wait for them to get back to you. Good thing though is that there is VERY little I had ever needed to contact them about. A few connections I'd like to see a better connection with, in particular HostelWorld and HotelTonight.

It could be way better

Kommentare: There are some incompatibilities to the Brazilian market, which limited our possibilities to the Siteminder partners, but it is a selfserviced channel manager with a good structure and amazing support.

Vorteile:

The easy way of different types of settings for pricing, variations and additional rates.

Nachteile:

The limited options of restrictions and the need of creating the properties anywhere and then connect, it is not so practical at all.

Terrible support and a very basic system

Kommentare: We have been using Little Hotelier with Siteminder (same company) for almost a year. For a company of it's size, the lack of support is astounding. I am constantly chasing them up for answers for the most simple issues. Even after going to the head of the department, issues are still just left or put in the too hard basket.
Aside from the lack of support, the biggest frustration has been how amateurish the system is. A simple thing like putting your own image as an invoice header has been ignored by them. To me, this is simple programming that could be done in a day at the most. Also, there is no guest profile or blacklist facility. To find previous guests you have to look at reservations, each reservation listed separately, not collating information. They brought in a function to add multiple guest names on a booking, not important. They really need to focus on what customers want, not what they want to do.
The latest issue for us is the lack of reports. They provide a few but none of them match each other. Some include payments when others don't, some include extra items when others don't, none include credit card fees. Their response to this was trying to get us to sign up to their payment system. If you can't get the basic system right, why would we do that? We are looking at other systems to replace this one as even though we are only a small hotel, we expect much more than this basic system for the money we pay each month. Do your research before signing up to this software. The basic bones are there but the support is terrible and the functionality is very basic.

Vorteile:

It puts bookings into the system via channel manager as it should, well most of the information but not all.

Nachteile:

The lack of support and it not being able to do basic things like reports.

Very user friendly.

Vorteile:

We were looking for one product with which to manage our inventory for several different OTAs. This is what SiteMinder does beautifully. We are also able to offer unique specials on our own site by using Channel Manager as our booking engine.

Nachteile:

The only criticism is minor. When using the calendar feature in the RESERVATIONS menu to jump to a specific date, after entering the start date, you must also go back to the last calender and page forward to the required finish date. For example, if it is Feb and you want to look at arrivals in August, after selecting the "From Date" of 08/01, the "To Date" does not automatically change to August, but remains in Feb until manually moved to August.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: OpenHotel PMS

Gründe für den Wechsel zu SiteMinder: Upper management recommendation.

Suite of tools to effectively manage a boutique hotel or a large resort

Kommentare: Many. 1. The channel manager is very stable!! We have less than 1% of issues and even then there emails or the Siteminder extranet that we can easily double check.
2. Prophet is easy to use and pretty accurate. The weekly summary could have some improvements, like a percentage of rate increase or decrease of each of our designated competitors.
3. Booking button - That it is tied into the Channel Manager and Canvas makes it so easy. It is specific for hotels so it has all of the data needed. Super easy to build out a promotion or edit content. One suggestion, the ability to note a price drop, right on the rate.
4. Canvas - Again very easy to use!! Because it is designed specifically for hotels it has all of the necessary pages and some.
5. Siteminder has also recently partnered with TripTease-a website chat, pop-up promotion and rate comparison tool that you paste a script that Triptease provides onto your Canvas webpages. It's another added bonus. I have definitely seen an increase in reservations since we implemented it.

Vorteile:

Having the entire SiteMinder suite of products has reduced our time spent managing reservations and has provided a brand presence that truly reflects our vision of a boutique hotel. Canvas has also improved the quality of guest interaction with our website, they are spending more time in areas like rooms, gallery and attractions. The pages are right there on the homepage easy for them to find and the layout is cleaner and more inviting to browse.

Leading Channel Manager

Vorteile:

I have been using Siteminder for quite a while now and it has proved to be one of the most robust channel management softwares for the hotels. Here's how I am going to break down the Pro's of Siteminder : 1- Simple and Easy to Use 2- Supports many big, mid-size and small OTA's. 3. Reservation & Yield reports. 4. Connectivity with multiple Property Management Systems. 5. It's definitely cost-effective 6. Easy to set-up rooms, rate plans and map them.

Nachteile:

Apart from all the good things mentioned above Siteminder still needs improvement in certain areas. The thing that I like the least about them are as follows : 1. Customer Support is terrible and very rarely would you get a first call resolution. 2. GDS by Siteminder is not being managed efficiently, the staff seems to have very little information on how GDS works. 3. Their turn around and on-boarding time sometimes take weeks.

Great product, less than average support service

Vorteile:

Great software for hoteliers who wants to reach a global audience. Will save a lot of time, especially if you want to offer many different rates and length of stay. Not expensive at all. Give you ability to connect to so many different booking sites around the world in no time. Another great thing is - they have their own PMS (LittleHotelier).

Nachteile:

The support service. No words... Having problem during a weekend? Oh, sorry we have no one in the office you can speak about, leave a message... What? Response time for created cases is slow. Accounting: if you have several hotels: your bills could be mixed up easily. After being with them for 7 years quit only because of support service. Still do feel sad about that as I loved the software. Now we are using other software and each time I receive an answer from new software support in less then one hour I remember how I was waiting for SiteMinder answers for days!

Great CHM with plenty of feature

Vorteile:

It is a very advance hotel manager software with the most partner connection.

Nachteile:

Too complex for small or medium properties and also it is a bit too expensive

Overall Good Experience

Vorteile:

Very complete Channel Manager with everything you need to run several properties mapped through different OTAs. Working properly, never had a real issue. Their customer support got back to us promptly each time we had a problem in understanding something or for a set up. Like some says it's easy to use when you know what you're doing. It's a very professional Channel Manager. The price is also professional but nothing surprising when you have stability and efficiency. I would definitely recommend it.

Nachteile:

Like I said above, it's a very professional Channel Manager so you should expect having troubles understanding what should be done and what should be left untouched. That has been the major issue for us, to understand what to manage and what not to touch. We didn't have the experience we have now with channel managers so as profanes it was pretty hard to do the set up.

Very Reliable and easy to use

Vorteile:

I have used SiteMinder for almost 10 years. This channel manager is very reliable and easy to use. I highly recommended to revenue manager and general manager of small to mid sized properties

Nachteile:

none, I did not find anything that i would consider a flaw

Just plain terrible

Kommentare: We will be moving to something else as soon as we can. It's a disagrace from the company, their support and product teams

Vorteile:

Nothing, it used to be a great channel manager and i'm wondering when it went so wrong

Nachteile:

Siteminder used to be a top channel manager. Now we have 12 hotels on it and CONSTANT overbookings from every channel - their support is just terrible, each single instance they copy paste their response (basically blaming each single individual channel) and completely washing their hands of any fault. Channel maanger that can't manage channels and blames them - go figure. Also, they flat out refuse to provide ANY logs. Whether it's to do with connectivity, user changes etc. It's quite simply a disaster, what happened with this once great product. We will be changing as soon as we can

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Cloudbeds und STAAH Channel Manager

Warum SiteMinder gewählt wurde: Old channel manager had big limitations on channel connectivity - many key channels werent there

Gründe für den Wechsel zu SiteMinder: it used to be a good product years ago and we didn't know that it changed

Do your homework, check them out before commiting as to price and function

Kommentare: We entered on a 30 day free trial, then 6 months 1/2 price, 6 months full price. There is a sense as you go further down the track of total commitment and no escape as considerable time committed to set-up and link the channels. With an extensive background in both IT and major Hotel PMS systems, we found key reporting and functionality missing. When the full monthly cost hit, we viewed the product as unviable.
The Canvas website template is very poor and expensive.

Vorteile:

The calendar integration to multiple channels is essential by methods other than iCal. This one feature changes the picture for any operation with more than one channel. In the end, this was the only attractive feature.

Nachteile:

My personal experience was the product is not at all intuitive, in other words you had to ask lots of questions rather than figure it out for yourself. Support and personnel are unresponsive to client suggestions when problems or difficulties encountered. Simple questions often take days for response. With 1-5 rooms, very expensive when you consider revenue versus accumulated expenses for this plus OTA commissions, payment discounts, housekeeping etc. No meaningful reports for revenue, Mobile app on Android was useless, had to use the browser version.

Very bad and faulty system, terrible customer support

Kommentare: Being in the hotel industry, we operate 24/7, and when there is a need for customer support follow up, you would expect 24/7 or at least decently efficient follow-up. During a period when our hotel was fully booked, we closed the allotments for the higher room types, while increasing the rates for our standard rooms, so that if a booking were to come in, we could easily afford to book the guest in a neighbouring hotel, most of which happen to be full or high occupancy as well. Having set up the system, and input the values, one week before the period we are full, I had expected the system to have updated all our online agent sites. Lo and behold, we received a booking 5 days after I had input the new values. And at our normal standard rates at that. Obviously this would be a problem for us. So I called up the agent to check if they had been linked up with Siteminder. They checked on their back-end, and it showed all up and running. So I immediately called Siteminder to get them to check on their back-end, and informed them that the guest would be arriving in 2 days time, so I needed an answer before then. The amazing part was to be told that I needed to wait 3 days for a reply. Despite knowing that the guest would be arriving in 2 days time. They just threw the problem back to me. Up until the guest arrived, there was still no resolution from Siteminder. For a company that is so closely linked to the hospitality industry, and who claims to be one of the best there is, this is abysmal performance. Why should I be paying them, when I end up having to solve problems created by them?

Vorteile:

It makes it easy for revenue managers to combine all OTAs into one platform, to manage rates and availability.

Nachteile:

Terrible response time, error in their software but they make the customer solve the problem for them and pay for the damages caused.

DO NOT use this CMS if you're looking to improve SEO performance

Vorteile:

Adding basic content to the CMS is fairly straightforward but there is nothing this offers which cheaper competitors don't.

Nachteile:

There doesn't seem to ever be any updates made. As someone who works in digital marketing, making updates to the site to improve SEO performance is critical. However this CMS doesn't even allow the simplest of updates. It doesn't allow you to update page titles without the H1 header and main navigation title being updated. So just to be clear, updating page titles on their own is NOT POSSIBLE. This is 2017! We've been asking the question for over a year about when this will be updated and it's still not done! We still can't update page titles (some of the most important elements for SEO) and therefore are losing out on revenue because of this CMS. It also doesn't allow users to set up 301 redirects, which is simply laughable. Again, this is also impacting our performance. If it was solely my choice I'd have changed a long time ago. Avoid the canvas CMS at all cost if you're looking to improve SEO performance.

Siteminder, impossible to dislike

Vorteile:

I have worked with different channel managers, however Siteminder has been the most intuitive to work with and the support of the team has been amazing since day one. The connection with our PMS was and is perfect. Overall the benefits are more than enough for us to keep Siteminder as our channel manager for a long long time.

Nachteile:

I believe that what can be improved are the yield rules. To close availability upon percentage of total sold rooms. This is an action we, specifically, would love to have.

The Technical department needs a few lessons in caring about customers

Kommentare: It is the only real serious booking engine available to local hoteliers and we would have a problem getting direct bookings if it was not available to us.

Vorteile:

The staff that answer the phone are lovely and try to be helpful when you phone and the on hold music we spend hours listening to is good

Nachteile:

Those that answer the support phone are lovely people and try their best to assist. However, they seem quite often not to fully understand what the product can and cannot do. And if your problem (one that is caused by a siteminder malfunction and one that can be losing your small business money)) ends up in the tech department - then watch out. They sit on the problem for a week and try finding out when it is going to be fixed. They are like elusive Gods who think they are answerable to no one, least of all the customers!

Siteminder Reviews

Kommentare: To be honest, I am very satisfied using the product. Except on several occasion certain room
categories have been booked twice despite inventories have been closed on channel manager. Beside these problem, overall it is an excellent product to use

Vorteile:

Easy to manage and efficient Saves time

Nachteile:

showing /sending room availability on certain ota channel despite inventory has been closed on channel manager therefore caused overbooking situation. If channel manager suppose to send real time room availability to all the mapped channels, how could it happend? As our hotel is in Singapore, we are not able to contact Siteminder's customer support directly during emergencies for advise. Only via emails and it could take few days to resolve the problem.

The Best Channel Management Solution

Vorteile:

Range of channels Range of other apps , PMS and booking engines Adaptability and flexibility of set up. Very reliable Great support Cost

Nachteile:

Wish new feature could be added to Booking engine, such as loyalty scheme or secret rates to help us compete with OTA pricing.

No overbookings

Vorteile:

When introduced to the software, the hassle of over bookings were eliminated. With it's seamless integration to the PMS, it automates availability of rooms and increases revenue by making the most expensive rooms available.

Nachteile:

I think commissions can be reduced to maximise profit.