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Distribution Engine vs. Direct Connect: What’s the Difference?

By cody

Among the many decisions and day-to-day operations our property managers face, these questions are often in the back of their minds:

  • Where is my money coming from?
  • What channels am I on?
  • How many units are live on each channel?

Fortunately, Track’s new channel management solution, Distribution Engine, puts your mind at ease and does (most of) the work for you.

Track’s Direct Connect solution offered basic features like managing rates, availability, booking settings, and basic unit-level content for Vrbo, Airbnb, and other channels. The new Distribution Engine offers much, much more.

Let’s compare upgraded enhancements, now offered exclusively through Distribution Engine (DE), to the old Track solution known as Direct Connect (DC).

Embedded Fees

Direct Connect

In order to present appropriate rents and fees to guests, you create a derivative rate that includes both a markup and a booking fee, and attribute that rent to a revenue account. These are difficult to figure out across channels, especially when dealing with length of stays, discounts, and more.

Distribution Engine

Now, embedded fee setup means that fees and commissions will calculate correctly and get sent to the channels. Our markup calculator for Vrbo, Airbnb, and MHVB takes the guesswork out of rates, taxes, or commission pass-thrus. Once set up, Track calculates the rent and fees and sends the appropriate information back to your ledger accounts.

This feature also allows you to incorporate seasonal fees the channels don’t take and add fees channels won’t allow you to add (e.g. Airbnb will not take a $ per day fee, but you can now do this with embedded fees).

Airbnb promotions, early bird, and discount pricing

Direct Connect

Only after creating derivative rates for different lengths of stays can you add them to your Airbnb console.

Distribution Engine

Promotions and discounts are created for weekly, monthly, and early bird specials based on the length-of-stay pricing model. That same model presents the correct pricing for you.

Instead of logging into Airbnb to manage these and enabling unit by unit, DE makes it simple.

Amenity mapping

Direct Connect

Channels are constantly updating and adding amenities, so it is difficult to know when channels add them, what they are, and how to ensure the correct “name” of an amenity matches its channel equivalent, e.g. “jacuzzi” vs. “hot tub” vs. “spa.”

Distribution Engine

DE automatically syncs new amenities, flags those that are unmapped, and pushes the amenities appropriately to each channel no matter what they’re called.

Channel content

Direct Connect

You must log in to each unit on each channel to manage content updates like headlines, descriptions, and risk errors. Big time commitment logistically.

Distribution Engine

Now, it’s simple to update all content across units and across channels with automatic content checks and headlines. Easily update units seasonally or around events as needed.

Bulk editing

Direct Connect

Manually copy and paste or upload information for each unit on each channel.

Distribution Engine

Simply search and identify properties, select and bulk change, update and upload content across all channels with just a couple of clicks. A huge time-saver.

Notifications and errors

Direct Connect

A validation report gets run for you each night and presents unit validation messages for errors and warnings that need to be addressed.

Distribution Engine

Warnings and errors show up in the channel dashboard automatically and also link straight to the page to address the errors. You can sort and filter messages to prioritize them.

If you want to learn more about features in Distribution Engine, make sure to contact us here. We’re excited to show you even more innovative features that are sure to save you more time and ultimately help keep your portfolio optimized and seen across channels.

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