What does mapping mean?
When you create a listing in Hostaway, the system needs to know what channel(s) and room to connect. To do this, you need to map your channel connections to the listings you have created in Hostaway. Each Listing can only have 1 room availability setup in the channel.
You cannot map a channel room ID xxxx with 4 rooms to sell to one Hostaway listing. If You have multi availability setup in the channels, you need to find a way to divide the rooms and its reservation on the channel before connection.
Following the mapping of properties
For every channel, you will find the activation or configuration buttons under Hostaway > Channel manager > Channels. When you activate a channel for the first time, it will depending on the channel, ask for your property IDs and mapping configuration.
If you have a lot of properties to manage, it's easier to use an excel overview to see who should be mapped to what listing.
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Hostaway property id
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Hostaway iCal
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Airbnb property id
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Expedia property id
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HomeAway id or iCal
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Tripadvisor ID / iCal
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VRBO iCal
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Owners Direct iCal
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Innclusive id
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9flats id
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Wimdu iCal
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Custom
others
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| 40327 | hostaway.biz/xxxx.ics | 55451 | 655155516 | xxxx.ics | 56465 | vrbo.com/xxx.ics | etc | etc | etc | etc | |
| 15225 | hostaway.biz/xxxx.ics | 6546 | 656568 | na | na | na | na | na | na | na |
When you have an overview created like the above, it is going to be a lot easier for you to give listing different titles and/or different images to create more diversity between channels.
Changing the mapping of properties
Sometimes you'll need to make adjustments on your specific channels, perhaps you'll want to delete a room, add a new room, change a room category, address, etc. In most cases, this also means that the data you have loaded into the Hostaway software has changed.
For example, when you create a new rate category in Expedia, it will receive a new rate number. This number isn't provided to the software automatically. Due to this, when you update the day rate, the software on both ends will ignore the changes as it doesn't have corresponding rate ID numbers to update.
Some channels like Expedia will send you an email when you've changed the mapping and this then tells you to remap your listings. In the channel-specific sections, you will find more information about this re-mapping and how this works.