[13:57 March 11, 2019] Yangon
Updated [Feb 16, 2020]
A few months working with Property Management Systems and Channel Managers.

I first heard about Flymya and Get from a friend who used to work there. Then I checked them out, I came across BOD Tech which is working on pretty much every consumer product here in Myanmar.

This should also be needed to get separated into a different posts.

So for the past few months, I was helping out a relative with their hotel business and got to learn a bit about the local hotel and tourism industry. A few years back then, I also heard about those industries from a close friend whom I no longer have contact with. Anyway. So I first came across this article, How This Myanmar Travel Company Went From $0 To $1.5M Revenue In A Year, from Forbes and I was surprised.

I have never thought these industries were that huge. I have heard of Airbnb but didn’t know the market size. So I ended up digging into all the platforms, Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, Hotels.com, and CTrip (mainly for Chinese travelers). And strangely, most of those platforms, (acquired/partnered/invested) are under two main groups.

Priceline Group Vs Expedia Vs Airbnb

Priceline Group on one side and Expedia Inc. on the other.

And there is Airbnb on its own. It convinces me that Joe and Brian did disrupt this industry. I wondered about so many websites and platforms, and how hotels and homeowners even manage to keep their rooms and properties updated across platforms. There you go. Channel Managers. I was like wow. People are just incredibly smart. I guess, back then hotels be like we can get a cracked version of room reservation software on our desktop at the reception. And that was what I expected how it would be like. Nope. The software is eating the world for sure. So I ended up digging more and saw, Global Distribution System, Travel Management Companies, Property Managers, etc., etc.

Channel Manager

So basically, a channel manager syncs all your rooms that are listed on the websites like Booking.com. And some are super expensive and even charge a commission per booking too. So you have to share a part of your room rent income with online booking platforms, and all these channel managers like SiteMinder and Nobeds (Probably free, I guess). There is also open-source software. Another fact, Flymya acquired this Switch.cm. Wait. What! A channel Manger for channel managers. So how did I find out Switch.cm? I asked someone from one of the online booking companies for a local channel manager company suggestion, and they recommended me that. Not sure it was supposed to be disclosed. I just checked now and saw it. They are also using isometric design here on their Features page. That design trend is LIT. Haha. Here is a Twitter thread about this design trend, a list of company websites using isometric and retro human design. Well, I think this is enough. I cramped too much in here. I shall write in detail later in a different post.

I wonder where the future is going. How the future of businesses will be like. Here is the progression I see in this one particular industry. Hotels, like real infrastructure, real buildings.
• People come to town, ask the locals and then go stay there.
• Then, on the internet and WWW, there are individual websites for those hotels.
• Guests call them via phone or send a fax to book. Facebook pages.
• Then here are these platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com, and so on. And again Google and TripAdvisor list the prices of a hotel from those booking platforms. • For hotels, there are channel managers to manage reservations.
• Again, there are API services for those channel management platforms. • So where exactly this is going? (How do we filter all this information to the right user?) There is soon going to be a mixed branch of industries; hotel and tourism, co-working spaces (Sharing Economy), real estate, digital nomads; Nomad List & HackerParadise, Tribe Theory and many are becoming trendy.

A question I have is, how is the government working on rules and regulations for these disruptions so that locals won’t get exploited? Or how can locals prepare or adapt to these digital disruptions to be able to integrate their businesses? That is the issue I am seeing when I talk to local business owners, they just can’t understand why their businesses are not doing good. Blame the government? Not really. As a result of these rapid changes, the government itself is becoming a victim. Well, this is a revolution, not cultural or social, but digital. I might probably need to dig into the O2O business model to have more opinions on this.

Ok. Enough for now.