EVT bet on a young SiteMinder and never looked back

Some partnerships last longer than many marriages. EVT, the Australian chain, has been using SiteMinder's channel manager for nearly 20 years to manage its OTAs across more than 100 hotels. That's what its GM of digital distribution tells Hospitality Net, and the story has a point.

When EVT signed with SiteMinder, the company was a young project and channel managers weren't the standard they are today. They jumped on tech that was a bet back then. Almost two decades later, their team doesn't waste time fighting clunky integrations. The tool, they say, freed them from manual OTA management and left room for revenue strategy.

So what's in it for the rest of us? First, patience with a tool pays off. Switching systems in hotel distribution every couple of years costs time and errors. Second, EVT isn't talking about painful migrations or endless rewiring. They talk about a platform that grew with them. Careful, not everyone can say that. If you're a hotelier reviewing your tech stack, pick platforms that can scale with you. Changing at 40 is not for everyone.

My take? This backs something we defend at Notitur: hotel distribution isn't about having a thousand tools, it's about having the ones that keep up. EVT proves that a choice made when SiteMinder was a nobody can hold for two decades if the platform adapts to what the market demands.