Push vs Pull Connectivity

Push vs Pull Connectivity describes the two ways availability, rates and inventory (ARI) data moves between a hotel's systems and its distribution partners. In a push model, the hotel's channel manager or CRS sends updates outward to each OTA as soon as they change. In a pull model, the OTA requests the current state from the hotel's system on demand — typically when a traveller searches — and the hotel responds in real time.

How each model works

Push. The channel manager holds the source of truth and transmits deltas to every connected channel. Each OTA stores a cached copy of the hotel's rates and availability and serves search results from that cache. Speed of propagation depends on how quickly the hotel pushes and how quickly the OTA ingests.

Pull. The OTA queries the hotel's system live, usually via an availability/rate request that returns prices for a specific date range and occupancy. Nothing is cached, so what the traveller sees is always current — at the cost of far higher request volume and a hard dependency on the hotel system's uptime and response time.

Example

A hotel drops its Friday rate from €180 to €140 at 09:00. On a push connection, the channel manager transmits the change immediately and the OTA's cache reflects €140 within seconds to a few minutes. On a pull connection, no message is sent at all — the next traveller who searches that date triggers a live request and receives €140 directly.

Most large OTAs run hybrid architectures: cached ARI from push feeds for search results, with a pull-style verification call at the booking step to confirm the room is still available at that price before committing the reservation.

Why it matters

The model in use determines how quickly a stop sell, a rate change or a last-room-availability update actually reaches the market. Push connections are efficient and predictable but introduce a propagation lag that causes overbookings on compression nights when inventory moves faster than updates. Pull connections eliminate the lag but shift the load onto the hotel's infrastructure, and any latency or outage translates directly into lost visibility on the OTA.

For revenue and distribution managers, knowing which channels are push and which are pull explains why rate changes appear instantly on some sites and minutes later on others — and where to look first when a rate parity discrepancy or a phantom-availability booking turns up.

Related

• Channel Manager — the system that usually owns the push side of the connection
• Switch (Distribution Switch) — the intermediary that routes ARI and booking messages between systems
• Rate Parity — frequently broken by propagation lag rather than deliberate pricing decisions
• LRA (Last Room Availability) — the scenario where the push/pull distinction matters most
• Webhook — the event-driven mechanism often used to trigger push updates