Clock Kiosk
We are proud to announce the latest addition to our digital guest interaction products - Clock Kiosk.
Clock Kiosk is designed and developed entirely by Clock Software. It is created as the ultimate combination of reliable specially designed hardware, secure operating system, guest servicing software, and close connection with the hotel PMS. In result, our new product provides reliable secure environment which operates in real time with the PMS and ensures the best possible guest service on check-in.
- Security. Data and system security is a our primary concern. PCI DSS places the highest requirements towards the operating systems and hardware involved in the processing of credit card data. Aiming to provide the most reliable environment possible, we decided against Windows as it is the most popular and therefore the most targeted operating system. Instead, we turned to a Linux-based environment and modified it further to provide the highest security in the field.
- Hardware and software designed to work together. Clock Kiosk offers hardware and software specially designed to ensure maximum usability and ultimate guest experience.
- High quality reliable components. Best quality touch-screen monitor, fanless computer system, original keycard encoders and specially designed Linux version guarantee problem-free 24*7 kiosk uptime.
- Integration. Saying that Clock Kiosk is fully integrated with Clock PMS is not entirely accurate. Rather, Clock Kiosk is a continuation of Clock PMS and the Self Service portal. This software design prevents any duplication of data between the systems and completely eliminates mismatch of data, delays and synchronisation issues.
- Slick Hardware Design. Clock Kiosk is made of high-quality steel and is only 7 cm thick. It is a solid piece of hardware which can be bolted or even glued to the floor.
- Rich Software Functionality. Clock Kiosk takes a step beyond the traditional guest check-in. It is a point of active communication, which changes the experience of your guests completely.
Functionality
Here are the functions included in the first version and those planned to be added shortly:
- Access with booking number and PIN. The PIN is the code guests use for the self service portal, either the original one sent with the booking confirmation or their own they have chosen later.
- Upsell / Special Offers. Personalised offers to guests for room type or package upgrades. The offers are completely synchronised with the booking parameters and with your availability. They can be finely tuned through rate restrictions and upgrade policies. The selected upsell rate is effective immediately and the folio of the guest displays the correct charges. You receive a notification about the upgrade, but you don’t need to do anything. All changes are applied automatically.
- Early checkin (*under development). An Early checkin option charged extra on the account of the guest. The charge is posted in real time and the folio is updated immediately.
- Understandable hotel policy. Enter the hotel policy on checkin, checkout, stay, damages, and so on in as many languages as you may need.
- Registration cards. Filling in guest details in registration cards. If the details have been entered in advance in the self service portal, guests only need to check and confirm them. Easy setup of registration card fields. The fields displayed in the kiosk are the same as those in the self service portal.
- Electronic signature. Guests sign their registration cards on the touch screen monitor. The signatures are saved digitally.
- Paying bills.The Kiosk can be set to require credit card payment of bills on check-in. The bills are up-to-date and include all charges, upgrades, extra services selected in the web reservation system or in the self service portal as well as any advance credit card payments.
- Additionally for Corporate clients: corporate clients can select the option of company invoice. The invoices are emailed to the addresses they provide.
- Credit cards. Credit card payment requires clients to enter their credit card details. Authorize.net and Adyen Easy Encryption are the interfaces currently supported.
- Credit Card Pre-Authorization (*under development). An Authorization Only transaction blocks a certain amount on the credit card for any possible damages or unpaid charges.
- Automatic room assignment. If this setting is activated and the guest has no room assigned, the system will automatically select a clean available room of the type booked and your guest will be able to go there immediately.
- Room selected by guest (*under development). If this setting is activated, guests will be prompted to choose their rooms from a list of free clean rooms. For return guests, the rooms they have stayed in before will be marked to help them select the same ones easily if desired.
- Keycard. Guests are issued their room keycards. The issuing depends on the system of access the hotel uses. Currently the Kiosk supports Visionline by Assa Abloy (Vingcard). Other popular systems will be interfaced soon.
- Custom access system. If your system of access is not included in the standard list of interfaces, it can be interfaced through the API of Clock PMS for issuing cards. To do this, you can order your Clock Kiosk with the card encoder used by your access system.
- Feedback (*under development). After checkin guests can rate their experience and/or leave a review. This allows you to identify dissatisfied guests and take measures to avoid negative reviews in public forums.
IF YOU LIKE THE IMPROVEMENTS, WE'LL APPRECIATE IT IF YOU TAKE A MINUTE TO LEAVE A SHORT REVIEW HERE.
Upsell Rates & Extra Services
With “Upsell Rates” you can organise a self-driving yet personalised yield management procedure to induce your clients to purchase higher priced rooms or packages.
Special Offers
The available upsell rates are displayed to the Guest in the Self Service Portal (prior to check-in or on self check-in) and Clock Kiosk(on self check-in). Receptionists can access applicable upsell rates in PMS as well.
The “Special Offers” list is uniquely calculated for each booking and consists of rates applicable to this booking only.
Guest can find all special offer details and check the upgrade price (the difference between the current booking price and each special offer) and select a Special Offer to upgrade into. Once the guest selects the desired offer, the booking is updated and the rate price is recalculated.
Use this feature with the guest mailer to send invitations to your guests and promote the special offers section in the self service portal.
Settings and Logic
Upsell Rate List.
Activate the feature and select the rates to be included in the “Upsell list”. You can use your standard rates or create a new set with discounted rates (standard or derived), or even occupancy adaptable rates. To setup the rate list go to “Settings - Self Service Settings - Upsell rates.
The suitable upsell rates will be available for choosing in the Self Service or in Clock Kiosk. A rate will be presented to the guest only if:
- There are free rooms for the rate room type for the booking period
- All restrictions of the rates are compatible with the booking attributes (arrival, stay, departure, adults, children, …) and all other restrictions permit the rate to be available (Close, Close for arrival, Min Free Rooms, Minimum days before arrival”, …)
- The total price of the upsell rate is MORE than the price of the booking (extra services selected in WRS or posted manually are not calculated in booking price).
Upgrade Index
Sometimes automated upgrade suggestions may be inappropriate. For example, a special offer an APP may be sold at a lower price than the regular DBL, or HB sold at a lower price than standard BB. In such cases the system will annoyingly offer upgrade from APP to DBL, or from HB to BB, because of the price. The upgrade index is an additional parameter which helps avoid this.
- You can set upsell index for each room type. Then only room types with higher index than that of the booking room type will be offered.
- You can set upsell index for each rate. Then only rates with higher booking rate index will be offered.
Using Restrictions
- You can use the “Minimum days before arrival” restriction to allow upsell to be available a certain number of days before arrival.
- You can use the “Minimum free rooms” restriction to allow upgrades to be available only if there are a certain number of free rooms available.
Extra Services
Extra Services upsell is now available in Self Service portal as well. Extra Services set in WRS will be displayed in Self Service.
The Guest can select the services prior to arrival or during they stay. The service will be charged to the guest folio automatically. A ToDo will be created for review and potentinal service refusal. The services set as 'per day' will be charged for each day of rest of the guest stay. This way if the guest selects a Dinner (which is marked as 'per day' service) in the middle of his stay, charges will be posted only for remaining part of the stay.
Room Calendar
- Events. We have added a section with events for a period. Additionally, a colour can be chosen for each event for clearer presentation. Open an event by just clicking it. You can show or hide the event section from the 'View' menu, as the system remembers your choice.
- Group by Room Type or Location. We have added new grouping options - by room type or location. The grouping can be changed from the 'View' menu, as Clock PMS stores your selection.
- Filter by Room Type. Use the new filter (located in the upper left part of the table) to see a certain room type only in the calendar.
- Hide the repeating dates. From the 'View' menu, you can show or hide repeating date rows. Your choice is stored.
To-Do
We have been working on the improvement of To-Dos and their usability. Part of the changes are included in this update, and the development of others is in progress. The changes are:
- An 'Assignment' option for To-Dos added. You can select the user to perform a task. This way this To-Do will appear in their To-Do list only.
- Now you can mark To-Dos as'Completed'. Thus you have a history of the completed To-Dos – by whom and when they were completed. More new changes are coming up.
Other Improvements
- Room Type KPI.To provide you with more accurate statistics by room types, we have improved the following reports:
- Charge Segmentation Report – now when you run the report by room types, booking movements are also accounted for. So far, the report worked on the basis of the arrival room type, which led to to statistics deviations.
- Occupancy and Charge Report – if you choose to filter by room type, now you'll see the following columns: Charges, ADR and RevPAR for the selected room type. The amount of charges is calculated based on the revenue groups of Rooms and Packages and corresponds to the amount from the Charge Segmentation Report run by room type. Please note that it is impossible to determine a room type for each charge of the revenue groups of Rooms and Packages. For example, you post charges of these groups directly to a group folio. These charges are not related to a booking. Then these charges cannot be referred to any room type. In other words, they will appear in the Charge Segmentation Report as segment '-'. In the Occupancy and Charges Report, these charges will be shown when the report is run without using the room type filter. And when the room type filter is selected, the report will not show them.
- Deposit - new scheme.We have changed the way a deposit scheme is set up, expanding the number of options for deposit calculation with two new ones: fixed amount and selection of the revenue groups to be used for deposit calculation as percent or nights. The data of the existing deposit schemes has been transferred the new ones. Thus you don't need to do anything else.. The setup of a deposit is done the following way:
- A deposit can contain a fixed and/or relative amount. You can use both (fixed + relative amount) or only one of them (fixed OR relative one).
- In the 'Deposit fixed amount' field, enter the fixed amount if any.
- A deposit relative amount can be based on a percentage of the booking amount and/or nights. If both are defined, the greater amount applies.
- Booking amount – The booking amount depends on the revenue groups you have selected. This way the deposit can be calculated on the room charges only or any other combination of revenue groups.
- Deposit percent - Percentage of the booking amount as defined above.
- Deposit night count - How many nights to be counted as a deposit. The night amount is calculated as the average night price based on the booking amount (as defined above).
- Send Invoices as links. Instead of PDF files, the issued folios and invoices can now be sent as links to clients. The link can be used to open the folio and print it. The subject and text of the emails with folio links can be changed from 'Languages and Texts' - "Folio/Invoice Translations" - 'Folio email subject' and 'Folio email text' fields. The new method for sending links is much more reliable than the generating and sending of PDF files, leading to more secure delivery of your documents to guests' emails.
- Charge and POS transfers to Event folios. Now the option for transferring bills from POS to PMS or charges from one to another bill is also available for event folios. These folios can be found on transfer screen after selecting an event company.
- Self Service – Room selection – a new setting: "Days before arrival". Use the new setting to determine how many days before arrival the room selection option is to be available to guests on the Self Service Portal.
- Rounding of Derived Percent Rates. As the percent calculation may leads to amounts such as EUR 126.67, for example, we have added an option for the result rounding. This way amounts can have more commercial appearance. Depending on the currency used with the derived rates, select the most suitable rounding option: 0.1, 1, 10, 100 or 1000. You can find the new setting in Settings - Tax Settings - Derived percent rate rounding. It applies to all 'Derived percent rates' for your account.
- Booking – a new company note option has been added. And when a company is selected, you can see the company-related note, if any.
- ParityRate – when a booking with a supplement is received, a To-Do containing a description of the received supplements is created
- YieldPlanet – with the import of bookings, a check is performed for overbooking and an email sent to the hotel
Interface to the Key Cards of the VisiOnline (Assa Abloy) system
We have developed an interface to the VisiOnline access system of Assa Abloy (VingCard).
Requirements:
- VisiOnline with enabled "Hospitality Web API"
- Clock IoT Device. A hardware device delivered by Clock connected to the network where VisiOnline is installed. One device is linked to one account.
- Door keys Add-On enabled
- API Add-on enabled.
Settings :
- Log in to the account to be set up.
- Clock IoT Device. After connecting the device to the network, choose Settings - Door keys settings - Clock IoT Devices. You need to find the identifier code of your device in the 'Unassigned IoT Devices' list. If you can't find it, wait for 2 minutes and click 'Refresh'. After the device's appearing on the list, click the 'Assign IoT device to account: ...' button next to it. The device will move to the 'Assigned Devices' list.
- API user. Create a new API user (e.g. api_visionline) and grant this user access to the necessary accounts.
- Interface setup. Select Settings - Door keys settings - Visionline (Assa Abloy / Vingcard).
- Choose Active
- Select the API user you have created
- Fill in the IP address, on which the VisiOnline system is installed. Consult your system administrator, if necessary.
- Enter the username and password to access the "Hospitality Web API" of VisiOnline. Consult an Assa Abloy specialist, if necessary.
- Fill in the Key format (e.g. with TLCode), as you need to consult an Assa Abloy specialist if this is the proper format for your key cards.
- Save
- Other settings. Select Settings - Door keys settings
- Fill in the "Default 'From' time for Door Keys" and "Default 'To' time for Door Keys" with the times to be available on the screen when issuing a key card.
- Add one or more encoders to be used for key card issuing. For each device, enter such a name that lets you easily distinguish them, and in the "Identifier" field fill in the precise name of the encoder, as it appears on VisiOnline. Make sure the name is accurately entered, as this field is used for the mapping between the two systems. Consult an Assa Abloy specialist about the encoder name.
Use :
- To issue a new key card, click 'Key' on the booking screen or the arrivals screen. The button is visible when a room is allocated to a booking.
- The guest's name is automatically completed, however, it can be changed, if necessary.
- Select the encoder you'll use to issue the key card. The encoder is stored and is offered by the system next time you issue a key card, but it can be changed.
- If necessary, change the dates and times.
- Click "Issue Original ..."
- After receiving a signal from the encoder, insert the key card in it.
- If you do not get a signal or error message, select "Retry Key Creation" to try again.
API
- We have added statistics of the API calls in the system. This way you get a clear idea of the number and specifics of the API calls for each month. To view the statistics, choose 'Settings' - 'API Users' - 'API calls statistics'
- We have introduced an option for separating the API calls of the individual users. Thus the call limit filter ( 5 calls per second ) can be applied to each user separately. The user ID is added before the id of the subscription and the account. You can find your 'User Base Api Url' and 'User Pms Api Url' by opening the Edit screen of the API user - Settings - API users - Edit - 'Api Endpoints' section. The API can be used with the existing URLs, too – you don't need to change anything.
- We have added rate_restrictions object for each day to the rates_availabiliti endpoint
Fixes
- ParityRate – the issue which could cause multiple repeating messages of the cancellation of a booking in the Inbox has been fixed.
- On the folio screen, the amounts didn't update immediately after charge editing, if the folio contained a surcharge.
- On the Events screen -> In Hotel / Expected Events , the Bookings column also counted the cancelled bookings
- The issue which prevented the deletion of a virtual room or virtual room type has been fixed
- The signature in the registration cards appeared too high and the printout didn't look good.
- WRS – the title field appeared on the last page of the WRS, even though there were no titles entered
- Gift Voucher Webshop - services are now sorted out by sort order
POS
- The Inventory Items Report didn't filter the charges for a given period properly