Channel Manager
We have developed several different instruments to help you effectively manage availability and prices in the channels. As a result, you have perfect balance between avoiding the overbooking risk and achieving maximum occupancy. You can use these instruments separately or in combination, in order to have the best results.
OTA Allotment Management
If your contracts with OTAs include allotment clauses, Clock PMS can effectively help you manage this allotment. Through Clock PMS you can avoid the overbooking risk. It often occurs in the cases of high occupancy combined with OTA allotment remainders. In these situations, OTAs continue selling rooms and you can't stop their sales. The new OTA allotment management option enables you to update your availability by deducting the minimum number of rooms under the allotment contracts with the OTAs. The overbooking risk is eliminated and you are able to fulfil your allotment contracts. And through the additional blocked room option - 'cut off days', you can release blocked rooms for last minute sales.
How does the ОТА Allotment Management work?
- The ОТА Allotment Management uses the Events and Blocks feature.
- Create an event for each of the OTA companies and name it 'Allotment' for example. Set the allotment period to coincide with the validity period of the agreement with the respective ОТА.
- Enter the minimum number of rooms to be allotted under this agreement. In order to set one value for all the dates – click the pencil icon.
- Thus the blocks set will be deducted from the total availability and will not be sold through the channel manager or the WRS.
- Go to the settings of the channel manager. Having selected a company, choose the Allotment event in the company mapping next to the respective channel.
- All the bookings received and still not checked in (having the expected status) need to be updated with the Company Event/Block once.
- Now you can receive information on the block remainders. The information on the blocks and the related rooms remaining unsold can be found in the Occupancy Forecast report, as well as in the Block Pickups Report.
- All new arrivals will be referred to the respective room type block (when the event is set in the company mapping). This allows the block remainders and availability to be recalculated.
- Here is an example of the block functioning :
- You have 10 rooms
- You have signed an contract for minimum 2rooms with Booking.com and another one for minimum 2 rooms with Expedia.
- Create blocks for Booking.com and Expedia, each containing 2 rooms for the duration of the contracts.
- Now your availability is 6 rooms, which you can freely sell
- You sell 5 of them through your WRS.
- Your availability becomes 1 room. The information of 1 free room is submitted to all channels, including Booking.com and Expedia. Both channels continue to have 2 rooms for sale each, as this is their minimum as per the contract.
- You sell 1 room via Booking.com. This booking is automatically associated with the Booking.com block. As a result, your availability still remains 1 room. The room sold is part of the Booking.com block.
- You also sell 1 room through Expedia. Once again your availability remains 1 room. And the room sold is deducted from the Expedia block.
- When you sell 1 room through your WRS, the general availability becomes 0 rooms. The sales via all channels but Booking.com and Expedia stop.
- Booking.com and Expedia still have 1 room for sale each, part of the initially blocked rooms.
Note: In order to use Events and Blocks, you have to have this addon enabled. If not, please contact the Support Team of Clock Software.
Maximum Rooms Sold Simultaneously
We have added a new setting to the mapping of each rate - Max Rooms. Use it to restrict the quantity of rooms you send to each channel. Please note that this setting does not reflect the maximum rooms as a whole, but the maximum rooms at a given moment.
What does it mean? Here is an example showing the effect of this setting:
- If you have 5 free rooms, they will be sent as availability to all your channels for all of their products.
- When one of the sites sells 5 rooms, while another one sells 2 rooms, you will have overbooking of 2 rooms|.
- Through the new settings you can set the maximum of free rooms to be sent each channel, for example 2. So if you have 5 free rooms, 2 room availability will be sent to all channels. Returning to the above case, even when two channels sell all the rooms sent to them, you still won't have overbooking.
- When receiving bookings, the availability sent to the channels is recalculated. And in the case of resulting availability of 4 rooms, the channels will once again be reloaded with 2 rooms. However, if your your availability is only 1 or 0 rooms, the availability sent will become 1 or 0.
Find the exact balance depending on the size of your hotel.
Automatically Increased ('sale stopping') prices
Using the existing Adaptable Rates feature, you can set the system to automatically change the price levels depending on the availability of the related room type. Additionally, we have introduced zero and negative levels. This way you can send increased prices to the channels in the cases of zero availability. These increased prices should stop the bookings even from the channels still having allotment remainders. And through the negative levels you can set even higher 'sale stopping' prices for the dates when your hotel is overbooked.
How to apply this feature:
- Create new adaptable rates and associate them with the respective products, using the rate mappings.
- For the adaptable rates – set your standard prices to a channel as the baseline.
- Add a new level for 0 availability. Set the related rate to contain high ('sale stopping') prices.
- You can add one more level to contain even higher prices for the dates when your hotel is overbooked.
Automatic Overbooking Notifications
The new functionality checks the availability after each new booking received from the channel manager. If in the period of a booking, overbooking is detected, a To-Do is generated and an email is sent to the hotel. This way even if there is overbooking, the hotel is timely notified to take the necessary measures.
Other Changes to the Channel Manager
- Most of the channels do not support availability data for more than one year. Therefore data of availability and prices for only one year ahead is sent to the channel manager. This also leads to the decrease in mistakes and increases the exchange rate of updated data to the channels. We strongly recommend checking the channels still supporting data for more than 1 year and see whether they offer data only for one year ahead. We have notified the channels for this matter, however, it is still possible for some of them to sell as per the old data. This old data will not be updated automatically by the channel manager.
- The data sent to the channels is sorted out by products. Thus the errors occurring during update are specifically related to the respective products/channels. The error log is clearer and easier to read.
- We are gradually changing the error reporting system, so that you have comprehensive information on the state of each message being sent to the channels, including the errors that might occur.
- The additional services sold by channels are now reflected in the booking note to facilitate the charging process.
- Log of the changes to the settings of a channel. Click the 'Change Log' button to track all changes to the settings of a channel, rate and company mappings.
Others
- Printing Multiple Registration Cards. The new feature enables you to print registration cards of expected bookings in advance and save time during the check-in process. From 'Arrivals' (this feature is also available on all booking search screens) choose all bookings through the 'all' link and click the Registration Card button. Print all related registration cards. You can use this functionality to add a new registration card to each booking, if necessary. The newly added registration card is automatically completed with the data of the booking holder.
- Discounts. The discount calculation functionality has been improved.
- Discount Base. Now a discount can also be calculated on the basis of the revenue groups selected. This way you can offer discounts applicable to the room charges only or use different discounts for the room charges and meals.
- Charge. A new option for setting discounts has been introduced: as before, you can have a discount on the revenue group or alternatively you can apply it through a separate line for each revenue group. Doing the latter will decrease the revenue from each revenue group shown in the reports – nights, meals, etc.
- Languages – Public. A new feature allowing you to choose which languages (and related texts and descriptions) to make public on the WRS. Prior to the introduction of this option, a language would become public with its adding to the WRS. The public status of a language can be changed from the language list through the 'Make public' button.
- The concept of the OOS room status has been changed. It used to be valid for the whole day when applied. This prevented arrivals or departures for a OOS date. Now this status is similar to the checked-in status for a room. If a room is OOS on 05.07, you have only departures and no arrivals for this room on this date.
- Advanced Search – it contains two new columns – date and time of booking creation and date and time of booking cancellation.
- Automatic voiding of empty folios with guest's check-out. Additionally, no right is required for voiding these folios. This optimisation facilitates operations at the reception desk.
- Sorting. A new screen has been created for sorting out rooms, rates, charge templates, etc. Easier sorting through drag and drop functionality instead of entering values in various fields. To sort out a list, click its Sorting button above it.
- WRS – arrangement of charge templates. The sorting of the additional services on the WRS has been changed. If you wish to change their arrangement in your own way – use the new sorting option through the drag and drop option.
- Now guests' names appear in full in pre-arrival, post-departure and confirmation emails, e.g. 'Mr. John Smith', instead of 'Mr. Smith' only.
- Payment Report – a new filter for folio type added – deposit or no deposit one. This way it is easier to audit payments to and from folios.
- Charge Control Report – new period filters added: service date and transaction date filters. All filters can be used in combination. You can find charges referring to previous dates (service date), but changed today (revenue date).
- WRS - Worldpay integration. A new code has been added to guarantee that customers are redirected to the top of the Worldpay page.
- Change Log – now you can use it to track changes to the account settings such as fees, users and ParityRate settings.
- Housekeeping Live Monitor – already accessible even without additional rights (similarly to the Housekeeping Report)
- Export templates can work in a character set selected in advance
Fixes
- The number of rooms referring to the adaptable rate levels couldn't be updated.
- WRS – the new Non-Compatible Product Managament option did not work properly, when the min/max adults/children and min/max stay restrictions used .
- When moving a booking to an OOS status room, the OOS status check was not always accurate
- The bug with copying a rate plan and the related seasons has been fixed.
- A user's cashier closure report wrongly included the payments created by this user, but voided by another one. Also closed folios were present in the cashier closure report of the user having created them instead of the user having closed them.
- WRS - Map. The minimum price shown for each location was based on the prices of the non-compatible products too.
- Advanced Search – the red buttons for quick deletion of values have been fixed .