New Types of Rates: Occupancy Adaptable Rates
For the purposes of yield management, we have added a new type of rates to the Advanced Rates add-on.
The new type of rates enables the automatic change of room prices for each day. Thus a room price follows the occupancy level of the respective room type on this day.
Additionally, you can use the manual price option. It is very useful for the dates, when you know in advance there will be high demand and you would not like the automatic levels to be activated.
The rate setup is done through adding occupancy levels and corresponding rates. The rate for each occupancy level can be of any type:
- Basic rate
- Rate derived through the addition or subtraction of an amount or percentage to a standard rate
- Derived rate on the basis of another derived rate, etc.
In a similar way, the new type of occupancy adaptable rates can be used as a basis for derived rates or as a part of another adaptable rate.
The new type of rates works both for PMS and WBE, as well as for the OTA channels.
Setup
- On the Rate Plan Screen, click 'Add Rate' and select 'Occupancy Adaptable Rate'
- Fill in the standard fields of the rate
- Set different occupancy levels (these levels correlate to the number of free rooms of a given room type) :
- The lowest level (empty hotel) has automatically been added. Select a rate for it.
- Add the next levels, as, for each level, determine the corresponding number of free rooms and the rate to be used.
- Save the rate
Changes to the Basic Rate Amounts
The rate amounts building up an adaptable rate can be changed at any time. The adaptable rate amount will correspond to the current state of the related rate.
Manual Prices
If you fill in an amount for the adaptable rate itself (for a season or special day), the amount entered by you (a manually set price) takes priority and the adaptable rate do not apply. Thus you can define the price desired by you for dates and seasons when you expect high occupancy and stop the use of the occupancy adaptable rate in these cases.
Restrictions
Restrictions operate in a similar way to derived rates: The adaptable rates themselves can contain restrictions. The restrictions set up in the rates building up the adaptable rate are not taken into consideration.
New Occupancy Adaptable Rate with 4 occupancy levels named 'Yeld'.
Traditionally, there is high demand on 31 March. The price is overridden with 110 EUR.
Rate Availability screen: 'Yeld' rate - prices adapt to occupancy. The price for 31 March is an overridden one.
Users – New Unified Screens
The user screens in PMS, POS and GOLF have been redesigned, in order to be more convenient for larger organizations with more users.
The screens are the same, so that it is equally convenient to edit a user, regardless of the system used. All of the three systems have the following improvements:
Search for users by name. Filter by property. Fast deactivation.
- Search for users by name or full name
- Search for users with access to a certain account
- The inactive users are hidden and in grey. In order to see them, select the 'All' filter.
- For any user listed as a search result, a deactivation option has been added to the Edit button dropdown menu.
- In the Edit mode for a user, you can simultaneously grant (and see) the access rights to all systems.
- Now users can change their passwords on their own, without being granted the User: Create and Edit right.
Web Reservation System
Location Map
A new feature has been added to the WRS, enabling your guests to see all of your free units/apartments on a single interactive map. The map is to be found at the second step and it provides information on any unit (an image and description), as well as its price (minimum price). Choosing a certain unit, all of its rates (products) are visible and can be booked.
Setup:
- In 'Settings' – 'Locations', add the different locations, in which you have units.
- Depending on whether you use the WRS in the Room Type Mode or in the Room Mode, set the location for any room type or room (Room Type Edit Screen or Room Edit Screen).
- Add one more location map (e.g. 'Main Map'), which is to be used as a map of the markers of all units. Use a proper zoom, so that the map can comprise all locations and do not add a marker. Note: if added, you can remove this marker through a special button for that matter.
- In the 'Optional settings' - 'Location Map' section of the WRS, select this location (e.g. 'Main Map').
- 'Save'
All your properties on one interactive map.
Setup of Descriptions:
- In order to set the Name, Short and Long Description for any location, select 'Languages and Texts' - 'Location/Translation'
- Name and Short Description will be visible for any location.
- The Long Description is used in booking confirmations and can be used for the purposes of giving directions.
Show property location.
Use:
- The map is to be found on the second page and reflects the free units
- The filters for a room type or room in the deep links are taken into consideration when the map is generated and it only shows the units complying with the filters set.
- Any marker shows an image (of the unit type or unit), location name, short description of the location, as well as the minimum price of the rates in this location.
Calendar
- The calendar of the WRS has been redesigned and now it has an entirely responsive design. Thus it is much more convenient to use on mobile devices and integrate into the property website.
- For guests' convenience, a new option to view 12 or 24 days has been added.
Responsive Calendar.
Rates - Badge
If you wish to have a red badge shown next to a rate in the WRS such as: 'Best price', 'Hot', 'Discount', etc., you can use this new field.
Promotion Rate.
- Choose 'Settings' - 'Web Reservation System'.
- Select 'Choose rates' from 'Required settings' - 'Web Reservation System Rates' section.
- Fill in the 'Badge' next to the rates of your choosing. 'Save'.
Booking several rooms/beds at a time
As before, the Clock WRS enables a single client to book multiple beds. Up to now, however, you had to add each room individually. Such an approach is not very convenient for hotels where often several beds are sold at a time. For these cases, we have added a new feature through which you can add several rooms/beds at a time clicking only once. In order to use this feature: 'Settings' - 'Web Reservation System' – fill in the 'Max Rooms/Units with one click' field.
Note: This functionality is not compatible with the the option for selection of extra services in the WRS. If you use this feature, the extra service screen will be omitted.
Choose rooms/beds.
The free rooms shown now reflect the rooms currently selected by a guest.
The list of products (second step) now shows much clearer information on the booking options when booking multiple rooms/apartments/beds. The free rooms are decreased by the number of the rooms selected by a guest during the ongoing session. This way, if the guest chooses a certain apartment, it will not be listed for secondary selection. The number of the free rooms of this room type will also be decreased. This feature does not affect the rest of the users – they still can see the free rooms for which there is no actual booking and the ones selected during their session.
Channel Manager
Version Control During the Update
The update of the bookings received from the channels used to be automatically and unconditionally performed. However, this behaviour led to losses of data entered by the user. The new feature for Version Control allows the automatic update only when there is no prior editing of the booking by a user.
If a booking has been edited by a user, the update will not take place and a special To-Do is generated to notify the user of the conflict. Upon viewing the change log of the booking, as well as the booking received, the user can decide to force the update by clicking the Import button or to manually change the booking and ignore the notification received by clicking the Ignore button.
In order for this functionality to operate properly, the user selected in the settings of the channel manager has to be individual, not to be used for other operations and not to be changed.
Other
- A new screen has been added, on which the rate and availability data sent to the channel manager can be viewed. Note: This is not the last notification received, but the general picture of the rates and availability created on the basis of the notifications received regarding each new change to rate and availability data.
- The user selected in the channel manager now has to have the 'Charges: Edit, Transfer and Void' right, so that updates can automatically change the price, if necessary. The new right has automatically been added to all channel manager users.
Locations
- Booking Confirmation – a unit location map . The booking confirmation contains location maps of the units covered by the booking. Now there is an additional description to each map which can contain directions how guests can find your property. In order to fill in these directions, go to: 'Settings' - 'Languages and Texts' - 'Location/Translation' - 'Description' for the respective location.
- In order to set up different maps for your various units/apartments/villas: enter all locations first, then select each of them in the edit mode for the respective room type or room.
- For the units having only one location (hotels), the setup of the map to be shown in booking confirmations has been changed:
- The map can be set up by going to 'Settings' - 'Locations'.
- Then this map is necessary to be selected to be the main map in 'Settings' - 'Hotel Map'
Location Description or Directions.
Other Improvements
- Multiple To-Dos. Now it is possible to add multiple To-Dos for any booking or company. This way you will be able to manage the following tasks more effectively: wake-up calls; transfers; ticket purchase; deposit tracking; document issue, etc.
- Automatic closing of the folios of a booking with its checkout. Upon the checkout of a booking, you are prompted to allow the automatic closing of the folios of this booking. The user can choose whether to close or leave them open.
- Occupancy and Charges Report – a total section has been added
- Profile – on the profile screen, you can see the reviews (feedback) sent by the respective guest from the self service portal. The screen can be opened both from profile search results and the eye icon in the booking preview mode.
- Disabling Pre-Arrival/ Post-Departure Emails for a certain booking. On the booking registration screen, a check box has been added through which you can disable the automatic sending of emails. Still you have the option to manually send emails for this booking at a later stage: Booking Screen - 'Functions' - 'Pre-Arrival Email' or 'Post-Departure Email'
Authorize.net - Verified Merchant Seal.
The users operating with credit card payments through Authorize.net, can add the Verified Merchat Seal to their website and on the credit card data collection webpage. Such a practice increases the conversion rate and builds greater guests' trust in the payment system. In order to add Verified Merchant Seal:
- The property has to perform certain settings of their Authorize.net account. It is necessary to add the Clock PMS domain to your Authorize.net settings. The domain, at which the account is registered is of the following type: sky-eu1.clock-software.com, sky-us1.clock-software.com, sky-ap1.clock-software.com, etc. For more information on the settings, go to: Authorize.net site
- Upon making the necessary settings to the Authorize.net account, it is necessary to send the generated script to the support team of Clock Software to upload it.
- A new translation field has been added: 'Hotel Policy Description' for the purposes of Registration Cards. This way the policy and the description in registration cards can differ from the ones in booking confirmations.
- Import bookings from CSV file and Import guest profiles from CSV file - a new field 'State' has been added.
- Deposits – the calculation of deposits based on the number of nights has been improved, so that the rounding differences related to deposit schemes for 2 or more nights can be avoided.
- Room Calendar – buttons have been added for the previous and the next 7 days, as well as a Today button for the fast setting of the Room Calendar to show the data for the current date.
- First Day of Week. In the setup of each user, a new setting has been added enabling you to determine the first day of the week in the calendars: Saturday, Sunday or Monday.
- Bookings Created Today. A new menu item has been added to the 'Booking' menu for the quick searching for bookings created on the current date and their listing as results on the Advanced Search Screen
API
A new module to the Clock API - PMS API. The new API methods include:
Base API
- Service charges
- On-line channel for notifications related to bill settlement ( for example, it can be used for fiscalisation or on-line export to the accounting department).
PMS API
- Bookings: Search, Create and Update
- Booking – Default Folio (an easy way to find a folio and post the necessary charges to this folio)
- Bookings – All Folios
- Bookings related to a room – for quickly finding the bookings related to a room for a certain date
- Rate and Availability Request – this method is used by the WRS calendar, the Rate and Availability Screen of the PMS (with the calendar option) and for the export to channel managers.
- Product Request – this method is used for the WRS product page (the second page) and for the Rate and Availability Screen (without the calendar option).
- Related Nomenclature: Rooms, Room Types, Rates
Scenarios
With the newly added features of the API, apart from the export to the accounting department, now you it can be used for the following purposes :
- Fiscalisation
- Connection to PBX (for charging telephone calls made from hotel rooms)
- Connection to POS (charges to rooms)
- Connection to Building Management Sytems
- External WRS
- External Channel Manager
- External ITV system bills
- External Marketing Mailing
- Export of Documents in Real Time, etc.
You can find the full documentation here: Clock Base/PMS API
Please note that the access to Clock Base/PMS API is a paid option. For up-to-date price information, contact a Clock Software representative.
Fixes
- ParityRate и RezGain – in the export of availability data, now 1-day minimum stay is sent by default, so that the pre-set value, if any, can be resaved.
- The Meal Report already shows the room correctly, if there are re-allocations of bookings to other rooms
- New Booking – registration cards – the calendars did not work properly
- Custom SMTP – the test email screen used to close on its own
- Booking Advanced Search – the Created and the Cancelled filters did not reflect the hotel time zone correctly .
- Rates - Set multiple days – the currency field next to the derived rates has been removed