Self Service Portal
A new feature has been added to the Self Service Portal, allowing guests to guarantee their bookings through an online payment or credit card data collection in a similar way to the web reservation system. The guarantee methods depend on the guarantee policy selected in the guest's booking.
Here are some cases solved through the new feature:
Online Guarantee for Offline Bookings
If a client of yours makes a booking over the phone or by email, upon receiving the booking confirmation email, the same can access the Self Service Portal and select the Guarantee your booking link.
Depending on the guarantee methods selected by you, the guest can either pay a deposit online or provide their credit card data. Similarly to the Web Reservation System, on the Self Service Portal, the guest can familiarize themselves with the hotel policy and the terms of the guarantee method.
When the booking is successfully guaranteed, a new booking confirmation email is received.
In order to explain the necessary steps of the guarantee method, you can use the custom text of the confirmation email, describing how a guest can guarantee their booking.
Two-Step Guarantee
The cases referring to guarantee methods requiring two payments, can also be solved through the new functionality. For example, if when making a booking, 30% of the amount is required, and the remaining 70% - 15 days before arrival, here is the following solution:
- The first 30% is collected through a WRS deposit payment or following the steps of the above case.
- Upon receiving the first guarantee, you should change the guarantee policy in the booking for another one requiring the payment of the remaining 70%. To-Dos can help you perform this task easily and efficiently.
- Through a pre-arrival email you can remind the guest that the same needs to pay the remaining amount through the Self Service Portal 15 days before arrival, as you can also describe the steps.
- The client accesses the Self Service Portal, where a payment of 70% of the booking amount is required.
Bookings Guaranteed Shortly Before Arrival
In the cases when you accept bookings which are not guaranteed at first, however, you would like these bookings to be guaranteed at least 3 days before arrival, the steps of the above case can be used again:
- On the WRS, you have a policy not requiring a guarantee at first
- Upon receiving the booking, you change the guarantee policy
- Through a pre-arrival email you remind the guest of the necessary guarantee 3 days before arrival
- The client guarantees through a payment or credit card.
You can also see the new feature for bookings whose period to be guaranteed has expired, which will assist you with the guarantee process management.
PMS
- Information on bookings whose period to be guaranteed has expired.
- In the Bookings Awaiting Guarantee Report, a new 'Only expired' filter has been added.
- Through this filter, you can see only the bookings whose period to be guaranteed has expired.
- In order to receive this information, you should set up a number of days in each guarantee policy, showing the period after the creation of a booking or the period before arrival within which the booking is to be guaranteed.
- The bookings not guaranteed within the specified period are treated as expired and are included in the report.
- Marketing Channel and Marketing Segment. Now you can specify how these fields are to be automatically filled in on a booking, when receiving bookings from the WRS, the Channel Manager or TripAdvisor.
- The necessary settings of these fields for the WRS can be done from the following screen - 'Web' - 'Settings - Web Reservation System'
- For ParityRate bookings – you can choose different Channel and Segment for each of the tourist portals you work with. The settings are done in the 'Company map' section when going to 'Channels' - 'Parity Rate channel settings'
- For TripAdvisor bookings – from the setting screen - 'Web' - 'Trip Connect by Trip Advisor'
- New Report - Charge Summary D-M-Y Report. The report is similar to the Charge Summary Report, however, it provides information by Day, Month to day, Year to day. It also lists this data from the previous year, as well as percent difference for each of the columns.
- New Report - Bookings Day-By-Day Report. For the period selected, this report provides multiple details regarding each of the hotel bookings. Through the use of an additional parameter, this report can be set to show the departures for a certain date. It is also possible to use this detailed report for the creation of your own custom report in Excel showing the number of nights and guests by dates and other filters.
- Derived Rates – Now a derived rate can be used as a basis for the creation of another derived rate. Thus you can have more flexible and dynamic pricing and apply a greater range of yield management practices.
- More Compact Folio Printout Layout. The new 'Compact' printout replaces the old 'Group' printout and gives a folio printout even more compact layout.
- Package Elements can now be presented in one line on folio printouts.
- Package Elements and all other charges now have a new field: 'Print Text', as it is used for the purposes of folio printouts. If this charge field is filled in, it appears on folio printouts, and if not, the old field is used.
- The new field is to be filled in when posting or editing a charge and it can be set in rates (room charges), package elements, city tax and charge templates.
- The 'Compact' folio printout groups all the charges having the same description into one line, thus the packages can be gathered in the Hotel Services line, and the rest of the charges can appear with their respective descriptions.
- Registration Cards– Improved Registration Card Search
- The "Add registration card" button on the booking screen has new options
- You can directly choose among the registration cards linked to the last booking belonging to a profile
- You can also search for registration cards by name, address, telephone or email
- You can add a registration card containing the data from the booking itself
- You can add an empty registration card
- Rate and Availability Screen – Improved Rate Selection. The list of rates, which is usually very long and inconvenient to work with, has been removed. And now you can choose a room type or rate plans. Thus the results appear along the whole width of the screen.
- On the Booking Advanced Search screen, a new 'Status' column has been added.
- The 'Import bookings from CSV file” feature can now import manual prices (one or multiple ones), as well as multiple meals. See the example file for more information.
- Google Analytics – new information – clients can use their own tracking code. Clients can send their own tracking code (from their own Google Analytics account or another web tracking product), which we will place in their WRS. As usual, the service is charged as a service case.
- Advanced Tracking Code. This new feature enables the use of a tracking code in the WRS which provides information on a booking itself. Such codes are the ecommerce tracking codes, which, apart from the information on the visited pages, also provide information on the booking amount or the number of nights. The setting of the new advanced tracking code is done by the development department of Clock Software upon the provision of the script source on the client side, along with a list of the WRS pages, where this code is to be placed. This service is charged on the basis of the development time used, as it usually takes about an hour.
Fixes
- The import of bookings from ParityRate led to the booking doubling in some cases
- On the booking edit screen, the stay was not calculated correctly when there was switching between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time, in which case the days are not 24 hours long.
- When sending a folio by email, the PDF file had no extension.