New features
Room Allocation - Cutting-Edge Allocation Intelligence
Take advantage of our new room allocation algorithm to maximize your occupancy or reduce peak hotel housekeeping workload. Here's what options you can choose to intelligently allocate room numbers to bookings:
- To take advantage of the new algorithms, change the setting "Allocation algorithm" by navigating to Settings->All Settings->Rooms->Rooms, and switch to the page "Other".
Here are all the algorithms, including the old ones:
- Ordered. An old algorithm. Allocates rooms to bookings in a sequential manner, depending on the set room sequence (sorting);
- Random. An old algorithm. Allocates rooms to bookings randomly;
- Dense. A new algorithm that allocates rooms to bookings to maximize occupancy by finding free rooms with the minimum number of free nights before arrival. This maximizes occupancy.
- Equal usage. A new algorithm that allocates rooms to bookings to evenly distribute the workload among all hotel rooms and avoid crowding where possible. This facilitates the work of Housekeeping and ensures that all rooms are cleaned upon guest arrival.
- Occupancy dependent. A new dynamic algorithm that combines the previous two and changes its behaviour depending on the hotel's occupancy. You set the hotel's occupancy percentage threshold at which the algorithm switches from "Equal usage" to “Dense”.
Example: For instance, if you set 70%, it means that if the hotel's occupancy for the booking period is 65%, the "Equal usage" allocation will be used, and if it is 75%, the “Dense” allocation will be used.
- When allocating a room for each booking, its period and the maximum occupancy of the hotel during that period are considered.
- If you allocate many bookings at once, the algorithm is determined for each booking and its period. This allows behaviour to adapt to the different occupancy, for example, on weekends and weekdays.
Important: Please note that for this model to function, your hotel's occupancy needs to be known in advance. This means the algorithm will work best if you book room types (not numbers) and allocate rooms to bookings a few days in advance or for each following day, for example.
Events - New Rights
We have added new permissions to finely regulate your employees' access to information and functions of the "Events" module. We have added two permissions for two categories of users:
- View Right (Event: Access). This right can be granted to employees who use event information. They will be able to use searches, Banquet Event Order, Function Sheet, and other printouts without being able to edit event data.
- Create and Edit Right (Event: Create or Edit). This right grants access to create new events and edit activities within them. Additionally, it covers sending emails related to the event.
- Users without any of the above rights will not have access to operational information related to events.
Important: The two new rights are automatically granted to all users who have company-related permissions. If necessary, review your employees' permissions and grant or revoke permissions for specific users.
Improvements
- Occupancy Forecast - When using the segmentation function, virtual rooms were included in the summary data for occupied rooms by segments. We determined that such information in totals is more confusing than helpful, so now only data for real rooms is displayed in the totals. There is no change in the sections of the room types themselves - data for the occupancy of the type, whether real or virtual, continues to be displayed as before.
- Meal Report (new) - Compact view - Print optimisation - In cases where a specific room number is allocated for a booking, the room type name will no longer be displayed.
Fixes
- Events - The link to the Event Confirmation App was incorrect when sending an email that was first generated and then saved as a document. The link is now correct, regardless of the sequence in which the document was created.
- Events - If the event had the status “Optional”, templates could not be used. When creating activities from a template, the activities are now created with the status of the event.
- Payment Autopilot - settings - In certain situations, the "Additional Amount" field required a value on the edit screen, even when it was not necessary.
- Printing the standard registration card form no longer adds an extra page.
- Closed Folios Report (new) - did not produce results when the "Include open/voided folios" option was enabled.
- Charges By Rooms Report (new) - The revenue category filter did not function correctly.
- Credit Card Transaction Report - In certain situations, the report could not be generated and would produce an error of the type 'Error: Request failed with status code 422 ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound...'.
Integrations
- LightSpeed POS L-Series - The End-of-day transfer in some cases processed periods not matching the financial day 24 hours period. The behaviour is enhanced to ensure matching of the reports between LightSpeed POS L-Series and Clock POS.