Managing Availability and Rates
There are three ways to manage availability and Rates using Room Types and Rate Plan combinations. Which method or methods you choose will depend on the number of room types you have, your Rates and the number of channels you have set up. Think about how many rooms you want available online in each channel, the rates you want to offer and if you want to offer any promotions or packages. Then, decide how you want to manage your online availability and rates. These considerations will shape Room Type and Rate Plan allocations and your online distribution plan. See Best Practices for using GDS and OTA
There are three ways to manage availability and rates to each specific channel and each can be used alone or in combination to accomplish different things. These functions will help you to control which rooms you have available online, the number of rooms you offer online and the rates allocated to the Room Types. See examples below.
- Create unique Room Types: This method is best used for limiting the number of Rooms you have available for sale in an online channel. Since individual Rooms are assigned to a Room Type, you can control the number of Rooms available online by creating a unique Room Type with a limited number of Rooms assigned and that is only allocated to a specific channel. For Example, A QUEEN Room Type has 20 Rooms assigned to it. Create another Room Type just for online channels like QUEENGDS and then assign 10 of the 20 Rooms to that Room Type. Then, allocate QUEENGDS to the corresponding Channel and only those 10 rooms that you have assigned will be available online. See Room Types
- Create unique Rate Plans: This method allows you to create specific Rates that will only be allocated to distribution like QUEENGDS. This Rate Plan can then be allocated to a current Room Type or a unique Room Type you have created.For example: You have already allocated the QUEEN Room Type to an online channel, but you would like to have a completely separate and unique rate for the QUEEN Room Type in online distribution. Create the Rate in Default Rates and then Allocate the new Rate to your current Queen Room Type. See Default Rates
- Use "Closed to Arrival" setting in your Rate Plan: To close out rooms completely for a specific day of the week, a busy weekend, etc. you can use the "closed to arrival" in Manage Rates. The closed to Arrival setting closes availability for the Room Type that has the Rate Plan allocated. If you have a unique Rate plan allocated only in one channel, then it will effectively close availabity for that Room Type in that Channel. If you close arrival to a Rate that is allocated to a Room Type in multiple channels then it will closely availabiilty to ALL allocations using that Rate Plan in each channel. For Example, A QUEEN Rate Plan is allocated to all of your QUEEN Room Types in all channels. You know that you will be sold out for Labor Day Weekend with bookings by regular customers and want to limit the number of Rooms available online. You decide to close all of your Queen Rooms to online availability. Go to Manage Rates and use "close to arrival" for those dates on the QUEEN Rate Plan and it will close availability for the QUEEN on those dates.See Manage Rates
You can add multiple Rates to a single Room Type in each Agent. There can be multiple Rate Plans assigned to one Room Type and a Room Type can be allocated to multiple channels. For example, If you wanted to offer the same NSK (non smoking king) Room Type at 3 different rates (i.e., Rack, AAA, and COR), then you would need to the Room Type 3 times each with the separate and corresponding Rate attached. One for the RACK, one for the AAA, and one for a COR rate. This would allow your guest to choose from these 3 rates when booking the NSK rooms. See examples below. See Add Room Type Allocations.
Rate Plan Examples
Example 1
Property A has 50 Rooms categorized and assigned to 3 Room Types (KING, QUEEN and SINGLE) and 3 Rate Plans (KING, QUEEN, SINGLE). They sell online through their website and want all of their Rooms available online at their current Rates.They also want to offer a Package with a special called Weekend Escape (ESCAPE) for the KING Room at a different Rate and for only two months. (The Rates and availability dates of the Package are set up in the package itself. See Packages) Notice that the King Room Type is allocated twice, but with different Rate Plans.
To do this, they would allocate their current Room Types and Rate Plans to Master Agent - Agent BC like this:
| Queen with a view [QUEEN] | QUEEN rate [QUEEN] |
| Large Room with 1 King Bed [KING] | KING rate [KING] |
| Large Room with 1 King Bed [KING] | Weekend ESCAPE [ESCAPE] |
| 2 Single Beds [SINGLE] | SINGLE rate [SINGLE] |
Example 2
Property B has 15 very unique Rooms, each with a different Rate, so they have set up 15 Room Types and 15 Rate Plans. They already sell their Rooms on their website so have allocated all of the Room Types and Rate Plans in Agent BC as shown in Example 1. They already sell online through their website and GDS, but have decided to add two OTA Contract Rates Programs to their online distribution and need to allocate Room Types and Rate Plans. Since each Room Type only has 1 Room assigned, they want to be careful about offering all of them online so they decide to only sell 10 of these Rooms online,
To do this, they would allocate the 10 Room Types and Rate Plans to Master Agent - Agent WR like this:
(Note: this is an abbreviated list, it would have 10 lines with the 10 Room Types.
When you add Room Type/Rate Plan allocation to a channel, all of the rooms assigned to that Room Type will be available at the Rate Plan you have assigned to it.
| Oceanside (OCEAN) | OCEAN rate [OCEAN] |
| Sunset [SUNSET] | SUNSET rate [SUNSET] |
| Suite with 2 Bedrooms [SUITE] | SUITE rate [SUITE] |
| Single with 2 Twins [SINGLE] | SINGLE rate [SINGLE] |
EXAMPLE 3
Property C has a 25 Rooms and 5 unique Suites. The 25 Rooms are categorized into 4 Room Types (KING, QUEEN, QUEEN2 and SINGLE), the Suites are categorized and assigned to 2 Room Types (1BDRSUITE and 2BDRSUITE)
They already sell their Rooms on their website and GDS so have allocated all of the Room Types and Rate Plans in Agent BC and Agent WR as shown in Example 1 and Example 2. They have decided to add two Contract Rate Programs to their online distribution portfolio and need to allocate Room Types and Rate Plans.
The first consideration is that a requirement of OTA Contract Rate Programs is that all availability and rates remain in parity, meaning that they are all offered the same availability and rates. In addition, any agreed upon discounted rates must be based on the rates allocated to GDS in the WR channel. Therefore, if you have agreed to an 18% discounted Rate, it must reflect 18% discount off of your "general published rates" or GDS in the WR Channel. For example, you agree to sell rooms at an 18% discount to 1 OTA Channel. This discount is 18% off of the Rates published in GDS not the Rates shown on your website or in the Front Desk. To do this, they make sure the same allocations are in both the GDS and OTA channel and then they enter -18% in the Rate Loading of the OTA Channel. Since OTA Channel is discounting from the same Room Types allocated it GDS.
At this point, they decide to create unique Rates just for GDS and OTA distribution, but using the same Room Types. The new Rate Plans are called QUEENGDS, KINGGDS and so on. Then, they allocate those new Rate Plans to their current Room Types, first in Agent WR (GDS) and then for each Net Rate Agent (OTA's). Therefore, the allocations in both channels look like this:
To do this, they would allocate the 10 Room Types and Rate Plans to Master Agent - Agent WR like this:
| Queen with a view [QUEEN] | QUEEN GDS rate [QUEENGDS] |
| Queen with a view [QUEEN2] | QUEEN2 GDS rate [QUEEN2GDS] |
| Large Room with 1 King Bed [KING] | KING GDS rate [KINGGDS] |
| 2 Single Beds [SINGLE] | SINGLE GDS rate [SINGLEGDS] |
| 1BDR Suite [1BDRSUITE] | 1BDR SUITE GDS rate [1BDRSUITEGDS] |
| 2BDR Suite [2BDRSUITE] | 2BDR SUITE GDS rate [2BDRSUITEGDS] |
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