EVENTS - PACKAGES

In Hotel-In system an event is a special activity organised by a hotel outside of the normal hotel offer (normal offer beeing accomodation and standard and additional services) always available and rather expected by the customers.

They are organised for a particular reason of making visit more interesting for customers and thus attracting more customers or encouraging them to come back.They can be organized with or without accomodation - as stand alone event. They can be unique - only on a specific date, or recurrent - multiple appearances of the same event defined in the system.

During business or leisure trips preferred types of activities may vary but everybody likes to have something fun to do in their free time.

Add new event
Where?   Administration panel > Events offer > click on "+Add" on Events tab

When you organise and want to promote your new event, you can add it to the system and promote it on two levels.

First is by adding this event to the system and enabling online search and reservations - the basic information about an event is its name, price, timing details and description.

The second level of promotion of an event is displaying it on your hotels page in a banner  - see details in section "Banner". From this moment the selected events will be visible whenever your hotel's site is viewed.

Modify event
Where?   Administration panel > Events offer > Events

To modify an event click on its name on the displayed list of all your events in the system. Save afterwards or click "Go back" in your browser if you want to discard changes. To remove an event completely from the list click on the button "x Delete".

Note: You should not modify event timing from 'specific days' or 'weekly' into 'specific hours' and the other way arround. Instead delete or decrease the quota of the previous event and create a new one with the desired timing.

Fields

Name - textbox - unique name used only inside the administration panel to identify an event

Quota - numerical textbox - maximum number of reservations that can be made on a specific event during its one appearance

Minimum participants (field requires activation on request) - in this field define minimum number of people to make the reservation while the price will be per person (to be used for events without accomodation)

Event price without accomodation or extras - numerical textbox - base price of the event. Excluding any accomodation, extra option or, taxes. If you wish to define final event price depending specifically on the room and including complete package - here enter 0 and define the price in field "Price override".

Tax - dropdown list -  to associate tax rate.

Timing - dropdown list - with four available options:

• Specific date - event will be avaliable for specific individually defined periods
• Weekly - event will be repeated every week for specific weekdays - easier way to define events that occur weekly.
• Specific hour - event will occur according to a schedule defined by you for specific hours; the schedule can repeat on a weekly basis. This feature is very exceptional in the systems of this kind.
• New ! Any - you only set the whole period when the even will be available + it's lenght and it is the customer whole will define the starring date
  

Length - numerical filed - activated only for type "Any" - defines duration of one booked event in number of nights

Category - dropdown list - grouping all available events into categories of your choice that you can define in event Categories panel. It's used for searching events on web page and in the admin panel.

New ! Downpayment - numerical field - overrides standard downpayment defined in module Booking engine configuration (in fieldu "reservation percentage fee") - will have effect only if in Configuration "Require payment" is activated. You can enter here % value or absolute value.

Avaliable online - checkbox - if checked an event is avaliable for clients for booking through the hotel web site, otherwise it can be booked via administration panel only.

Extra options - checkboxes - to enable some extra optional services to the participants of this specific event.

Localized names - section - names of event displayed on the hotel web page. It can be translated into all avaliable languages:

• Label - textbox - event name used for search / display
• Language - dropdown menu - to indicate in what language version on your internet site this name will be used
• Delete? - checkbox - check and save if you wish to delate a localized name

Event days - section - to define the periods when this event will be available.

• start date - date field - the first date when event is avaliable
• end date - date field -  the day when the event ends

1* - for "specific date" timing - each appearance of the event has to be defined in a separate row.

2* - for "weekly" timing - only the whole duration of the period when an event will be appearing needs to be defined - together with checking the weekdays of appearance:

• weekdays - checkboxes - only avaliable when event timing is set to "weekly". In such case it allows you to specify which days of the week are included in one appearance of the event. The event will be repeated each week from start until end date.
  

*3 - for timing "any" - define only start end end date of availability of the event and the customer will decine when they want to book it.

*4 - for timing "specific hours"-  you will need to define a schedule which will appear in a form of grid when choosing this timing option. To define an event - click on one field representing the day and hour of your choice or click on the starting hour and drag untill the ending hour of your event. Upon right-clicking you can change the price for this occurance of the event or you can delete the chosen occurance.

If you plan accomodation it will always have to cover all nights inbetween event days - thus there will be always one night less than the number of event days

Image - upload facility - allows to upload an image which will appear next to event name on the banner on your internet page.

Room groups participating (optional) - section - to add room groups that can be booked for this event if its provided with accomodation - when stand alone event - leave this section empty:

• Room group - dropdown list - to choose which room are associated to the event. Even though more than one group will be enabled, one event reservation will book only one room.
• Participants - numerical field - it is an equivalent of price configuration in room groups module, defines the price depending on the number of people booking it (therefore you will define multiple prices for one room in multiple rows)
  
• Price override - New ! - numerical field - alternatively with "Price reduction in %" - if you want to define price of room in the package independently of its base fare, enter it here; if you fill "Participants", prices will be valid for the number of people indicated in respective rows; but if you leave them empty, the new price will be valid for any number of people making the reservation. If field "Event price without ..." contains 0, it means that the price that you just defined in override is the final price of the package, otherwise the values from those two fields will be added
• Room price reduction in % - numerical field - alternatively with "Price override" - discount on the room base fare that you'll offer when booking in an even package; this field is desactivated upon definin Price override"
  
• Proposed choice - radio button - at the end of the rooms definition indicate which room you propose to be used for the first display - if you choose the cheapest room from those participating then the first displayed price will be the lowest. But you can chose any other room.
  

Localized description for results display - section -  the most important points about the event displayed in the search results list after a customer makes a query on events:

• Language - dropdown menu - to indicate in what language version on your internet site this description will be used
• Description - text area - to describe the event highlights
  
• Delete? - checkbox - check and save if you wish to delate a localized name

Localized full description - section - represents complete description which is displayed to the client on the hotel web page when one event is already selected.Make sure that this description is exhaustive and attracts new customers. It can be translated to all avaliable languages:

• see above for a detailed description of the fields (here - the 'description' text area should be filled with more information)

Gallery images - upload facility - if you wish to add several images to appear at client's page, use this upload. After clicking on gallery icon under the main foto on search results page - customers will be able to review the images. All major image formats are accepted including gif, jpeg, png.

See also: Promotional packages - examples

What's new in this section:

2010-10-15: Price override - independent from room base fare
2010-10-05: Overriding stadard downpayment in packages
2010-09-30: New timing - "Any" - client chooses the date, in the system oyu define only duration
2010-08-25: You define the  minimum number of participants that can book the event
2010-03-16: Events created in Hotel-In can be booked for specific hours now
2010-01-30: Hotel-In is enriched with an event reservation panel