What's new in this section ?

SPECIAL FARES

Thanks to this panel you can define special prices depending on specific periods. Every special fare scheme can contain several entries for different periods. Neither of two fare entries can overlap in terms of dates. One or more special fare can be associated with a room group.

Special fare is applicable to all reservation days that fall into the period for which the fare is applicable.

Example:
If the special fare is defined for 20 - 30 March then in a reservation created for arrival: 19 March - leave: 21 March, the base fare for the first of those two nights (20-21) will be affected by the special fare. Except for limitation that you can set for Last Minute Promotion (see example below).

Using this fare definition you can define promotional Weekend Prices and Last Minute offers !

In response to the needs of our customers we increased the flexibility of defining special fares by enabling an option of changing free parameter in fare definition. This means that you can change not only the price but also for instance the requested percantage of downpayment or obligatory combination with some additional service.

Add new spacial fare - promotions, reductions, increases in peak season
Where?   Administration panel > Hotel offer > click on "+Add" on Special fares tab

To create a new special fare you will have to define the grouping reference, period(s) when applicable and rates with the appropiate sign ( + or - ).

If year after year or month after month, you will always apply one kind of special fare to a specific room group it's worth to define it in one grouping reference as the system will apply the defined rates without you touching it anymore after having defined periods and prices once. But if you wish, you can specify each special fare in a separate grouping reference - this will a bit more difficult to maintain but possible.

Modifying special fare - next year higher, why not?
Where?   Administration panel > Hotel offer > Special fares tab

Click on the special fare grouping reference from the list. Modify the fields of your choice and bear in mind that it will be applicable to all room groups with which the fare is associated. Save afterwards or click "Go back" in your browser if you want to discard changes.

Fields

Grouping reference - textbox - unique name for the special fares group, it is used only in administration panel.

Description - text area - administrative description of the special fare or some comments for other users.

Display as promotion - checkbox - when selected clients will see the room with fare entry highlighted as a promotion. It can be used to enhance the sell of specific rooms.

New !
Non-default, activated by client - selection of this field will make your special fare non-default, it will only be activated by client's choice. In other words if a customer finds a room via search panel, the promo will not be applied but if they go and click on a button representing promotion, it will be activated (so for example the price will be decreased). Thanks to this mechanism, you can apply different promotions to the same room group in an overlapping period of time, which previously was not possible. If the same customer then chooses another promo, the new one will be activated and the original one will be deactivated.

Attention! There is no problem to mark all promos as non-default but if you choose the other way arround and make all of the default, then the system will select one but you will not have any impact on which one it will be, so this is not advised.

Special fares - section - definition of the price change:

• Name - textbox - name of the fare entry which. Used only for administrative purpose. When defining a periodical fare, you can indicate name and period in the field "Spring promo'10"
  
• Start date - date field - day from which the fare entry is valid
• End date - date field - last day when which the fare entry is valid (if you want the fare to be valid "forever" enter a date very far in the future)
  New !
  
• Mn, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su - numerical fields - if your promo prices are dependent on the weekdays you can enter them here in the respective fields; otherwise you will use the below field of Price change in % or Price override.
  

• Last Minute day interval - numerical field - defines how many days from the day when a client is searching for a room is treated as "last minute" (e.g. 1 means offer will be valid for arrival only "today")
  
• Last Minute max days - numerical field - optional - if  from all days treated as "last minute" you want to apply the fare only for a certain number of days - define it here
  Example:
  If you want to define Last Minute valid for Spring 2011 only and treat it as arriving "today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow" with 10% reduction on 2 out of those nights, you will enter for instance:
  - Start Date: 21-03-2010
  - End Date: 22-06-2010
  - Last Minute day interval: 3
  - Last Minute max days: 2
  
  If you want the promo to be valid for 7 comming days and fare applicable to all nights, you'll exchange the last two values with 7 and 7 (or last leave empty).
  
  
• Sign - can be either plus or minus. Indicates whether fare entry represents an increase or decrease
  
• Price change in % - percentage value which represents the change of the base fare price of the room (enter without +/- nor the % symbol)
• Price override - price in absolute value (net if you have defined taxes separately in the system) that will be used instead of base fare in the period of this special fare
  Attention:
  It is a question of choice if you want to enter percentage or proce ovveride - both can lead you to the same final price. If you enter both - the override will be used.
  Price change in % gives you more flexibility to use the same special for multiple rooms and price configurations; price override on the other hand is a better choice if you care about neat rounding of your prices.

• Configuration change - this extra parameter gives the system an immense flexibility in terms of defining promotions! But it is only to be changed by the System provider on request as it is to be used with specificaly defined text commands for the system. Due to illimited ways in which a promotion can be defined - this field leaves an open door for changes of any types of multiple parameters
  
  Example:
  e.g. when this promotion is applicable - you can define here to ask for 100% of down-payment in plase of normally defined 30%

  Unless an expert - leave this field empty.
  

• New! Starts on [Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su] - checkbox - thanks to those fields you can define a promo, that will activate only for reservations that start on a certain day of the week. The promotion will be applied to all the nights of the reservation.
  

Localized promotion names - section - names displayed to the client when a room is presented in the search results. Works only if "display as promotion" checkbox is selected.

• Label - textbox - promotion name
• Language code - 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

Read also: PROMOTIONS - types and examples

What's new in this section ?

2011-04-26: Promos for reservations starting on a certain weekday
2011-03-28: Promos can be dependent on a certain weekday
2011-03-05: Special fares don't have to be default now, they can be activated on customer's selection
2010-08-20: Last minute offers
2010-08-20: Configuration change - possibility of complex promotions