Configuring the Rooms Web Booking Engine

By the end of this training article you will be able to:

• Add Basic Configurations & Set Colours
• Add the Logo and optional background
• Add book direct information
• Set master T&C’s
• Sync Rooms and update room details
• Sync rate plans
• Configure rate details
• Exclude Cross sell items

Please note, you will need to have signed up for the HART Room Engine Module prior to starting setup. Please contact the HART support team if you wish to find out more about our Rooms Engine. 

Initial Engine Configuration

Log into cloud reservations and navigate to Hotel > Configuration. You are going to initially set up the following tabs.

• Colours: In the bottom part where it says New WBE Colours, add a new record and choose your colours for different elements of the engine. 
• Location: Put in the link to google maps location and the address of your hotel which will display on the engine. You can get the google maps link by googling your hotel and then clicking on Maps in the search results. Press the share button and use the link this generates. 
• Banner Text: You can put 3 book direct messages in your header. These should be no more than 3 words to work best.
• Check-in/Out Times: This is where you put the check-in and out times which will show in the booking bar. Unless you are using the self-catering engine, you should always select Standard as the product type here.

Once you have set these up you will be able to view your booking engine on the link supplied. 

The below boxes show you where the banner text and hotel information will appear on the engine. 

Adding your Hotel Logo & Background

Navigate to Hotel > Pictures > Hotel Logo and upload the logo for your property. The logo should be kept small, ideally no larger than 300px wide.

Many people opt to keep the background of the booking engine white. If you do however have a pattern as part of your branding you may wish to upload this to the engine. 

You can do this by navigating to  Hotel > Pictures > New WBE Background. The background should be no larger than 1920 px wide.

Banner Summary Overview

Next, navigate to Hotel > Templates > Banner Summary Overview.  Here you can insert any conversion text you wish to highlight the book direct benefits. It will come up when you click the Read more option in the engine header. Example below.

Setting your T&C’s

Further on in this guide we will go through how you can set custom T&C’s per rate plan, but first, you will need to navigate to Hotel > Templates > Rooms Terms & Conditions and put in your default terms and conditions. These show on the billing page at the end of the booking process. 

Creating and Configuring Room Types

Next, we are going to sync your bedrooms to the booking engine, and add images, text and room features to the engine. 

Firstly, navigate to Reservations > Rooms > Room Types. Press the Refresh button at the top of the page to pull all your room types across from HART if they are not there already. 

In this screen, you are able to edit the number of adults, children and a max total pax per room. For example, you may fill in 2 adults, 2 children but a max of 3. This would mean any combination of adults and children up to 3 pax for that room type. 

Save any changes. 

Navigate to Reservations > Rooms > Room Details and select the room type you wish to add information to first. 

• Top Box: This is where you put the advanced description and full information on the room. 
• Short Description: short sentence to introduce the room
• Room Features: This is where you set the key features of the room along with a corresponding icon.

To add the room features, click Add Record, then the Icon Legend button.  The Icon legend will allow you to browse all the loaded icons. Once you have found the icon you require, you can click in the feature Icon cell and find the corresponding icon name. Add a short description in the Feature Label cell.

Save your changes and repeat for each room type. 

To load your images, go to Hotel > Pictures > Room Gallery and upload the gallery of images for each room type.

Linking Rate Plans to the Booking Engine

Navigate to your rate plan in HART, and under the Channel tab, right-click and add an entry for HART WBE. If you are setting up a totally new rate, please read our guide on setting up a rate plan. 

A window will pop up asking you to synchronize your rate plan, but just leave the window open for now and navigate back to cloud reservations. 

Go to Reservations > Rates > Rate Plans and press the Refresh button at the top of the page. This will pull through and new rate plans ready for you to start configuring. 

Back in HART, in the synchronisation window, run a sync the rate plan you have published. 

Configuring the Rate Plan on the Engine 

In Cloud Reservations, stay in the Rate Screen to do some additional configuration.

• ID: Automatically generated by the system.
• Order: you are able to configure which rate plans you would like to show first.
• Code: This is the rate plan code from HART. Non configurable.
• Name: The rate plan name pulled from HART. You can edit this
• Min: Minimum length of stay if applicable 
• Max: Maximum length of stay if applicable
• Lead: Lead time if applicable
• Conf: Which confirmation you are linking to this plan (Hotel > Templates > Room Confirmations)
• Package: Automatically populated from HART
• Unit: Only applicable if your hotel has units set up in HART
• PMS ID: The ID of the rate plan pulled from HART
• A: Untick to make the rate plan inactive while you configure. Tick to make active
• H: Hide rate. Used in conjunction with hidden rate plans and link codes
• C: Tick if this rate allows children

Make any tweaks in this section and then press Save Changes at the top of the screen. 

Making sure you have the correct rate plan selected, we are now going to add information to the three highlighted tabs: Payment, Checkout Texts, Rate Features. 

Payment Tab. This is where you select the payment rule for the rate plan. Add a new entry and fill in the detail.

• Lead Time: How far in advance you take payment. I.e. if you always take payment then you would put a long lead time of 120 weeks. 
• Deposit %: If you would like to deposit to be a percentage of the total rate, then fill this field in. i.e. 50% deposit
• Deposit amount: If you would like the deposit to be a fixed amount, fill this one in. I.e., £100 per booking. 

You can have multiple payment options here. For example, you may take a 25% deposit if the booking is made more than 6 weeks in advance of the stay date, but 100% if the booking is in less than 6 weeks’ time.

Press the Save button just above the tab to save your changes. 

Check out Texts Tab top screen. This is where you can set custom Terms and Conditions for each rate plan. If left blank then it will use the default one. Make sure you have selected the rate plan from the drop-down box.

Check out CTA is an optional extra marketing tool, where you can put a short piece of copy which will display just over the final book now button to help convert the booking. 

Rate Details: This is where you can add the rate features for the rate plan along with icons. This is done in the same way as for the room features. 

Save you changes. 

Finally, Navigate to Reservations > Rates > Rate Details and select the rate plan you have just configured from the drop-down at the top. 

The top box is where you put the full rate details, and the Short Description box is where you put the brief description which is shown below when the rate screen first loads. 

Save your changes. 

Exclude cross-sell items

You are now ready to start setting you your extra cross-sell items. Please read our guide below on how to set these up. 

Setting up Cross-Sells

Cross-sells can be excluded by rate plan. So if you have a package which is DBB you may wish to exclude a 3-course fixed-price dinner extra from this package. 

In Reservations > Rates > Rate Plans, select the rate plan you are editing and press the Extras tab. Add a new record, and then select the extra you wish to exclude from the drop-down list. Keep doing this until you have added all the ones you wish to do and then save your changes.