Adding a new rate plan to the rooms booking engine

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

• Pull a rate plan onto the booking engine
• Add the rate details
• Manage cross-sells
• Find extra rate plan tips and guides

To read the complete guide on the rooms booking engine, view our training article here

Pulling a rate plan from HART

Set up your rate plan in HART as normal. To view our guide on building rate plans in HART, click here

Once the rate plan is set up, open the Channel Tab, right-click and add an entry for HART WBE. 

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 of the rate plan you have published. 

Adding the rate details

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, and 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. 

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. 

Managing Extras /Cross Sells

You should already have your cross-sells set up, but if you need to add a new one, please read our guide here

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.

Extra Rate Plan Features

You may find these extra guides helpful to get the most out of using the rooms booking engine.

Setting up Promotional Codes

Using Hide Codes

Creating custom URL links to direct customers to specific rates or rooms