Marketing Segments and Their Transfer from the Rate, Company, Agents and Event to the Booking
We have completed the changes to the way Marketing Segments are sent to bookings from the various locations where these Marketing Segments have been set up ( Companies/Agents, Rates, Events, WRS settings, Channel Manager settings, and settings of New Booking screen default values).
For each new booking, Marketing Segments are taken following a unified model regardless of whether the booking is manually made, comes from the WRS or the Channel Manager.
The same refers to the New Booking screen itself. Upon a change to any of the fields (Rate, Company, Agent, Event), Marketing Segments are updated on the the screen as per the mentioned model.
Here is the new method of determining Marketing Segments upon booking creation:
Each of the Marketing Segments (source, channel, segment) is searched for in an order described below. If the next level has a value – it replaces the one already found. If there is no value – the already found one remains:
- If it is a WRS booking – the field values are taken from the Default WRS settings
- If it is a Channel Manager booking – the field values are taken from the Default Channel Manager settings. Please note that there is also a change to the settings here. See below.
- If it is a booking made by a user – the field values are taken from the New Booking screen default values
- Afterwards:
- Rates – the set field values override the previously found ones
- Company - the set field values override the previously found ones
- Agent - the set field values override the previously found ones
- Event - the set field values override the previously found ones
In other words, the order is as follows: Rate, Company, Agent, Event, as the last ones are most important.
There is a change to the settings of the channel manager. The settings of Marketing Segments are removed from the lines of the company map and are added as default settings for the channel manager.
If you have used various segments for each of the OTA companies, now you will have to make a small change, so that the transfer of Marketing Segments can continue the way it was.
More specifically, you will need to transfer the data of segments from the Company Map to the Companies (Agents) themselves.
Here is an example of a booking coming from a channel manager, namely the Booking.com channel, with a BB rate.
- In the channel manager, the default settings are: Marketing channel: ОТА; Marketing source: Online
- In the BB rate, the default setting is: Marketing segment: Individual
- In the Booking.com, the default setting is Marketing channel: Booking.com
- The booking will be created with: Marketing channel: Booking.com; Marketing source: Online; Marketing segment: Individual
Other changes:
Creation/copy of multiple bookings. We have changed the whole functionality, so that it can support the creation or copy of much more bookings at a time. Still, we have added a limitation to the number of bookings that can be created at a time to prevent user mistakes. The limitation is the capacity of the room type selected.
We have added a new screen where you can see the task status. Upon the booking creation, you can choose if you would like to open and edit them, use the Advance Search to open them or simply close the screen.
- Housekeeping tasks – automated assignment. We have redesigned the logic behind the automated assignment of housekeeping tasks. In our opinion, this logic is the optimal one.
We would like to remind you of the criteria used for the automated assignment of housekeeping tasks. The idea is that tasks should be equally distributed (depending on the number of credits for each task) while minimising the movement of chambermaids among the floors or the bodies of the hotel (the housekeeping sector of each room is taken into consideration). - Customer Cost Centre – a new field on the Folio, Booking and Event screens.
Use the new field to enter information on the booking or the event screen which is then to be transferred to the folio and be present in the printouts.
The goal is for the customer to get feedback in relation to their accounting and be able to make a connection between the costs made for hotel services and their own codes, identifiers, accounts, projects, etc. - We have changed the Reports screen to show the new ledgers (Ledgers v2) and hide the old ones.
On the Reports screen, the following reports have been updated to their new version: Trial balance, Guest Ledger, Company Ledger, Deposit Ledger.
In the Obsolete Versions section, you can find the old report versions: Trial Balance, Guest Ledger, Deposit Ledger. - Accounts Receivable Report. To make the report clearer and easier for comparison with the data from the other reports (Trial balance, Guest Ledger, Company Ledger), we have added a section to it showing the closed, but OVERPAID folios, i.e. the negative balance ones.
- In the ledgers (Trial balance, Guest Ledger, Company Ledger), we have made the Accounts Receivable column clearer.
The column values now also include the values of the payments from the closed folios. Before they appeared in a separate column, and, as a result, it was very difficult to compare the values between the Ledgers and the Accounts Receivable Report. - Booking Pre-Authorization Report – to the status filter, we have added the following statuses: check-in, expected, checked-out
- The Agent has been added to the booking requirements for a new booking.
In particular, similarly to the way you can make a new booking with the selected Company without the guest contact details, now you can make a booking with the selected Agent without any other contact information. - In the Gift Voucher Webshop, we have added the State field.
- Email address field validation changed. Now it supports UTF characters in the email address.
- We have optimised the functioning speed of some screens: POS and charging; Closure screen; Room settings screen; Payment screen for folios of private customers;
Channel Managers
- RoomCloud – now you can process Company info sent with bookings.To this end, you need to change the Channel Manager's settings. If not done, it will continue working as before. Here is how the new setting will work.
- In the RoomCloud settings section, click the "Switch to Agent and Company mapping (v2)" link. As a result:
- A new map will appear - Agent map (the old Company map will disappear). The data entered in it will be transferred to the Agent field in the booking. This way the bookings from Booking.com will be reflected in the Agent field instead of the Company field as before.
- If, in the received XML, there is data of the company related to the booking (e.g. Bosch), the system will look for it by the received VAT/Tax number and enter it into the Company field of the booking, if such a company is found.
- If not found by the VAT number, there is another way for the system to look for this company – based on the CompanyId field from the XML. The system looks for a company with the same code in the Channel manager search code field. This field is designed to be used for the manual mapping of companies to the Channel Manager, when bookings are received without a VAT/Tax number.
- If this company search method also doesn't produce a result, a To-Do is created and the booking is imported without a Company.
- In addition, for the Agent map, you can use the option for transferring charges for each of the OTA channels (Agents). For each of them, you can decide for the charges: not to be transferred; to be transferred to the Agent or to a Company, if present in the booking.
- ParityRate – now the OTA channel info can be entered into the Agent field instead of the Company field. ParityRate cannot send info of the company, as RoomCloud can. Here the change is small. In the Company map, you can select in which field the OTA channel sending the booking to be entered into: the Company field of the booking or the Agent field of the booking. It is not necessary to change anything, if you wish to preserve the current way of the feature functioning.
- SiteMainder/Availpro/OTA – At present, when info of a booking with an attached Agent is received, the system will automatically create this Agent, if no other agent with the same IATA or Tax number exists. It is, however, possible for another agent under the same name to exist, but having a different Tax number, for example. In this case, both agents have absolutely the same names and it is very difficult to distinguish them. So now the new agent is created with a new branch. This way you can easily differentiate them and name the branches of the Agents differently when their IATA numbers differ, but their names don't.
- SiteMinder/Availpro/OTA – we have solved an issue reported by some users concerning the fact that in certain cases the newly added rates are not sent with a full update to the channel.
- SiteMinder – now with the import of bookings, one more remark received in the XML is processed.
- RoomCloud and ParityRate – a bug fixed which occurred during the synchronization of the availability and prices, if there are mappings of one and the same rate in Clock PMS+ to several products in the Channel Manager. In such a situation, if there is a problem with one of the products, while the other one passes without any issues, the mechanism for resending the requests for the problematic product didn't work. The issue has been fixed, but please pay attention to the following peculiarity: now if one of the products shows errors, the requests for both products will be repeated. As a result, the communication with the channel manager will be delayed. We would like to remind you that all errors sent by the Channel Manager should carefully be examined and reasons for the errors – removed in a timely manner.
Fixes:
- WRS – the booking enquiry page was not responsive
- Channel Managers – we forbade the deletion of room types and rooms participating in maps of the channel managers as this resulted in errors.
- In case of Event cancellation, if the user didn't have the 'Folio: Void' right and tried to tick the Void Valid Folios checkbox, the app sent ambiguous error
- POS – a bill couldn't be voided, if there was a surcharge set in the account
- The VOID link for a transferred payment didn't work.
- Accounts Receivable Report - Summary – didn't properly account for Days overdue
- Payment with a Gift Voucher via the WRS, when in an iframe integration, it didn't work properly.
- When making a booking by Block – the rate from the Block didn't transfer to the booking
- Errors arising from the deletion of a room type didn't show on the screen.
Integrations:
- Italy Export - negative quantity not allowed in XML
- Italy Export – the ZIP code should be '00000' for non-resident companies
- Lightspeed – The transferred revenue is incomplete when LiteServer used
- 4suite - error 404 on the creation of a key to a hidden door