Offers

What are Offers

Offers are used to provide discounts compared to the standard price (rates) to guests who are making a booking. These discounts are mostly used to incentivize the guests to make a booking or prolong their stay. They can be used in different scenarios and for different reasons. For example, a client could provide a 10% discount for guests who make a booking of over 7 days during July & August to make sure that they are fully booked during that period. Another example would be to incentivize guests to make a booking when occupancy is low compared to another season. The client could decide to create an early booking offer with a 15% discount for all bookings made from February to April. 

The prerequisites of setting up offers is to have your location(s), Distribution Channels (DC's), accommodation types, rates and eventually, add-ons properly setup. Once all of this is done we can start setting up offers.   

How to setup Offers in MXTS

Within the Rate Manager we have the module Offers. When you click on the Offer tab, you should arrive at the following page :

Open

With an offer, it is possible to set a different price for the accommodation than the one in the Rates tab. At the bottom right of this page, you should see a button " create offer". 

Open

When clicking on it, you should see the following page : 

We can now start configuring the offer.

1. Scenario and details

First of all, you need to decide which type of offer you would like to setup. You have the choice between:

• General offer (the standard setup)

• Offer with add-ons (this setup is also called a package). It is used to when including sets of items (such as add-ons) into the booking and has more settings around management of these different items. This setup is not used very often.

For now we will focus on the standard setup. Once you have chosen the type of offer you want, you need to select the type of price calculation that you would like your offer to have. There are currently 4 types of price calculations for general offers:

1. Percentage: You define a percentage of discount that is calculated over the base rate.

2. Amount: You define a fixed number which will be the amount used for the discount.

3. New price: You set a custom price (i.e. normally the cost is 300€ for 3 nights, offer is 250€ for 3 nights.

4. Rate per subject: Apply a flat reduction over the actual price of the accommodation type based on the subjects (i.e.: -15€ for adults).

Next, chose the location on which you would like this offer to be applicable. We suggest selecting the highest location in the tree structure, which will automatically make the offer available for all child locations.

If you wish, you can choose to group your offers together when they have similar configuration. For this, you can use the parent offer field (an offer has to be initially created in order to be visible in this field). 

Proceed to enter the name & the code of your offer. You can also add descriptions if you wish.

Once all of the relevant fields filled in, click on "Next" at the bottom right. 

 2. Distribution Channels

You should then be redirected to the following page :

On this page, you can select all of the relevant Distribution Channels (DC's) that need to be applicable for this offer. Once you have made your choice, click on "Next step" at the bottom right.

3. Configure rentability and rates

 You should see the following pop-up :

Here you will configure the rentability for your offer, the linked accommodation types, add-ons & offers, the applicable rate types and rates, as well as the translations for your offer.

We start by configuring the rentability of the offer.

1. Rentability

N.B :  If you have multiple rentability rules that need to be setup for your offer, you will need to go through he whole "configure rentability and rates" pop-up and, after which you will be brought back to the 3rd step of the offer creation named "Periods & Rates" (see below). At that moment you will be able to add a new rule with new rentability and new rates for your offer. Otherwise, you may also setup only one rule and update or change the rates & rentability of your offer once it is created. Please note that the offer creation flow is being reworked and will see usability improvements in the near future. Here are the different elements that need to / can be filled in:

• Stay date From - To (mandatory for both fields to be filled in). Here you select which dates are applicable for the offer when the guests come to a resort (i.e. the booking is applied for all arrivals between June 1st & July 31st).

• Bookable From - To ("bookable from" date mandatory, "Bookable to" date not mandatory. Maxxton advises to keep the "Book date to" date empty for more flexibility). Here you select the dates from which the offer can be bookable (i.e. I am able to book this reservation from April 1st). So if I create a reservation on April 2nd, the offer will be applicable, but if I make the booking on March 31st then I will not be able to book this offer.

• Arrival days & departure days (at least one day is mandatory for each). You can adjust the offer to be available for specific arrival and / or departure dates. (i.e. the offer is applicable only for departures on Saturday & arrivals on Sunday)

• Min / Max length of stay (optional fields). If you wish, you can add a minimum and / or a maximum length of stay for your offer. (i.e.This offer is applied to bookings made for a minimum of 7 nights). If set, then any bookings that do not meet these settings will not be able to book the offer.

• Min / Max Deviation (optional fields) The deviation represents the number of days (before or within) between book date & arrival date whether you may book the offer. This field allows you to add relative booking restrictions to your offer for more flexibility. (i.e. Suppose you fill in the min deviation 30; than if you would book the offer on the 1st of June and you would like to arrive on the 16th of June, the offer will not be applicable as the difference is less than 30 days). Please note that this option is not frequently used by clients.

Once all of the relevant fields filled in, click on the "Next step" button at the bottom right of the pop-up.

2. Accommodation types / add-ons / offers

You should then see the following screen : 

On this page you can select the accommodation types, add-ons & offers that should be applicable on the offer that you are creating. Please note that if you want to add add-ons or offers applicable to your offer, you first need to select at least one accommodation type from the list. You can chose "specific accommodation types" or "all accommodation types" using the buttons at the top. If all accommodation types need to be linked to the offer, you can just chose the "all accommodation types" button and move onto the next step. No selection is required.

However, if you wish to choose specific accommodation types, you can make your selection based on the parent level. When toggling "all accommodation types", a new tab appears underneath called "Parent level".

When selecting this tab, you can filter on parent accommodation type level and link the parent level to your offer. Maxxton highly suggests using this feature if as this will pick up any new new child accommodation types that you might create in the future. Once you have made your selection(s), click on "Next Step" at the bottom right.

3. Rate types

You should see the following screen :

Here you can select the different rate types that should be applied to your offer. You can either select all rate types or specific rate types that are applicable. When selecting specific rate types, you can choose multiple ones to be applied. Once you have made your selection click on "Next Step".

4. Rates

You should see the following screen :

On this screen you can select the rate that will be applied to your offer (based on the type of rate you chose at the first step of the creation (percentage, amount, new price or rate per subject). If you have chosen multi rate types, you will be able to choose the rate for each rate type. 

On this screen you also have 2 toggles at the top that allow you to :

• Add different rates for different lengths of stay :  This feature can be useful if you have an offer where the rate will be different depending on the length of stay. For example, a client can have a long stay offer with a 10% discount if the guest stays from 5 to 15 days but the same offer will have a 20% discount if the client stays more than 15 days. This toggle should also be activated in case you wish to have 2 or more different (and subsequent) rates to be applicable on a reservation (i.e. From Sept. 10th to Sept. 15th the rate is -30% and from Sept. 15th to Sept. 25th the rate is -20%. If you make a booking from Sept. 12th to Sept. 19th, you expect both rates to be applicable).   

• Add different rates depending on arrival date :  This feature allows you to tailor the rate of your offer based on the date of arrival of your guests. It can be used for instance to decrease the rate (increase the % discount) for arrivals that are in over a month to incentive your guests to make their booking earlier in the year.

Next, enter the rate that you would like to be applied to your offer. In the first step of the offer creation, we chose a percentage rate, so here, the rate will take the form of a percentage of the total price (either a reduction or a surplus). You can also choose the type of rate calculation from : 

• Per stay

• Per Night

• Custom Stay

When choosing the custom stay option, you unlock the other 2 fields "rate applicable for days" & "Stay days" in order to customize the rate to fit your needs.

Once all of the relevant information has been filled in, click on "Next Step". 

5. Translations

You should see the following page :

On this page you can add translations if necessary. This is an optional field. This can be useful if you wish to have different titles for your offers depending on the language. Once configured, click on "Apply rule" at the bottom right of the pop-up. You should see the following page : 

You are brought back to the main offer creation page where you can see the elements that you have already setup and navigate through the different steps. You also have the possibility to add another rule for the "Periods and rates" (3rd step) that you are in. Once you have verified that everything is setup according to your needs, you can click on "Next Step".

4. Policies

You should see the following screen.

You have arrived at the last step of the of the offer creation process. This page allows you to decide the policy that you wish to use for your offer. You need to decide if you want your offer to be visible (open) or hidden.

When the offer is visible, you will see it appear as one of the rates in the Reservation Manager and it will also be visible for your clients via the website for example. If the offer policy is "Open", then the offer search code is optional.

You can also choose to mark the offer as hidden, which will make the offer invisible via the Reservation Manager and via the website. It will be possible to add the offer to a booking via search code. This search code is mandatory to retrieve the offer in case it is hidden.

Once you have made your choice and filled in all of the relevant fields, click on "Create offer".

Congratulations, you have successfully created your offer.

Updating & Editing your offer

You should now be able to  see the offer page.

You can now edit the following elements of your offer : 

• Translations

• Rates

• Representations (Distribution Channel linkage)

• Rentability rules

• Linked accommodation types

As well as setup new elements, such as :

• Add-ons

• Capacity (if you want to limit your offer based on capacity).

• Combinations

You can use the combinations card at the bottom of the offer page to link different offers together. To learn more about combining offers, please see here.

N.B.: When editing the rates of your offer, you are only able to change the selected amount (i.e. change the discount from 20% to 30%) and the translations. You are not able to edit the arrival & book dates of your offer. If you have made a mistake in any of those dates, you will have to remove or block the rate and create a new one. Please note that the offer module is being reviewed and will soon be updated with usability improvements in the near future.

Offer Combination

It is possible to combine offers together. However, there are certain rules & best practices that need to be followed. Within an offer, you will find a Combinations Card which has 2 sub-tabs :

• Combinations

• Linked in other combinations

Here are some best practices for setting up Offer combinations in MXTS :

• A specific rate can only have a maximum of 2 Offers (automatically) added in the price compare step. More Offers can be added to the booking but this will need to be done manually by the user.

• The “Combinations” sub-tab refers to what other resources the current offer is associated with (link from this offer to other resources).

• The “Linked in other combinations” sub-tab refers to which other resources are associated to the current offer (link from other resources to this offer). This tab should not be used during Offer combination configuration. It will be automatically populated once a given combination has been established.

• The “Combinations” tab should not have more than 1 offer linked for the same stay dates. If the stay dates are not overlapping, then it is possible to have more combinations but it is still not recommended.

• When combining offers, it is important to do the combination link from the offer with more restricted rules to the one with less restricted rules. For example, a long stay offer should not be linked to an early booking offer, but rather the early booking offer should be linked to the long stay offer. 

• Only use the combination feature for Offers that need to be shown together in the price compare. If an Offer is always added after a booking is already created, then there is no need to add that offer to a combination.

Conclusion

Offers are a used to provide discounts to your guests. These discounts can be used to incentivize your guests to make certain decisions that benefit your business. Offers can be either open or hidden, which has an impact on who can see the offer and how to find it. Setting up offers takes time, but allows for flexibility in order to fit almost any business scenario depending on your needs.It is also possible to link offers together. To know more about combining offers, please see here.