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We introduced a Message Board on CRS (Quoting Screen). Simply, it’s an on-screen message display that you can set for specific dates and rate plans – a useful prompt for reservation staff. For instance, while making a booking, staff can be reminded that SPA is closed on that day or that there is a street parade. Alternatively, during the holiday season, to select “WinterOffer” Rateplan to see offers.

A great pre-booking messaging will help your staff be informed, plan better experiences, and refine guests’ itineraries.

The Message Board functionality for creating, modifying, or deleting messages can be found on CRS Configuration > Message Board.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

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Multi-Property performance reports

A short while ago we introduced Multi-Property Performance Reports, providing you with aggregated KPIs to monitor the performance of your entire hotel portfolio. As promised then, this feature is now available to all users, including PO Start version.

Occupancy Calculation – Out of Order Rooms

Last month we introduced Hotel Closed Dates configuration, allowing you to set the occupancy calculation on open dates only (subtracting closed dates from inventory count). We added an additional layer that allows you to ‘Subtract Out of Order Rooms from Occupancy % calculation’. It means that OOO rooms will be removed from total inventory count for calculating occupancy.

For example: In a 100 room hotel, 40 rooms are sold while 20 rooms are OOO.

Current OTB (by default): 40/100 = 40%

Current OTB (by enabling new feature: Subtract OOO rooms from inventory): 40/(100-20) = 40/80 = 50%

Both options are available the way you prefer to calculate them. They will reflect on reports accordingly.

DTA horizon for Price & Occupancy changes graph

For Price & Occupancy changes graph in Price Details, the DTA horizon (X-axis) is a minimum of 90 days by default. Now, this value can be changed in Hotel Configuration from a minimum Lead Days of 10 to a maximum of 370.

Happy Holidays!

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

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The occupancy metric shows the percentage of occupied rooms during a chosen time. It’s one of the most common KPIs used in hospitality. The formula for it is simple.

Hotel occupancy rate = Number of occupied rooms / Total number of available rooms (in the chosen period). Multiplied by 100 to convert it into a percentage.

It is calculated for all days of the month/year. For hotels that are open all year round, this is fine. However, for hotels that are seasonal or closed for some part of the year, the occupancy calculation did not take the closed dates out of the equation.

Now you can add Hotel Closed Dates in Price Optimizer. The occupancy calculation will then be based on the open dates only.

For example, your hotel is occupied 100% throughout 2022 but it was closed for the month of December.

Old (if feature disabled): Occupancy = 91.6% (11/12 x 100)

New (if feature enabled): Occupancy = 100% (11/11 x 100)

Both options are available for you. They will reflect on reports accordingly.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

You might also be interested in reading:

Forecast Export to Excel

Recently, we redesigned the Forecast table to provide you with a clear way to understand, compare and utilize demand and revenue forecast data. Now we added an Export to Excel option that will export all Forecast Per Segment and Forecast Per Day visible on screen in two excel sheets.

CRS Alternate Offers for Chain Hotels

If you have multiple hotels linked in CRS (Quoting Screen), you could view alternate offers below the Price Table based on “lowest price/availability”. Now, in addition to that, you can expand and view offers of every room category, all on the same page.

Overbooked Rooms in Red

On Price Control, when a room is not available, it is greyed out. When a room is overbooked, it will be highlighted in red.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

You might also be interested in reading:

Today we introduce Multi-Property Performance Reports, providing you with aggregated KPIs to monitor the performance of your entire hotel portfolio. Having a comprehensive overview helps in identifying revenue opportunities and which properties need action first.

You can easily and instantly compare the performance of individual properties or a set of properties with just a few input parameters. The excel report is generated with various KPIs such as Pickup, Occupancy, Availability, Revenue, ADR, RevPAR, Strategy and Room Prices across individual properties and on an aggregated level.

This feature is currently available only for PRO users. Our team is working on a version for START users that will be released in due course.

CRS Updates

New Price Logic for Children Prices

When you select “Fixed Price” in Children Price forumla, a new dropdown will appear with options “Pax/Day” and “Pax/Stay”.

For example: If you add a fixed price of 20 CHF “Pax/Day”, the price will be applied to each stay date. Whereas, if you add a fixed price 20 CHF ”Pax/Stay”, the price will be applied to the 1st night only.

Clouseout and n/a indicators on Price Table

X  – Closeout based on StopSell or Distribution Rules

n/a  – No availability or price for a Rate plan or Pax

‘City’ field not mandatory

While making a reservation on CRS, the ‘City’ field is now not mandatory to fill.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

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We’re constantly improving Price Optimizer – more available data, more ways to analyze it, grow your business and meet revenue projections throughout the year. With that in mind, we’re excited to share our newest features:

• New restriction options: Closed to Arrival and Closed to Departure
• Improvements in Forecasting Tab
• Send Email confirmation to guests directly from CRS
• Pickup Reports merged – with more data

Closed to Arrival & Closed to Departure Restrictions

Closed to Arrival (CTA)

Your guests cannot arrive on a specific stay date. The blocked rooms cannot be booked for arrival but is available to book for guests who arrive before this date to stay in the hotel beyond this specific date. CTA restriction could be useful when arrival is not possible, for instance, on a weekday due to staff limitations or to restrict check-in for certain days like New Years’ Eve.

Closed to Departure (CTD)

Your guests cannot depart on a specific stay date. Similarly, this restriction has no influence on stays with previous arrival and overnight stays beyond this day.

Both CTA & CTD can be set up in Distribution Rules, flexible to particular rate plans, rooms, periods, etc.

Improvements in Forecasting Tab

Forecasting data in Price Optimizer is simply very important. But it was not simple to analyze. We redesigned the table to provide you with a clear way to understand, compare and utilize demand and revenue forecast data for each market segment, calculated for each stay date.

In the future, we aim to provide a Forecast breakdown by Room Type Group and the option to export the tables to Excel.

Send Email confirmation to guests directly from CRS 

When you make a booking from CRS, the confirmation details are sent to your hotel. Now, you have the possibility to also send a booking confirmation directly to the guest.

Guest email confirmation is available in 5 languages. Hotel logo can be included. The first version does not offer too many liberties to customize but we are happy to receive suggestions for a later version. To turn this feature on, please contact your Key Account Manager.

Pickup Reports merged – with more data

Pickup Daily & Pickup Monthly reports can be found together in the Reports tab > Pickup. We did it to keep data points consistent, meaning:

• Pickup Monthly report, in addition to Room Nights, Revenue & ADR pickups, now also showcases Occupancy %, Room Night, Revenue & ADR totals

• Breakdown by segments is optional, which reflects on exported to Excel data

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or Key Account Manager.

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

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New Year? Yes, please! Here’s to better times ahead for us all and a happy, safe and healthy 2022. We begin the year with the following new feature updates:

Price Optimizer tabs reorganized and a new Price Details tab

• Price Recommendation Change Report Improvements

• Date to Date/Weekday to Weekday button for Pickup Daily Report

• Price Level Adjustment Explained

CRS Configuration Redesigned

Price Optimizer Tabs

Our data showed the tabs most frequently used by you, so we organized them in that order. We recognized the need for Price Details tab to be easier to access (found via Price Control > Details button), so we also added it to the front page menu. 

In the Price Details tab, you will find for a given date an overview of Competition Price evolution, Pickup, On the Books value & Forecast by segments. On the same page we added two graphs in the past year: 

Price Changes – Analyze price evolution of a room before the arrival date compared with different periods

Occupancy Changes – Evaluate hotel performance and forecast before the arrival date compared with different periods

To know more about the graphs – Click Here

We added a new option in Reports > Recommendation Change to view changed price including start value. How does it differ from the other options? Let us explain. In the selected stay date range:

• Show all: Will list each and every price change
• Show newest only: Will list the latest prices in the system
• Show changed prices only: Will list the price only if it was changed within the selected Change Date time frame
• Show changed price including start value: Will list the changed price and the initial price only if it was changed within the selected Change Date time frame

DtD/WtW button for Pickup Daily Report

Date to Date/Weekday to Weekday comparison option added to Report > Pickup Daily

Price Level Adjustment Explained

CRS Configuration Redesigned

If you have any questions or issues, please contact  po-support@yieldplanet.com. 

Missed any update? Click here for all our latest Price Optimizer releases.

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Christmas is coming soon, but new features are already here. Today we would like to show you exciting new features available on Price Optimizer & CRS:

• Multiple Occupancy on Price Control

• Children Prices per Room Category

• Flexible Rate Plan Visibility

• User Roles for Stop Sell

On Price Control, only one Pax price was visible at a time (1P, 2P, up to 10P). We realized this made it difficult to compare prices. Not anymore.

Now you can select multiple Pax at once (Up to 12P) and Price Control will dynamically display them – making it easier to observe & adjust prices effectively.

You may have noticed we moved all the top Price Control buttons into a left panel. This is so that all buttons remain static while scrolling and you can make changes, select/deselect Pax quickly.
In the Hotel Configuration page, you can set the default number of people pre-selected and max number of people visible on the Price Control page.

Children Prices per Room Category

We added a new option in Children Prices tab on CRS (Quoting Screen) that allows you to apply different price formulas for children including per room type.
Plus the ability to copy and sort formulas. Please note that the order of the formulas is important. As there can be an overlap of rules, Formula #1 is given priority, followed by #2 and so on. Therefore, you must first configure the exceptions and then the general rules.

Price Optimizer Usability Improvements II
Price Optimizer Usability Improvements
User Roles in CRS
New Stop Sell

In today’s release, we make it possible to edit prices manually in CRS. This feature gives reservation staff the option to negotiate prices before confirming the reservation.

You can edit prices when the reservation is in the basket. Each daily rate can be modified.

Please note, this feature is available only for Manager level users. To assign a user to Manager Role, please contact your Key Account Manager.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact 

po-support@yieldplanet.com .

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Price Optimizer Update: Multiple Occupancy & Multiple Features

Price Optimizer Usability Improvements II

Price Optimizer Usability Improvements 

Last time in Usability Improvements update we promised to release the features marked * by
September 30, 2021. Today, we deliver that plus we have increased the stability of the system by making a number of backend improvements.

Improvements in Price Optimizer

1. Ability to change hotel and competitor colors in Comp Set configuration for all users

• When you set colors in Comp Set, the same colors will be applied everywhere on the system where competitors are displayed. For example: Price Reports, Price Control & Details page

• On Price Control, only user hotel’s color is affected

2. Dashboard removed for PO Start users and tabs reordered

• For Start users, the old Dashboard information is available on Price Control

• On logging in, Price Control is the default page displayed

3. Occupancy Report table on Dashboard standardized for PRO Users allowing easier reading

1. New checkbox option in Room Types configuration whether to count baby cot in Total Pax calculation

2. Grouping info in Room Types configuration and ability to pin virtual room types to any of the existing group rooms

• Changing sort order of Rooms Types & Rate Plans configuration bug fixed

• Now the list of Rate Plans on the price table is displayed based on its sort order in Rate Plans configuration

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com. 

You might also be interested in reading:

Price Optimizer Usability Improvements
User Roles in CRS
New Stop Sell
User Roles

In our latest release, we have a number of noteworthy updates to our platform to simplify our solutions. Let’s dive into what’s new and what you need to know.

1. Competition Prices filter is now modifiable directly from the Price Control ‘Comp Prices’ section

• Clicking on each filter opens a dropdown to modify the existing selection

• When the user returns to Price Control or page is refreshed, the Default Filters are applied

2. All options in Multi-day Update have a change all-at-once option

3. On Price Reports, the field with hotel names are wider

4. The order of Room Type categories in Price Control & in the Price List are made the same

5. Reports > Real Availability History is better structured

6. The Notes icon turns yellow when the note is active i.e. contains any info within (Feature for Admin users)

7. Ability to change hotel and competitor colors in Comp Set configuration for all users *

1. Rate Plans configuration has been redesigned

• Clear display and easy to organize by changing sort order of Rate Plans
  

• New ‘Rate plans sort order’ option to sort rate plan packages in Prices Table from cheapest, most expensive or in manual order according to how it’s sorted in the configuration

2. New sort order design similarly added to Room Types configuration

3. The Rate Plan dropdown box is more responsive and wider

• New icons added on the left panel to distinguish and quickly select Rate Plans & Company Rates
  

• When a Rate Plan is selected that is other than default, it is highlighted in orange on the prices table

• When a Company Rate is selected, it is highlighted in red on the prices table

4. Descriptions and labels of rate plans, room types & packages are wider

5. Children pricing related ‘Room Types’ configuration parameters are hidden when Children Pricing is disabled

6. New ‘Clear all from basket’ button

7. New button to remove a reservation within the same room type in basket

8. Grouping info in Room Types configuration and ability to pin virtual room types to any of the existing room groups *

9. New checkbox option in Room Types configuration whether to count baby cot in Total Pax calculation *

Features marked with * will be released sometime between September 13, 2021 – September 30, 2021.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com. 

You might also be interested in reading:

User Roles in CRS
New Stop Sell
User Roles
Configuration Redesign

Last time we introduced User Roles or permissions in Price Optimizer. Today we extend the roles for CRS (Quoting Screen) allowing you to customize each user’s access for both Price Optimizer & CRS.

 Similarly — we added a predefined list of CRS roles for you to choose from. By default, current users are assigned as Normal user with the same access as before.

 CRS User Roles and Descriptions:

Admin user: Full access; plus ability to request modification of user roles

Normal user: Full access

Read-only user: View-only access

Limited Config user: Full access; minus ability to make any changes on the Configuration page

Restricted Config user: Full access; minus the visibility of Configuration page

The table below compares all PO & CRS roles

It is possible to have different roles for each solution. To assign a new role for your user, please contact your Key Account Manager.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

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New Stop Sell
User Roles
Configuration Redesign
HRS To Be Disconnected From Price Reports

Today we launched the new Stop Sell feature. With a Stop Sell restriction, a user could request to open or close channels. Now it further allows you to create flexible Stop Sell requests including room types and rate plans.

Old Stop Sell → Mechanism to close channels (OTA, CRS, BE, etc) for a specific time or period

New Stop Sell → Mechanism to force open or close a combination of room types, rate plans and partners (OTA, CRS, BE, etc) for a specific time or period

If you had existing Stop Sell rules in place, they were migrated and will remain active. Please get in touch with your Key Account Manager to learn more or book training for this feature.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

You might also be interested in reading:

User Roles
Configuration Redesign
HRS To Be Disconnected From Price Reports
Price Control Upgrade Part 4

In today’s release, we introduce User Roles or permissions in Price Optimizer allowing you to customize each user’s access. Now you can choose which areas of Price Optimizer your users can see, and whether or not they can create, edit and delete records in those areas.

To make it easy to understand — we added a predefined list of new roles for you to choose from that would help you maintain the appropriate balance of collaboration and control within your team.

User Roles and Descriptions

Admin user: Full access; plus ability to modify user roles & edit notes on the Configuration page

Normal user: Full access

Read-only user: View-only access

Limited Config user: Full access; minus ability to make any changes on the Configuration page

Limited Price Control user: Full access; minus ability to make price changes on the Price Control page for more than 2 days

Restricted Config user: Full access; minus the Configuration page

By default, current users are assigned as Normal user with the same access as before, including CRS and Channel Manager so nothing changes. To assign a new role for your user, please contact your Key Account Manager.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

Configuration Redesign
HRS To Be Disconnected From Price Reports
Price Control Upgrade Part 4
Price Control Upgrade Part 3

With great power comes great responsibility. And with great product improvements, comes a great number of configurations. Having them one after another made it a little unorganized and time-consuming to use.

So, in today’s release, we introduce improvements to the Configuration tab.

We grouped, merged and renamed tabs to make them more accessible, clear & easy to use.

What’s more – we included an inbuilt Notepad on each configuration so that you and your Key Account Manager can write important activities or changes relating to that configuration.

For instance, your Key Account Manager could note which strategy or distribution rule was added or why some settings were changed.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

You might also be interested in reading:

HRS To Be Disconnected From Price Reports
Price Control Upgrade Part 4
Price Control Upgrade Part 3
Weather Info

Weather can be a significant driver of bookings for hotels. Travel-seekers will often check current and forecast conditions for popular destinations to inform their booking decisions.

As a first iteration, we released weather data for the current day plus 14 forecasted days. This is available on the Price Control page to provide you quick access to weather data so that as many decision-making parameters are readily available in our system.

In the future, we look to integrate weather data into our demand forecasting algorithm.

Current-day weather is updated every two hours, whereas forecasted dates are updated once a day.

To learn more about this feature, please reach out to your key account manager.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

You might also be interested in reading:

HRS To Be Disconnected From Price Reports
Price Control Upgrade Part 4
Price Control Upgrade Part 3
Small Tweaks in PO & CRS

For the final release in the Price Control development series, we introduce Price and Occupancy Changes graphs on the Details section in Price Control.

Price Changes graph

Analyze price evolution of a room before the arrival date compared with different periods.

For example, you can view the current rate of a double room for stay date 17th February 2021 compared with a week before (10th Feb 2021), a month before (17th Jan 2021) or a year before (17th Feb 2020). At the same time, you can visualize how the rate of that room evolved, for instance, from 90 DTA to the current DTA.

Occupancy Changes graph

Evaluate hotel occupancy and forecast before the arrival date compared with different periods.

For example, you can view the current occupancy for stay date 17th February 2021 compared with a week before (10th Feb 2021), a month before (17th Jan 2021) or a year before (17th Feb 2020). Similarly, you can visualize current occupancy evolution, for instance, from 90 DTA to the current DTA.

Both graphs work in tandem so that it is faster to analyze information. Selecting one filter on the Price Changes graph would automatically select the same filter in the Occupany Changes graph.

To make it easy to compare information from both graphs, we added a table below the graphs that reflect the selected filters and DTA. It also includes information on hotel occupancy level, total revenue & ADR, providing a holistic view of your hotel performance.

Please note that calendar behavior on Price Optimizer has slightly changed. To generate data on a page, you must first select the date.

To learn more about this feature, please reach out to your key account manager.

You might also be interested in reading:

Price Control Upgrade – Part 3
Small Tweaks in PO & CRS
Price Control Upgrade
Report Scheduler

HRS source will be disconnected from the list of our sources for Price Reports on 24.02.2021. You will continue to receive prices from other sources such as Booking & Expedia.

As a reminder, we are integrated with OTA’s Rate Insight and HQ Revenue’s Market Intelligence and we highly recommend connecting their tool as a source to get the most precise and industry-leading rate shopping data.

If you have any questions or issues, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

You might also be interested in reading:

Price Control Upgrade Part 4
Price Control Upgrade Part 3
Small Tweaks in PO & CRS
Price Control Upgrade