In Part 3 of our Price Control development, we made out of order rooms configurable in Price Optimizer.

Set rooms that are out of order for multiple stay dates, periods and strategies all in one go! Plus, get a breakdown of how many and which rooms are blocked for a given date – making it easier to strategize price changes for the remaining rooms.

Out of Order (OOO) values displayed on the Price Control page

What’s more – you can choose how our algorithm takes into account those out of order rooms for price recommendations. Meaning you can influence the recommendation to be more or less aggressive based on your needs.

To activate and 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:

Small Tweaks in PO & CRS
Price Control Upgrade
Report Scheduler
Introducing Virtual Rate Plan

Today we release some changes in Price Optimizer & CRS (Quoting Screen):

• Altered CRS Select Dates panel

• Added filters on Pickup Overview table

• Popups for unsaved changes on Price Optimizer

Select Dates panel

The ‘Select dates’ panel on the top left of the quoting screen has a new design. If a guest calls up and says “I want to stay from December 10 to 15” – this panel provides you a natural way to input arrival & departure dates, along with the number of adults and children to see prices in an instance.

Filters on Pickup Overview ↓↑

New filters added to Pickup Overview tab.

1. Possible to filter pickup values for Room Type Groups, specific Room Types as well as Group Room Types

2. Visible Total Pickups and Year Totals

Unsaved Changes Popup

Made changes in Price Optimizer and forgot to save it? Happens to the best of us. Even when you change the dates, select another tab or try to close the window altogether – Price Optimizer will remind you via a popup when there are unsaved changes.

As usual, if you have any questions or problems using new features, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com or your Key Account Manager.

You might also be interested in reading:

Price Control Upgrade
Report Scheduler
Introducing Virtual Rate Plan
Children Prices in CRS

You might also be interested in reading:

Price Control Upgrade – Part 1
Report Scheduler
Introducing Virtual Rate Plan
Children Prices in CRS

The Price & General Availability panel on the right of the screen now includes distinct Pickup and Competition Price adjustments details. Now you can see the impact of these rules for a recommendation.

We know it can be hard at times to remember what rules were originally set up. To take the guesswork away, we introduce information buttons next to the price level so that you can be sure what rule was applied versus the actual result of the recommendation.

_{Impact of competition price rule for a given date}

Not just that, you can observe simulated results with or without its automatic application over the initial price level selection.

There’s more!

1. The Price Level row displays the current out of total price level
2. The Room Types column includes the total number of rooms

You might also be interested in reading:

Report Scheduler
Introducing Virtual Rate Plan
Children Prices in CRS
New Event Source

A fully revamped Report Scheduler is now available to PriceOptimizer PRO users. Starting today, you can schedule reports that will be delivered automatically via email on any scheduled day, time, and frequency.

Having a scheduler helps in reducing the time and manual work involved when someone has to send the report every week or every month to the desired recipients. For instance, if a Revenue Manager needs a weekly Room Revenue and Rooms Sold report, you can schedule one to be delivered to them every Monday at 8:00 AM.

Once scheduled, PriceOptimizer will run the reports and send them in an email notification as an Excel attachment. To access, go to Reports -> Report Scheduler.

You might also be interested in reading:

Introducing Virtual Rate Plan
Children Prices in CRS
New Event Source
More Improvements

You may be aware that OTAs are doing RateMixing or ‘blending’, a technique whereby OTA’s can provide customers with the best price by mixing different rate plans to meet the search parameters. For instance, they can combine a 2 nights stay by taking one ordinary rate and one night’s worth of the ‘special’ rate, add them together, and serve the guest a cheaper offer.

 You can do the same with YieldPlanet’s Virtual Rate Plan. Combine all your special offers and PriceOptimizer will compose the best price considering all restrictions of the linked rate plans. Offer optimal multi-day rates to direct clients on the phone, to the web booking engine, or send it to selected channels.

 Please get in contact with your account manager for more info on how to use this feature.

 Hotel Chain View

 Let’s say one of your hotels is already booked for the selected Dates & Pax on the CRS (Quoting screen).

 So then you scroll below and view alternative offers from your other hotel.

 If you decide to ‘Go to’ the offer → CRS will now preserve your selection when you switch to that hotel.

 If you have any questions or problem using new functions, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com.

You might also be interested in reading:

Children Prices in CRS
New Event Source
More Improvements
Pickup Overview

You might also be interested in previous Price Optimizer Updates:

Children Prices in CRS
New Event Source
More Improvements
Pickup Overview

For hotels that mainly work with families and small groups, it is essential to be able to outline rates and prices for children.

The Quoting Screen a.k.a CRS now makes it possible to define children’s prices in an absolutely flexible way, thanks to an intuitive interface that allows you to manage children’s capacity, discounts and rates even more simply.

→ How do I configure children’s prices in CRS?

You will find a new ‘Children Pricing’ tab in CRS > Configuration.

The first step in configuring children’s prices is to define the different age groups of the children.

For example, a hotel can have 3 age groups:

• Infants from 0 to 2 years;
• Children from 3 to 12 years old;
• Teens from 13 to 19 years old.

Indicating accurately the different age groups allows you to segment the price even more scrupulously, so as to better define your sales strategy.

The second step is defining formulas to set children’s prices. The ways in which prices for children can be defined are mainly 3:

1. A fixed price regardless of the prices set for the adult;
2. A fixed discount always compared to the price of adult 1.
3. A percentage discount on the price that adult 1 would have paid;

In some situations, there may be a need for the child’s price to be calculated starting from a reference price (that of adult 1), while in other cases it is not.
For this reason, we’ve made it flexible to set prices both in an absolute (fixed) and in a relative (variable) manner.

→ How do I configure children’s capacity for my rooms?

Navigate to ‘Room Types’ tab in CRS > Configuration.

For each room type you can modify the total room capacity (Total Pax), maximum number of children and maximum number of baby cots. Room capacity for adults cannot be modified here as it is imported from your PMS/Channel Manager.

Total room capacity is limited by the sum of Adults Max, Children Max and Cot Max values.

Once you have finished children’s prices configuration — you may go to the CRS home page and make your selection with the number of adults, followed by number of children. You must then select the age of each child.

Finally, CRS will display the rooms where it is possible to accommodate the adults and children with the total price of your selection.

More Improvements in CRS

1. Clicking on the active rate plan on-screen opens a dropdown list of all rate plans. Select another rate plan directly from this list for faster access
2. Select the rate plan package on the right panel by clicking on its title. This would enable that rate plan on the main screen
   
3. Close the left panel by clicking anywhere on the main screen, not just the “<” button
4. Hovering over a rate plan title will show its full package description

As usual, should you have any questions or problems using new features, please contact
po-support@yieldplanet.com.

You might also be interested in reading:

New Event Source
More Improvements
Pickup Overview
Your quoting screen — now clearer than ever

New Event Source 📅

We launched a new Events tool which makes it simple and quick for you to track and follow events/holidays from your key source markets.

How does this help?

The events calendar will help your hotel identify demand generators easily and adjust the pricing accordingly to the demand that is generated by specific events happening in your cities. Whether it is a company conference, a trade show, a music festival, a sporting event – all of these events can be tracked based on the automatically generated suggestions or by manually entering specific hotel events.

Calendars can be added via different sources:

1. Eventful – Eventful is an online calendar and events discovery service having a large directory of events. Use the Eventful source to automatically download a calendar of events at a specified venue
2. iCal (URL) – Calendar programs allow you to export what is called an iCalendar (.ics or iCal) feed URL. Use the iCal URL to import events
3. iCal (File) – Import events with an iCal file. These iCal URLs and files are commonly found on tourism or events websites
4. Manual – Manually add a calendar

When you have completed the events list, these events appear in:

Price Optimizer > Dashboard Calendar

Price Optimizer > Price Control

Price Optimizer > Price Report

 
CRS (Quoting Screen)

This tool has the possibility to integrate several hotels or a hotel group. In the future version, Events with an ‘Impact value’ could change forecast if requested by the hotel.

Please get in contact with your account manager to enable this feature. For other questions or problems using new features, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

More Improvements ⚡️
We made some product improvements that recently went live.

What’s new?

• ‘Season’ changed to ‘Strategy’
• Reports tab redesigned
• Multi-day price level change revamp

‘Season’ changed to ‘Strategy’

The word ‘Season’ was replaced with ‘Strategy’. When we think of a season, it’s categorized as Low, Mid and High/Peak season, each associated with different expectations and demands.

We made this change because by changing the < Strategy > not only the price range changes but also the entire strategy started with the prices, the aggressiveness of the price changes, virtual rooms, distribution rules, packages, etc. changes. Therefore, strategies have a much bigger impact.

To change or configure strategies, go to Config tab > Strategy.

Reports Tab Redesigned

The Reports tab was given a clean shave look. Better alignments and consistent button placements all across the reports interface. 📈

More improvements coming soon to reports. #staytuned

Multi-Day Price Level Change

PO > Price Control > Multi-Day Update.

Multi-Day update, as the name suggests, allows you to mass-change price levels for a selected period, strategy, and room type.

New Version

Now, there are two possibilities:

1. Set value to a price level

2. Change value by a price level

As usual, should you have any questions or problems using new features, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com

Introducing

↑ Pickup Overview ↓

Since the hospitality industry is in the middle of a storm, we have steered our development roadmap for current needs so that hotels have an umbrella in place i.e to plan and prepare for an upturn in bookings when the market restarts.

A new Pickup Overview tab is now available within the hamburger menu 🍔 (we mean ☰)

• A great way to identify pickup information < all in one view >

• React to bookings/cancellations or demand gaps in real-time

Each box represents a room night booked within the specified pickup window. Boxes highlighted in white are weekdays, while the ones in red are weekends.

That’s not all.. this is just the start! Pickup Overview is the first module in a row of new developments. New modules to follow.

Please note that we are seriously taking your suggestions to prioritize our development. Feel free to write to us at po-support@yieldplanet.com if you have any questions or problems using new functions.

Meet yieldPlanet’s CRS

Your quoting screen — now clearer than ever.

✔️New layout ✔️Alternative hotel chain view ✔️Virtual Rooms

Alternative hotel chain view

For users that have more than one hotel (chains) – we offer the possibility to show more than one hotel on the CRS. 

→ Your front desk or sales team can easily quote the best offer from all your properties on one screen

Each alternative hotel from the same group/city can be shown (when enabled) that would display the lowest available price at the standard rate plan for selected PAX and the total available rooms in that hotel (for given PAX).

Clicking on the other hotel switches to that hotel. For instance, in the above example, clicking on Sister Hotel would redirect you to Sister Hotel.

Virtual Rooms

Virtual Rooms are now also available in CRS. Virtual Rooms or VR work the same way as regular rooms and are controlled in various ways in Price Optimizer (Price Rules, Distribution Rules, etc.).

The role of VR is to ensure the best possible offer is available. This could mean that the ‘bestseller’ room can still be made available at the lowest price or anything else you come up with.

To enable virtual rooms, go to Configuration > Room Types tab and make virtual rooms visible that you want to work with on the price grid.

As usual, should you have any questions or problems using new functions, please contact
po-support@yieldplanet.com.

Multiday update redesign

Bulk updates for multiple stay dates are now easier to control. For each feature of the room type/stay date combination, user can choose to:

• apply no changes
• set the defined value (provided manually)
• set the default value (default for the season assigned to the stay date)

Warning of unsaved changes

In the Price Control, after any change is made within the selected stay date, there will be a warning message. This message will inform the user that changes made were not applied yet and therefore might be lost if “Apply Changes” is not clicked.

Adjust font colour to the background in Price Control

Rows with rooms in Price Control can have a colour defined by the user in Hotel Configuration, in the Config tab. The font colour will now be automatically adjusted to the background so the information is well presented.

As usual, should you have any questions or problem using new functions, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com.

Stop sell mechanism in CRS upgrade

User requests to close or open channels are now handled in the background, without stopping user’s work. If the request for change fails, it will be processed again without any additional action required.

The Stop Sell button is showing a current state of channels and ongoing requests:

1. Button red – all channels currently closed,

2. Button red and green – some channels are closed and the number of them is shown,

3. Spining wheel – recent request is being processed in the background,

4. Button green – all channels are open,

5. Alert – an error occured. In this situation user should retry to modify channel distribution or contact our support.

Error notifications

In case the browser session expires a user will be notified with a suitable information and a request to reload the page:

Any other technical problems have their own notification screens. Major problems result with an automated notification to our support.

CRS single reservation

All the rooms chosen in the quotting screen within the single reservation request, are currently transferred as a single reservation into the Channel Manager and into the PMS afterwards. This reservation will include all the rooms chosen.

Last year data switch

From now on, user can change the exact last year data used for comparison to current OTB values. Either the same day of the month (1st:1st) or the same day of the week (Mon:Mon) can be chosen. Both Last Year (LY) and Last Year Days To Arrival (LYDTA) values will be updated accordingly. The switch is available on multiple screens and the last choice will be remembered also during the page reload.

Rate shopper – main property color

In the rate shopping tool (Price Report) not only the colour of competition hotels but now also the colour of the main property can be modified. This can be done in Config, in Comp Set tab.

If the above mentioned features are not visible, please try to reload the page without the cached image of the website wit Ctrl+Shift+r or CMD+Shift+r shortcut.

If you have any questions or problem using new functions, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com.

Please find below the product updates that will go live on Thursday 24.01 – the first update in 2019.

Overview

• Virtual Rooms per season
• Corporate rates – Fixed prices in rate plans
• Saving display settings
• 3 Day Pick-up based on real availability data
• Dynamic Pricing on CRS

Virtual Rooms per season

The settings for Virtual Rooms can now be different and independent for each season, in line with all other settings that allow differentiation per season.

Additionally, there is also the possibility to limit the number of rooms that trigger a price recalculation. If that value is set to e.g. 3 rooms, the first 3 rooms will not trigger a dynamic price recalculation – this function allows to have the same price on channels and the CRS. This option is voluntary and can be set in User Interface Configuration.

As usual, should you have any questions or problem using new functions, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com.

We are happy to inform you that we have introduced new features in Price Optimizer. The updates will be available in the following days.

Company rates

in Price Optimizer, all rates, including fixed company rates, are currently listed in the Rate Plan drop-down menu.

Graph data

In Price Control, the graph information with current on the books value and the forecast is extended by last year values: on the books (Otb Ly) and the final occupancy (Otb LY Final).

Competition price range

In Price Control competition prices shown are adjusted to show the range of prices based on the Price Shopper default filter (to be changed in the Configuration).
To give an overview of the prices dynamics the percentage value compares the current median of competition prices to the median from 7 days ago.
    

Additional date row (1)

On Price Control, an additional row with stay dates is added for a better clarity especially for hotels with a long list of room types

Master availability and the Price Level (2)

The availability value was moved upwards into a separate row as a more important and intuitive number. The bolded value is a total number of rooms available for 1 PAX, where the value in brackets shows how many rooms are available for the chosen PAX number. The Availability is also colour coded in blue for low availability and red for overselling.

The Price Level is moved down and represents the hotel price level.

Table redesign

In price control, arrows represent information about the manually changed price levels. One arrow up (or down) means that the price level was manually shifted by one level. The same is for two levels. Three arrows represent all values equal to or higher than 3.

Not available room types are marked in grey and with a frame to easier identification.

Manually adjusted availability and MLOS values are underlined.

As usual, should you have any questions or problem using new functions, please contact po-support@yieldplanet.com.

We’d also like to use this opportunity to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

We are happy to inform you that we have introduced new features in Price Optimizer. The updates will be available in the following days.

Overview:

• • • Rate plan min/max price setting
    • Dynamic pricing in CRS
    • ReviewPro addon
    • Rate plan min/max price

A new setting is added for Rate Plans settings in Config. If prices of the rate plan are based on other rate plan, they can be cropped now by setting the minimum and maximum price. After applying the formula, the final price will never be lower or higher than defined values. Both of those values are optional and fully independent. Please, contact your account manager to discuss how to make use of this feature best.

Dynamic pricing in CRS

The Reservation Screen a.k.a. the front desk quoting screen (CRS), shows always the most up-to-date prices. Starting from today, adding a room into the basket can run the recalculation of prices for all stay dates included in the reservation, as well as other room categories. Therefore, the algorithms can decide if the price for the second room can be higher than the price for the first one.

This feature is optional and can be turned on or off in the CRS settings in the UI & General tab:

At this moment, adding more than one reservation at a time would not give the price based on dynamic rules. This functionality is still in progress and will be announced separately. Therefore, for larger reservations we suggest to add smaller chunks of rooms in order to achieve the dynamic pricing effect (e.g. instead of 25 rooms we suggest to add 5 x 5 rooms).

ReviewPro addon

A new tab is added in the main navigation menu – The Guest Intelligence.

This addon, provided to you in cooperation with ReviewPro, gives basic insights into reviews of your hotel against your competitors. The GRI index is calculated by ReviewPro by aggregating different hotel reviews and gives a possibility to compare different properties between each other.

ReviewPro also has an advanced tool for review management available as a separate tool.

Please, contact po-support@yieldplanet.com in case of any questions.

Today we are announcing updates for three different parts of the system.

Overview

• Colours for compset
• Channel opening time in CRS
• CRS polling pricing
• Availability and overbooking in CRS
• Overbooking pooling
• Bulk recalculation moved to Configuration

Colours for compset

Basing on user requests we are changing the way price graphs are presented. In the Price Report graph, your hotel will be presented in black to distinguish it clearly from competitors.
You can define a suitable colour for each competitor in the compset configuration page.

Channel opening time in CRS

After the channel was closed using the Stop Sell function there is an information about the time it will be effectively reopened.

CRS polling pricing

In certain cases, the CRS did not show the prices for pooled rooms correctly when the multiplication button was applied. This is fixed and pooled rooms are correctly calculated based on the price of the pooled room category.

Availability and overbooking in CRS

We slightly changed the way availability and overbooking are presented in the CRS. Availability will now be called Master Availability and we are newly showing the Overbooking Limit that has been applied in Price Control to help the front desk to make the right decision about the potential booking.

As in the Price Control, the first number represents the total number of available rooms and number in brackets tells how many rooms are available for a chosen occupancy (eg. 2 pax).
If the Master Availability is negative and therefore there is already an overbooking registered in the PMS, Master availability will turn red.
Overbooking limit shows the sum of cancellation probability and manual over/underbooking on a hotel level. It shows the amount by which the hotel can actually be overbooked. This value can be negative if there are more underbookings than overbookings. 
Also, the precise information about the number of overbooked rooms in a specific room type is presented when you hover on the price.

Overbooking pooling

This is a new way of pooling rooms in case of overbooking in a certain room category. The change will not affect any pricing strategy before activation. We will contact you directly to clarify possibilities and agree on modified settings.

Bulk recalculation moved to Configuration

The bulk recalculation button is removed from Price Control page and moved to the Configuration page. Please be careful with the usage of this function and contact po-support@yieldplanet.com in case of any questions.

Tomorrow (3.10.2018) we will release the first part of updates for the most frequently used feature in Price Optimizer, the price control screen.

Price control now offers to show the most important data in different formats. It is possible to use the table as today, choose a graph or just hide this information. The last option gives better overview of all rooms – helpful for hotels with many room types.

On the graph the blue bar shows the occupancy level of the hotel, where the orange line shows the forecasted value. Hover over any of the bars and you will see the actual room nights value.

Additionally, more information is displayed on the overview of the screen.

• Pick up (3d): The pick up from last 3 days is shown. This gives a quick understanding about booking dynamics in the last days, making it easier to spot well or low performing days. More detailed pick up reporting can be found in menu > reports > pick up daily or pick up monthly
• Availability: the first number shows total number of rooms available, where the second  number in brackets gives the information of how many rooms are still available for the chosen number of people (2 Pax in the example below).
• If a certain roomtype is not suitable for the selected number of adults (Pax), the roomtypes are marked as n/a.
• Out Of Order rooms (OOO): For Hogatex users, Price Control will show the OOO values fed automatically from the PMS. For all other PMS users, a future update will enable manual editing of the OOO feature.
• The Stop Sell button is shown consistently with the CRS and also allows to see the status of a stop sell.

Stop Sell

Upon many user requests we have restored the permanent channel close possibility in Price Control and in the quoting screen – the “Until opened” option is available in both interfaces.

We have also implemented some fixes in the Stop Sell service function, which improves the reliability of this function.

Price rounding in quoting screen

For stays longer than one night the average price is now showing the average price rounded to 2 digits behind the comma.