1. Email address – For confirmations. Use comma between multiple email addresses if you want emails to go to multiple contacts.
2. Accounts Email address – for invoices in future from Diary system – not currently being used.
3. GPS Coordinates – make sure that you enter in the format. 53.383108, -6.233639
4. Use Google Map – This is a location map that will appear on customer email confirmations
5. Facilities in your property – not currently being used, to be incorporated into new web builder.
6. Phone numbers – use international format if possible. (+353 (0) 86 217 8875)
7. Address – used on email confirmations
8. Brand/Skin for white label versions of the system. There is an AccuBook version for old customers which we did not use.
9. Time zone – ensure this is set correctly for international properties e.g. Vietnam. System depends on this for nightly refresh for example
10. Terms & conditions – these will display on email confirmations to guests for direct reservations. Does not impact OTA bookings.
11. Sign-in form text – this is used to add additional text to the sign-in sheets
12. Booking confirmation details – you can enter additional booking confirmation email text here. This may be some details about the hotel location, local area etc.
13. Property Logo – used on the sign-in sheets and invoices/bills
14. Nightly rates
a. Default is Always average. In this setup the rates across multi-night bookings will average over the entire booking. E.g. if a booking total for 2 nights is 250 euro then the system will assign €125 to each night.
b. Always Ask – this will allow the customer to set their own nightly rates on a reservation. They can do this by clicking the small € or £ or $ symbol beside the Price field when entering a booking or clicking the “Nightly Rates” link above the price field.
c. We advise that you leave by Always Average unless there is a specific requirement
d. OTA bookings always have nightly rates.
i. LateRooms bookings on the other hand, always average, we do not get night rates for this OTA.
15. Specify Max Length of Stay – Does not show allocation if number if nights searched is greater than this value on our booking engine
16. Accept Bookings that cannot be allocated – Default to accept. If set to do now accept the system will not allow bookings that cannot be allocated tot eh same room for entire stay
17. Default Cancellation Policy – this is used where the cancellation policy has not been setup on individual rate plans. Default on rate plans themselves Is “Use Default” (THIS ONE)
18. Accepted credit cards – By default all are accepted.
If customer doesn’t want a particular card, e.g. AMEX is quite common one. Just CTRL select the ones that the customer wants to accept on the booking engine.
19. Quick Booking – Allows you to customise booking engine to not ask for certain information.
This has potential to increase direct booking engine conversions, as we ask for less information.
Encourage customer to remove the requirement for the address on direct bookings
20. Google Analytics – UA Code to be entered here for the Google Analytics we have setup, or the properties own analytics account.
21. Furthest Departure – This value determines how long in advance a customer a book on the booking engine. The Default is 365 days. The system can only handle 365 days or less.
22. Upgrade Style – This this option tells the system to allow a booking that cannot be allocated to a specific style to allow the system to upgrade it to higher style on the “Types & Styles” order priority list. Refer to Andy’s notes in relation to this. Only switch this off if the property is very specific about what rooms they want to put customers into. Bear in mind that if this setting is set to “No” then there Is a good chance that more unallocated bookings will result.
23. Advertise All Suitable Occupancies
a. Select Default to only advertise results which closely match the searched number of occupants. This is the option that will show least results to the customer.
b. Select Advertise Suitable to advertise all occupancies capable of accommodating the number of guests. This should be used by self-catering properties as a guest may be searching for 2 people, but all their properties should be advertised, not just properties for 2 people. This option shows only Physical Occupancies, not sub occupancies. To summarise, this setting will show all occupancies that accommodate the booking, but also larger occupancies.
c. Select Advertise Everything to advertise all occupancies on the property. No matter what the customer searches for then the system will show all available occupancies for that night.
24. Custom No Availability Message – Use this setting to display a message on the booking engine when there is no allocation found.
Remember that the default message will display always, your custom message will get appended to this.
25. Marketing Consent Checkbox – Allow you to activate the checkbox to ask for marketing consent GDPR
26. Pill Alignment – Allows you to configure the pills on the Diary screen. Default is left align. Centred is preferred option with most customers. Change by default.
27. Pill Scaling – Default is automatic. This will change the height of the pills on the Diary screen based on the screen resolution if the customers display. 2 x and 3 x are just larger versions that you can set manually if the customer has a preference for larger or smaller pills.
28. Low Inventory Close Out for OTA’s – This allows you to set a global OTA close out threshold for the OTA channels. If you set a higher value on an individual OTA connection under Channels section, then that setting takes precedence.
29. Availability Management Type – Use this to switch between
Full Automatic Diary – the full Diary with automatic allocation management.
Manual With Pills – Allows the customer to use full Diary (and all Diary features), however allocation management is done via the Rates & Availability section. Not Automatic.
Manual Without Pills – This is the channel manager only option in the Diary, customer can update rates and allocation and also run reports, however, this version does not have full Diary functionality.
30. Occupancy Sort Order – Drag and drop the occupancies here to order them for the rates screen. Good practice is to order the smaller rooms first ascending. Also ensure that the “Physical Occupancy” is above and virtual occupancies for each room type. E.g. if it’s a Double Room then order Double first then Single below.
31. Alternative Currency – Allow the hotel to select different currency for bills and Booking confirmations for customs from other markets.
32. Limit Guest Counts – This feature will allow the Hotel to input as many persons into a room as they wish. This will only affect bookings that the customer inputs manually. It does not affect the booking engine, nor does it have any impact on OTA bookings.
Use this setting only in the event that a customer asks for it and give them plenty of warnings about the implications of doing this.