Rate plans are the most complex part of setting up your hotel. This guide will walk you through the creation step-by-step.
Preparations
- Set up unit groups
- Define cancellation policies, or use the predefined flexible and non-refundable policies
- If you want to package services with your rate plan: Set up services
- Translations for the descriptions and names. Those will be displayed on the internet booking engine and other guest facing apps. They should be formulated in a way that allows the guests to understand the rate conditions.
What to sell?
In the Unit group and time slices section, you can define what you want to sell. Which unit group, during which time, and bundled with which services.
For unit groups with a maximum occupancy greater than one person you need to specify the surcharges for each person. You can define surcharges as absolute values or as percent and they can be positive or negative. Please be aware that surcharges are always calculated on top of the base price for a one person occupancy.
The time slice definitions are automatically created for you, and you can choose between over-night, which will be from check-in to check-out time, or day-use, which is from check-out to check-in time.
For included services, you can decide whether the price is included in the rate or is added to the rate. The default service price can be overwritten. This allows you to specify a service only once, but include it with different prices in different rate plans.
Accounting and Policies
apaleo gives you the flexibility to define the revenue account and VAT type for your rate plans. For the standard case, rooms for nights, you can leave it as it is. For special cases like long-stay or meeting rooms, you will need to change it. Please check with your accountant if you are unsure what to do.
In case you have to change the VAT amount, e.g. your country enables a temporary VAT change, then you can do it through the accounting configuration. Simply set the new starting date for the changed VAT amount and apaleo will use the new VAT rate:
You can also configure if all reservations for this rate plan should be exempt from paying city taxes. Again, useful for long-stay, or corporate rate plans.
Learn more: supported guarantee types, cancellation policies, city tax.
Distribution
Minimum and maximum advanced booking let you specify, when this rate plan can be booked. Use this to model early-booking or last-minute discounted rates, or as a general restriction. If the default check-in time for your property is 5pm and you specify 1 hour minimum advanced booking, then the last booking for this rate plan can be made on the day of arrival, at 4pm.
With the late booking until time you can restrict until when you want to receive bookings on the day of arrival. The specified time has to be between the check-in and check-out times of the time slice definition for the rate plan.
Set booking periods to define when this rate plan is open for sale. Outside of the defined booking periods, this rate plan will not be visible to bookers. In the example below the guests will be able to book this rate plan from April 8th to June 20th for any stay dates between May 20th and June 25th.
Adding a corporate / promo code hides this rate plan when requesting offers. The rate plan is only visible to users knowing this code. If you request offers and specify a code, you will get offers for this code. Use it to model corporate rates, promotions or special rates for your most loyal guests.
Select one or more channels this rate plan should appear on. You can change this at any time, and add or remove channels depending on the occupancy of your hotel.
Copy rate plans
To speed up the creation of rate plans you can copy them. Let's say you already set up a flexible rate plan for your single rooms and want to sell the double room with the same conditions, but just a higher supplement for the price. Now you can go to the rate plan list, find the flexible rate plan for the single room and duplicate it. The create rate plan form will then already be pre-filled and you only need to define a new rate code, select the double room as unit group to sell and adjust the pricing rule.