Hotel Setup Step-by-Step

This guide covers the following topics about the step-by-step process:

Setting up your hotel, step-by-step
1. Settings on Account-Level
2. Adding a new Hotel
3. Settings on Hotel-Level
4. Set up your Inventory
5. Set up your Rates

Setting up your hotel, step-by-step

This guide explains in detail how you can create and set up your hotel in apaleo. We are recommending opening this guide alongside the apaleo page.

Open your browser and click on the following link: apaleo registration to login to your existing account (In case you already created a test account with test reservations before, you can now delete the sample properties in Settings > Hotel: Property Life Cycle). 

Enter your contact information in the form to become the account administrator for your apaleo account. Chose whether or not to add the three example hotels, but if you are ready to complete your setup, we recommend skipping this step. Click on 'Get started' and check your E-Mail Inbox for the apaleo confirmation mail, which is giving you a link to finalize your registration. Open apaleo and login with your credentials.

Once you are logged in you are automatically directed to the account level in apaleo. If needed, you can switch the language in the upper right corner.

1. Settings on Account-Level

Click on Settings in the account level:

Languages: Add any further languages that are important for your daily operations. E.g. a hotel in Spain might add Spanish as a language here, as English is set as the default language. Don't forget to save! 

General: General Information about the Account, like name and address.

User Management: Click on +Invite new user and insert the information for any additional users you want to add to your account:

• The invitation will be sent via E-Mail address.
• For the Roles you can choose between the Account Admin or any other role in the hotel level. The user role limits the access and functions a user can see and use.
• Every role requires that the new user has access to minimum one hotel, except the Account Admin.

2. Adding a new Hotel

In order to create a new hotel, use the Properties button in the account area and navigate to the field to add a new hotel via +New property.

2.1. Insert hotel information

A lot of the data is obligatory. For that reason we recommend preparing the following information before creating a new hotel:

General:

• Hotel-Code: has to contain a minimum of 3 characters.
  (Note: We recommend using a code that is connected to the hotel name to easily identify the hotel, e.g. 'HOLI' for Holiday Hotel)
• Important to know, this code can not be changed after creation.
• Name of the hotel, translated in all supporting languages.
  

Property:

• Address, postal code, city, country
• Time zone (can't be changed)
• Currency (can't be changed)
• Standard Check-in and Check-out Time (can't be changed)

Company details:

• Company name (legal entity)
• Commercial register entry
• Tax ID
• Payment terms, e.g. 'Invoice to be paid within 7 days of invoice creation'. This information will be visible on the guest invoice:

2.2. Save - Congratulations! You have created your first hotel.

After you have created your first hotel, you can choose it in the dropdown selector. If you have created more than one hotel, all hotels will be shown here:

3. Settings on Hotel-level

Click on Settings in the hotel level to insert your data about property, distribution, finance, payment & automation.

3.1. Property

General information about the hotel, like name and address of the property.

3.2. Distribution: 

Some cities collect city tax from guests staying in hotels. If your hotel is in one of those cities, apaleo allows you to configure the city tax. When checking in, the tax will be calculated and added to the guest's folio and invoice. No additional work for you!

Configure city tax:

You can set up city or tourist taxes for each hotel / property individually. Navigate to Settings  > Distribution > City tax and enter name, description and the formula how it is calculated.

Field	Explanation	Examples
Name	The official name your city is using.	City tax, Tourist tax
Description	The description will be displayed to your guests or front desk staff when creating reservations. Use it to describe how it is calculated and who needs to pay it.	$5 per person and night. City tax does not apply to business travelers and students, or if the stay is longer than two weeks. 2% of the net total of your stay, including breakfast. City tax does not apply to guests visiting close family members and tour guides. City tax is subject to a 5% VAT.
Value and Calculation types	The value and calculation are used by apaleo to automatically calculate the city tax.	5, per person and night. 2, percent of net amount.
Price step	You can only configure a price step, if the type is "Per person and night (in steps)". This specifies the room price steps, in which the city tax increases.	50 - for each started 50 Euro net room price, city tax is one Euro per person and night.
VAT	If the city tax is subject to VAT, choose the VAT type that applies to it.	Without, Reduced
Tax Handling	If the city tax is subject to VAT you can decide if the VAT should be added on top of the set value amount (add taxes to calculated value) or if the VAT is supposed to be contained in the calculated or defined value (calculated value contains taxes).	Add taxes to calculated value Calculated value contains taxes

City tax for children

In case you wish to set different values for infants, kids and so on you can select the calculation type "Per person and night", enable "Define different values for children" and start setting the ages and values.

apaleo calculates the "From Age" and then it's up to you to set the "To Age".

3.3. Finance: 

Invoice settings Tab:

Company details: Set the respective legal entity information, that should be displayed on the guest invoice.

Address: Address of the legal entity.

Invoice number template: Enter the pattern you would like to use for the creation of your invoices, e.g. yyyyMM000 would create invoices like: 202102001, 202102002, etc. You can always see an example under the pattern you have set.

Charges from other reservations: Choose if the guest name should be displayed on invoices when charges are moved.

Quicker invoice creation: Do you need the option of creating invoices without having to enter a complete billing address? Here you can specify the maximum amount for which this should be possible.

Accounting for invoices that are "marked as paid": Choose if you want apaleo to create a financial record when you select "Mark as paid" for an AR invoice. Always check with your Accountant if this function should be used, in general we recommend leaving it deactivated.

Tax breakdown settings: Choose how you want the tax breakdown to appear in your invoices. These settings are activated automatically and can be used directly by you.

Invoice styling Tab:

1. Navigate to Settings - Finance - Invoice Styling.
2. Upload a logo. The file must not be larger than 10MB. The dimensions must be between 10 x 50 pixels, and 1500 x 300 pixels.
3. Click Save

The logo is displayed at the top right of your invoice. If it is 800 pixels or larger, it takes the full width of the invoice.

Custom texts

apaleo comes with default texts, but you can change them for each supported language.

1. Navigate to Settings - Finance - Invoice Styling
2. Change or delete text. If a text is deleted, it will not be displayed on the invoice. If you delete the Hello text, then the whole greeting line is gone - including the name.
3. Click Save

Invoice address

apaleo initialises your invoice address (displayed at the bottom of the page) with the address of the property. However, the location of your hotel is not always the same as the invoice address.

1. Navigate to Settings > Finance > Invoice Styling
2. Change the address data or add more information. This does not change your property location.
3. Click Save

Sub-accounts Tab:

In order to track your service revenues, we strongly advise you to create sub-accounts and to link them to each of your services. This way, you are helping your accountants by saving them a lot of time finding the correct transactions in your accounting software.

• You are free to choose the names for the sub-accounts; however, make sure that it makes sense and is aligned with your accounting settings.

• The sub-accounts you have setup here can be assigned to specific services at a later step.

3.4. Payment

This step is only relevant with apaleo Payment and can't be changed during the setup because your hotel needs a merchant account first. If a merchant account exists, please notify the apaleo team, only we are able to insert details here. 

Payment Automation can completely automate the money collection process from your guests, as long as they entered a valid credit card.  You can activate multiple options in section according to your business needs.

3.5. Automation

For each property in your account, you can choose which actions should be automated. Navigate to Settings - Automation.

-> only activate no-show automation if you are certain about the effects on the applicable reservations.

Check-In

Automated check-in constantly observes if there are new reservations that are due to be checked in, and then does it. This is based on the reservation's arrival time.

You can either pre-assign rooms or let the check-in bot do that.

If no room can be assigned, the reservation will not be checked in. We strongly recommend that you manually verify the status of all reservations with arrival day "today", and handle the ones which are still in status Confirmed.

Check-Out

Automated check-out will check out each in-house reservation that is scheduled for departure for this day when the check-out time is reached.

This works best in combination with apaleo's payment integration and automation, which will collect and post the outstanding payments. If you do not have prepaid reservations, you still need to take care of that.

Night Audit

You can choose the time, when the night audit should be performed, and if guests that should have checked in before today should be set to no-show, or not. The night audit article describes what exactly happens during the night audit.

4. Create your Inventory

4.1. Create Unit Groups

• Unit groups are apaleo's room types.
• Choose your new property in the context selector, and navigate to Inventory - Unit Groups.
• Prepare names and descriptions in all languages you want to support. This data will be shown via IBE or your Channel Manager to guests and to your staff when creating reservations.
• No worries if you do not have everything prepared, you can enter draft texts and change them later at any time.
• Insert a code that corresponds to the name of the unit group, e.g. 'SRS' for Single Room Standard. Be aware that the Codes cannot be edited at a later stage.
• When creating a unit group you need to specify whether the unit group is for bedrooms, meeting rooms, event spaces, or parking lot.
• You will be able to select a unit group type when requesting offers and availability. This is needed in order to have accurately calculated occupancies. You definitely don't want your parking lots to influence your bedrooms' occupancy.

• Optionally, you can define a rank for the unit groups. The unit groups will then always be sorted in order from the lowest rank to the highest rank for offers or in the availability calendar etc.
• We recommend keeping the number of unit groups low, to simplify the booking process.

4.2. Create Units

There are two ways to set up units. If you have standardized rooms that share a description, we recommend using multi-create:

• Enter the number of units that have the same description and unit group
• Enter a name for each unit. You can use the TAB key on your keyboard to quickly switch between the name fields.
• Fill in the shared description which will be used to be displayed externally, e.g. via your IBE, and select the unit group and the maximum number of persons.

The units can later be changed individually.

• If you have very special rooms, you can also create those units one by one. Make sure to navigate back to the list and then click +New units after saving each room. Otherwise, you will only change the existing unit, instead of creating new ones.

4.3. Create Unit attributes

Attributes help you organize your inventory.

• You can add attributes to units to indicate floor number, bed types, view, or any other information you find useful.
• Attributes are defined on the account level and available in all properties. That means you can use it on any unit within any property.

• Navigate to Inventory - Unit Attributes and click +New unit attribute. Enter a name and an optional description. The description can help others understand when and where to use the attribute.

Add attributes to units:

• You can either add attributes on the unit details page or select multiple units and add an attribute to all of them in one click.

Delete unit attributes:

• Deleting an attribute will remove the attribute from any units.
• Remember, unit attributes are shared across all your properties: when you remove the attribute in one property, it will be gone everywhere.

Unit attributes in OTAs:

You have to ensure as well that your unit attributes are set up correctly in all OTA channels you are using, in order to map booking requests and room category conditions.

5. Setup your Rates

5.1. Age categories

• Before you can define the age-specific surcharges for children in the rate plans you need to define the age categories for that property first.
• Click on Rates - Age categories to open the setup.
• The age categories can cover the age range from 0 to 17 years.

5.2. Policies

Cancellation Policies:

Cancellation policies define when guests can cancel for free or when a fee applies.

• Each rate plan needs to have a cancellation policy.
• apaleo provides two default cancellation policies: strict and flexible. Make sure you review them to see if they fit your needs.
• You can also define additional policies: Navigate to Rates - Policies - Cancellation to create and change policies. Changing a cancellation policy will not affect existing reservations.
  
  Attention! Additional Cancellation policies cannot be canceled once created. 

In case you are using OTA's (e.g. Booking.com) for distribution: Make sure to set the same cancellation policies in Apaleo and the OTA. Like this you are avoiding discrepancies in the reservation creation and the activation date of virtual credit cards.

Defining the policies requires some time-math thinking. Here are some examples to get you started:

Policy	Time period	Reference point
Free cancellation up to 14 days after booking	0 months, 14 days, 0 hours	After booking
Free cancellation until 48 hours before check-in	0 months, 0 days, 48 hours	Prior to arrival
No free cancellation	0 months, 0 days, 0 hours	After booking
Free cancellation until check-in	0 months, 0 days, 0 hours	Prior to arrival

 

No-Show Policies:

No-show policies define the fee that applies when a guest did not arrive at the supposed arrival date, without any notice.

• Each rate plan needs to have a no-show policy.
• apaleo provides one default no-show policy: strict. Make sure you review it to see if it fits your needs. 
• You can also define additional policies. Navigate to Rates - Policies - No-Show to create and change policies. Changing a no-show policy will not affect existing reservations.

 Attention! Additional No-Show policies cannot be canceled once created. 

Fees:

You can define how to calculate no-show and cancellation fees for each hotel individually. The following settings apply both to cancellation and no-show policy fees.

VAT:

• You have to define the VAT that applies to the cancellation or no-show fee. Check these values with your accountant and verify they are aligned with the country's taxation rules.

Formula

• You can configure a fixed fee, a percentage fee, or even a mix of both. While this allows you to model very complex fees, your guests will be happier if they are simple.
• When configuring the percent fee, you can decide if services like breakfast should be included or not.
• You can also limit it to the first night, the first two nights, etc. If you do not specify a limit, the whole duration of the stay is used to calculate the fee.

5.3. Services

Services are all additional parts you want to offer to your guests besides the guest rooms. Breakfasts or business packages, additional costs for pets or parking spots, mini bar items and other goods. Services can be created and changed in the Rates - Services section.

In apaleo, services can be used in three different scenarios:

• In packages, to offer e.g. 'room with breakfast'. In apaleo, packages are modeled as rate plans. Each rate plan can include any number of services.
• As extras, like additional beds or high-speed internet. Extras can be added when making a reservation and they will be booked based on their availability settings. Extras can also be added or removed from existing reservations and their prices and quantities can be changed.
• For posting single charges to the folio, like mini bar items, or extras that should only be added to specific days.

You can use one service in all three scenarios, or you can set restrictions when creating the service. You can change the restrictions at any time.

• If the service should be visible only inside apaleo - for adding it as extras, or posting directly to folios - select only Direct as booking channels. This setting is useful for goods that are consumed during the stay and not booked in advance.

• In the availability section, you can choose whether the service is available for each and every day of the stay, only on arrival or only on departure. This is applicable for services/extras which are part of a rate plan or which are added to the reservation via the Extras tab. For services, which are directly booked into the Folio, this will need to be booked separately for each day.
• This setting is useful for services that are sold on specific days like a welcome drink (only on arrival) or a final cleaning (only on departure).

Pricing and Accounting:

apaleo calculates and books revenues and VAT automatically if a service is added in any of the ways described above. Pay attention that the pricing and accounting are set up correctly. It can be changed later, but all services that are already added to reservations will keep the old settings.

• Set the price and whether it is per room per night or per person per night. When posting the service directly on the folio, the price will be entered as a suggestion, and you can overwrite it.
  
• Choose the service and VAT types. When unsure, please consult with your accountant.
• In case you have to change the VAT amount at a later stage, 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:

When guests are staying overnight it is important to know for which day the service delivery will take place.

• With the setting Post next day you can specify that revenues for this service will be booked always to the second day of the night. Examples of services this should be active for are breakfast, final cleaning, or late check-out.
• Be aware that such a service will still be posted on the same day as the accommodation if it is sold as included in a package. It will nevertheless show up on the right day in the ordered service report.
  
  

Connecting a sub-account to a service

In order to track your services' revenues, we strongly advise you to create sub-accounts and to link them to each of your services. This way you are helping your accountants a lot and you are saving them a lot of time by finding the correct transactions in your accounting software.

• Here the created sub-accounts are coming into the game, scroll down to Accounting and select the right sub-account for the created service:
  
  
  
  
  

5.4. Create a new rate plan

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
• Get 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.

The rate plan code will be used in apaleo only and is recommended to be an abbreviation of the major rateplan features e.g. FLEX_B (flexible cancellation including breakfast).

-> A rateplan can be deleted only, if no reservations have been made with it. Once used, it remains in apaleo. This needs to happen, as these data points are used in statistics, accounting and many more.

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.

Surcharges:

• 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 one-person occupancy.

Time Slice Definitions:

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.

Services:

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.
• In case you have to change the VAT amount at a later stage, 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:

• 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.
• 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.

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 5:00 pm and you specify a 1-hour minimum advanced booking, then the last booking for this rate plan can be made on the day of arrival, at 4:00 pm.
• 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.

Corporate/ promo code:

• 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.

Channels:

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.

-> if you connect a Channel Manager to apaleo, only rateplans with the selected channel Channel Manager can be used by the App. Otherwise, theses rateplans appear as Closed. 

E.g. Siteminder can sell through multiple channels, including an IBE. While IBE is considered as a channel of Siteminder, the selected channel in apaleo must be Channel Manager.

E.g. HNS is a channel manager, like Siteminder, but has a stand alone IBE call OnePageBooking. If only OnePageBooking is used from HNS, then the apaleo channel IBE must be selected.

5.4.1. 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 then adjust the pricing rule by choosing the option Derived rates.

5.4.2. Setting prices

After creating rate plans, you need to set up rates. Each day with a price set is available for your guests.
Attention: If you do not set a price for a day, then you do not offer rooms with this rate plan on this day.

• Rate plans can derive their prices from another rate plan or define their own prices. With derived rates, the prices only need to be managed on one rate plan. The prices for all derived rate plans are calculated based on the pricing rules.
• This is useful if a rate plan is a variant of another rate plan: one with a different room type, cancellation policy, or included services.
  Attention: apaleo allows for 3 levels of derived prices.
• You can specify a price difference, as an absolute or a percent value. The difference can be negative or positive, allowing to give discounts or to add supplements on the base rate plan.
• You can change the pricing rule at any time. This allows you to switch from manually managed rates to derived rates and the other way around or change the hierarchy of the calculation rules. 

Prices can only be set for rate plans which are not derived. Click on the button Prices:

Now click on the three dots next to the rate plan to open a dialog to enter prices for a specific time range.

• You can either define one price for the entire time range or define prices per weekday.
• The price set is always the price for single occupancy. The prices for additional occupancies will be calculated based on the surcharges defined in the rate plan settings.

Congratulations, you just created your very first hotel all by yourself!

Go ahead and create a test reservation. You can delete them prior to your go-live and inserting actual reservation by clicking Settings > Property > reset this property. More details here: Property Life Cycle.