Adding Rate Types
Benson will have one rate type already populated. We would recommend you re-name this your rack rate.
A rate must have a name, a description (which appears on your web booking engine), a cancellation, a guarantee and a price type. The other fields can be blank or you can create further restrictions on rates:
- Min Stay Days – the minimum number of days a stay must contain (a long stay rate must have, for example, 4 days in the stay so ‘4’ would be the entry)
- Max Stay Days – the maximum number of days a stay can contain (a last minute rate may, for example, have a restoration of ‘1’ to prevent stays longer than one night)
- Min Advance Booking Days – the minimum number of days before the stay can be booked (an advance purchase rate may, for example, have an entry here of ’30’ indicating that it has to be booked at least 30 days before the stay).
- Max Advance Booking Days – the maximum number of days before the stay can be booked (a last minute rate may have an entry of ‘2’ here indicating that it can not be booked more than two days before the stay).
- Cancellation – selected from the list
- Guarantee – selected from the list
- Price type – selected from a per person or per room pricing.
- Restricted rate? – this allows a rate type to only be selected when linked to a client. For example, a corporate rate that is not available ‘generically’ but only to specific clients.
Adding a Cancellation Policy
A cancellation policy will allow Benson to calculate whether a guest owes you any fee if they cancel their stay.
Benson allows you to add multiple tiers to a Cancellation Policy, meaning that the cancellation penalty on a booking can fluctuate depending on certain date factors.
The first thing you’ll need to do is give your Cancellation Policy a name and a disclosure as these will appear on most of your PDF documents as well as on the Web Booking Engine. Once you’ve done that, you can start adding as many tiers to your policy as you want to.
For example, if you want your cancellation penalty to increase on a reservation as the arrival day approaches, then you’ll add three tiers that looking something like this:
- 25% of the total stay amount is payable 0 days after booking (immediately).
- 50% of the total stay is payable 14 days prior to arrival.
- 100% of the total stay amount will be payable 7 days prior to arrival.
You can add as many tiers as needed, but there’s also the option to add no tiers as well. In this instance, no cancellation penalty will apply to the booking.
Adding a Guarantee Policy
A guarantee policy will allow Benson to manage the deposits/guarantees you require when making and managing reservations. Like with Cancellation Policies, Guarantee Policies can have multiple tiers that change the deposit amount required over a period of time. Adding no tiers at all to a Guarantee Policy means that no deposit will apply to a booking with that Guarantee Policy.
Once you’ve given your Guarantee Policy a name and disclosure (both of which appear on most of the PDF documents generated from a Reservation), you can go ahead and start adding tiers. A two-tiered deposit may look something like this:
- 1 night’s stay payable 0 days after booking (immediately).
- 100% of the total stay payable 7 days prior to arrival.
Benson will automatically adjust reservations when the guarantee conditions are met.