To manage rate restrictions means selling rooms not purely by the availability of the room, but rather by selling a rate to the guest rather than a room. For example, a hotel may prefer to reject low price business even if the hotel is not full, in case hotel can anticipate that it will be able to sell the same room later to a higherpaying customer. The concept of maximizing revenue with a fixed inventory is known as yield management, of which rate restrictions are integral part.
Hotelila's Property Management Software supported restriction types
Minimum Stay Arrival
No booking can be made for less than the minimum number of nights defined for the selected arrival date.
Maximum Stay Arrival
This is the maximum number of nights a guest can book when making a reservation for a given room rate and selected arrival date.
Minimum Stay Through
No booking can be made for less than the minimum number of nights defined if the restricted date falls within any part of the stay.
Maximum Stay Through
No booking can be made for more than the maximum number of nights defined if the restricted date falls within any part of the stay.
Close To Arrival
No booking can be made for arrival on the selected date, meaning no check-ins are allowed on that day.
Close To Departure
No booking can be made for departure on the selected date, meaning no check-outs are allowed on that day.
Minimum Sell Before
Minimum number of days before arrival, when booking of the selected rate is still allowed.
Maximum Sell Before
Maximum number of days before arrival, when booking of the selected rate is still allowed.
Day Use
Only bookings with zero nights (i.e. day use) will be offered this rate code.
Maximum Persons
Specifies maximum number of persons in the room. Limitation can be applied on room type or rate. For example, you can limit persons in double room to set maximum persons attribute value to 2. In case you create a Single Use rate for double room, then you have to override default room type setting with rate maximum persons attribute value set to 1.
Minimum Person
Minimum number of persons in the room. Only bookings within the limit of minimum number of persons in the room will be accepted.
Maximum Rooms
Maximum number of rooms per one online booking. Restriction is used for online bookings only. In general with one online booking it is possible to book all available rooms. Some hoteliers from various reasons prefer individual online bookings before group bookings, in that case they set maximum rooms attribute value to 1. For example, if there is 10 rooms available for online booking, with one booking guest can occupy all 10 rooms at once with one booking. On the contrary with maximum rooms restriction value set to 1, online guest needs 10 separate bookings to occupy 10 rooms.
Stop Sell
Stop the sale of a room rate on that day. No booking can be accepted for either arrival or staying through the selected date.
When managing settings of rate restrictions we have to be careful, because it is possible to accidentally make a room completely unavailable by setting multiple, overlapping restrictions. Please note that these are rate restrictions supported by Hotelila's software, some Channel Managers and OTA channels might not support some restriction types.
Hotelila's hospitality software solutions allows you to create an unlimited number of strategies and techniques for restricting rates to maximize your hotel revenue. Although you might find the concept of rate restrictions complicated at first, chances are you are already using some form of rate availability in your hotel. Rate restrictions can be applied to offline and online bookings. With software is easier to implement and easier to control that all reservation clerks make the correct decisions when selling rooms in the hotel. Connected online booking channels are controlled from a single Property Management System (PMS) and rate restrictions are automatically updated to all channels.