Many lodging providers realize selling packages is smart, as they provide your guest with a better overall experience and add to the profitability of your business. There are two general places to sell your Packages:
Packages on your web site or a Portal Build your own custom package with complete control over the rooms, items, pricing, dates, and minimum stay requirements. Example: 'Romance Package' combines a room, flowers, and a bottle of wine, etc… and sell it from your website with a two night minimum, available any day of the week.
Example: Midweek Package. Bundle a room, a meal + a spa treatment, etc… and sell as a package to increase midweek bookings. Available Sunday – Thursday only.
Packages on the GDS systemsChoose your rooms, rates, dates, and minimum stay requirements, and allow travel agents and large travel portals to add it to their systems to sell as a 'Package'.
Example: Business PackagesProvide the GDS systems (travel agents and corporate planners) with a special rate and stay restrictions from Sunday – Thursday for business travelers requiring early breakfast, business office services provided by your staff, and 'turn down' service. A great way to entice mid-week business travel to your inn.
Example: Orbitz Package : Provide a Bed, Breakfast, and Spa Package that Orbitz will sell as a composite package to its millions of shoppers.
How to Setup a Package The first step is to plan what is desired in the package. Will you simply make a 'Fixed' Package consisting of a marketing 'concept' tied to a Room? Or will you make a 'Dynamic' Package that taps into Rom Rates that vary season by season and add to these 'dynamic rate' changes Items that may be dynamic added as well? What dates will the Package be available on? What minimum stay and maximum stays must be met to purchase the Package? Planning ahead strategically will help when setting up your Packages.
Details on Making Packages Example of a Package:
Package ID: This will be the 'Rate' that is allocated to a sales channel, - your website, a special Agent, or the GDS systems – once the Package is ready for sale.
Name: This is the name of the Package as online buyers will see it.
Parent Rate ID: This is the Rate that BookingCenter will use to calculate what the Room would cost for the Package, as it may vary from weekday to weekend and/or season to season. Additionally, the Parent Rate will allow BookingCenter to set our 'calculated Sell', which can help you price the Package, by providing an analysis of the Rate's value is added up with the Items assigned to the Package.
Type: The 'Fixed' package is priced once, and its price is not calculated from the Room Rate or Items added to it. This is intended for 'easy to make' packages that have no daily or seasonal rate changes. The 'Dynamic' package is intended to be used more tightly with Room Rates - as Room Rates rise, the Package price does as well. As the Room Rate falls, so does the Package price. The Items that comprise the Package may be shown - or not - to the Guest while being booked. Regardless, if Items are added to the Package, rest assured they will be in correct quantities, so that they can be tracked and priced by the Property Management Systems correctly when a Guest buys the package. The 'sell price' of a Package need not be priced on the calculation of the Room + Items, but it can be and BookingCenter provides a feature for viewing what the 'calculated price' of a dynamic package would be.
Sell: This is the price the Package will be sold at if it is a Fixed package. The sale price will either include or exclude taxes based on the setting of your Property, as all Rates do.
Calculated Sell: While building the Package, this filed will show what the 'pieces of the package, added together' would amount to. As you add and remove Items to a Package, click the 'refresh' button at bottom to refresh the 'calculated sell' price. This is not shown anywhere else and is intended to give a package bui8lder the composite price of the pieces.
Number of Guests: This is the number of guests that can be included in a Package – adults, children, and infants included:
Closed to Arrival: This setting will make sure that a Package can not be booked to start on the dates specified, with the first date value a Sunday. So, there should always be 7 (one for each day of week) Y's (yes) or N's (no) in this field. If there is no day of the week this rate can be purchased for an arrival, make that day N. For example, if a Package rate is closed for arrival on Fridays and Saturdays, but is available for other days, then the field would look like: NNNNNYY
Minimum Stay/Maximum Stay: The minimum and maximum number of days that need to be booked to allow the Package to be purchased. For a Dynamic Package, these can be different values, but a Fixed package the min and max values must be the same.
For example, a Dynamic package consisting of a vacation rental (self-catering facility) and a cleaning fee that recurs every 5 days can have a different min and max stay. A Fixed package
must have the same value for min and max stays, as the rate is not based on a day-by-day dynamic price, but on a 'fixed' duration and grouping of Rooms and Items.
Valid From/To: By entering dates, this will show which dates the Package can be booked on. Dates outside of these settings will not be able to be booked.
Display Items: This setting will show the Guest who books a Package on the BookingCenter Booking Engine
ONLY the actual Items that comprise a Package. When booked via the Global Booking Network, the Items are not displayed ever, only the marketing text and images are presented to the buying Guest. The options are to show the Items in email (the email confirmation that guest to a Guest after a booking) web (the web pages of the Booking Engine that show a summary of the Package being bought). The package builder can choose whether or not to show the Items comprising the Package by selecting these options.
Promote: This value will highlight the Package at the top of a BookingCenter Booking Engine screen in order to promote it above basic Room rates. This has no value outside of the BookingCenter system, ie no effect on its promotion within the GDS systems.
Live/Not Live: This is how you can 'turn on/turn off' the Package from being shown anywhere.
Short Description: The short description that shows on the BookingCenter Booking Engine that entices Guests to look at – and book - the Package. If the Package will be distributed to Global Booking Networks, then do not place HTML in this field as it will be rejected. Maximum 100 characters is recommended for this field.
Long Description: The long description that shows on the BookingCenter Booking Engine that entices Guests to look at – and book - the Package. If the Package will be distributed to Global Booking Networks, then do not place HTML in this field as it will be rejected. There is no recommendation for how many characters this field will support, but some GDS systems only support a maximum of 100 characters for the length of any description – long or short. For this reason, if the Package will be distributed to Global Booking Networks, keep all relevant text in the first 100 characters.
Managing Items within the Package Once a Package has been saved, whether or not is 'dynamic' or 'fixed', the manager can add Items to it to both change its 'calculated price' and also give the Guest a detailed look at what Items are included in the Package besides the Room. Choose the 'Add Items' to add Items that have been setup in the
Member's Area or the Property Management System.
Qty: This is the quantity of the Item that will be sold with the package and this will import these quantities into the Property Management System for management and delivery.
Cost: This is the 'sell cost' that the Item will be posted to the Property Management System when it imports.
Recur Days: This is to help a problem whereby a Package requires certain Item(s), such as a cleaning fee or a meal, to be added for each x day of the stay. If this is the case, choose how many Items for each day of the stay the Item should be added to the Package. For example, if a cleaning fee is only needed to be attached to the booking once each 7 days, make the recur days as 7. For each 7 days of the booking, one additional 'cleaning Item' entry will be added and priced. Thus a 21-day booking would have 3 'cleaning fee' Items added to it.
Note - to Delete an Item from the Package. Choose the number "0" and click the 'change' button to remove that Item from the package.
Allocating your Package to the proper channels Once your fixed or dynamic packages are setup you must allocate them to the desired distribution channels. Agent BC for the booking engine, Agent WR for GDS and Agent MYPMS for the front desk channel.
