This tutorial will explain how to setup an "Early Bird" Rate Discount and the various different options you have available to you.
Rate discounts are only for online bookings. They do not apply to manual calendar bookings.
Open Rate Discount in Setup.
If you're not sure how to do this, please check this tutorial on how to find this section in the setup.
Click on "Add" in order to open the section where you can create the Rate Discount.
Make sure that you've selected "Early Bird" as the type of discount.
Set the minimum amount of time before arrival that the discounts will apply.
This setting will allow you to set what period of time before arrival the special rate will apply to. This means that you can set an Early Bird special to only apply to bookings that have an arrival date that is more than a certain amount of days/months away.
E.g. if you would set up an early bird special with a duration of 6 months, then the discounts will only apply to bookings that have an arrival date more than 6 months from today.
Does a minimum length of stay apply?
See our tutorial on Minimum Stays.
If you only want this discount to come into effect for bookings that are more than 1 night, you would need to set this up here.
Please note that this setting is not supported by many channels and so think carefully about what you're trying to achieve with this setting.
Put in the percentage (%) change in the rate.
Keep in mind that fixed child rates will not be overridden, only the percentage sliding scale and sharing rates. If you're not sure what child rates you have setup, please have a looking by following the instructions here.
You can adjust your rates according to a percentage (%) increase or decrease.
Please ensure that you know the base rate is so that you end up with the desired rate. Therefore, the rate adjustment will be done according to the rates that you've got in your rate sheet for that period. This means that if your rates are R1000 for the period and the adjustment is a 10% decrease in the rates, the new price will be (R1000 - R100) = R900.
Add a name for the Rate Discount that you're creating.
The rate name will give you and your guests a way to easily identify the discount with a short description.
Use a name that gives the guest an indication what type of discount they're getting. Do not use codes or words that are meaningless to the guest.
If you want to see how the discount will reflect on the booking form please click here.
Add the dates that the discount will be valid for.
This section will allow you to add the dates on which this discount will apply. Therefore, if the discount will only apply for a long weekend, the "Valid From" will be the first night and the "Valid Until" will be the last night of the long weekend.
In this case, we're setting up the Early Bird Rate Discount to only apply to the peak season period so that guests can make bookings for this period in advance and get a 10% discount.
You're also able to add more periods in which the discount will be valid for. This means that you can apply the same discount for multiple periods and not just one.
Select the days of the week that the discount is valid for.
You would use this if you would like the discounts to only apply for stays on specific dates during the week.
E.g. if you would like discounts to only apply to your rates for week days and not weekends.
The Rate Discount will be applied on the days that have been ticked.
Would you like to setup price pointing?
Price pointing allows you to setup your prices so that they're rounded to a specific price. E.g If the price is R500 per night, you can setup the price pointing to round off to R499 per night.
- Price Rounding: You can setup the price rounding which means that the price will be rounded to the nearest R1, R5, R10, R100 etc. This is useful when you have rates that are not whole numbers and you would like round off the price.
- Price Pointing: You can then setup your price pointing to then round the price to the nearest 99 or 95 if the rate change ends up on a 100 or 1000 denomination. Therefore if your rate is R1000, the system will then round your prices to R999.
Use a name that gives you an indication what the special is for.
If you want to see how the discount will reflect on the booking form please click here.
Would this discount apply to a specific rate sheet or channel?
Alternatively, you could also choose to distribute this discount to a specific channel such as your own website or to an OTA like Booking.com. You're also able to apply the discount to more than one channel at a time.
Only sites that you have connected through NightsBridge will show in this list and so if the channel you're looking for is not in the list, it's not connected to your NightsBridge.
Keep the following in mind that certain channels like Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, etc. require that you provide them with the "best available price" or rate parity. Therefore, if you only give the discount to one of the channels and not the competing site, they will be unhappy.
Does the discount apply to any specific room types/meal plans?
If you only want your discount to apply to a specific room type or meal plan, you're able to set this up using this section.
You would first need to click on the slider to turn off the setting that applies the discount to all room types/meal plans. Once you've done that, then you can tick the boxes to choose which room types and meal plans the discount will apply to.
When you're happy with your selection, save and publish your setup.
Once you're finished with setting your preferences, you will then need to save and then publish the setup.