Enable deposits for a room rate
What "Deposit" means in the Booking Engine
Even though normally the word "deposit" is used to indicate a portion of the reservation paid at the time of booking (with the rest to be paid later), in Booking Engine terms, a deposit is any payment made at the time of the reservation: even the full reservation cost is considered to be a deposit. If you expect reservations to be paid in full at the time of booking, that is a "full amount" deposit.
Setting up deposits is also an important step when setting up a payment gateway (usually SiteMinder Payments).
Effects of deposits in the guest-facing booking engine after they have been set up in the extranet
Each room rate in your Booking Engine can be set up in extranet to require the guest to pay a different deposit on booking.
If your Booking Engine is connected to a payment gateway: the required deposit that you set up in the Booking Engine extranet is automatically processed by the payment gateway.
If your Booking Engine is not connected to a payment gateway: after the guest finishes a booking for a room rate that requires a deposit payment, you will need to manually process the payment using the credit card details provided by the guest (on the separate system that you use to process payments). The required deposit that you set up in the Booking Engine extranet will only serve to inform the Booking Engine of what messaging to give the guest about the amount of money that will be debited by you a short time after they make the reservation.
Depending on the type of deposit you set for each room rate, it will show different messaging when a guest is browsing through your booking engine:
No Deposit: ✓ Book now, pay later
Percentage Deposit: (!) X% deposit required - where instead of X it would show the number you selected
First Night Deposit: (!) One-night deposit required
Fixed Amount Deposit: (!) "currency" X deposit required - where instead of "currency" it would show the currency used by your property and instead of X it would show the amount of money you selected
Full Amount Deposit: (!) Pay today
How to set up a room rate to require a deposit
You can easily set up your room rates to require guests to provide a deposit. To set up a deposit:
Click on the Setup tab
Click on the Rooms & Rates tile
Locate and click on the room rate you wish to edit
Tick Enable deposits
Select the Deposit Type from the following:
Full Amount - Reservation paid fully at the time of booking.
No Deposit - No difference between selecting this or unticking "Enable Deposits".
Percentage - A percentage of the total rate excluding extras is required as a deposit.
First Night - The first night rate excluding extras is required as a deposit. If multiple rooms are booked in a single reservation, then this deposit type will charge the sum of each room's first night rate.
Fixed Amount - A set amount is required as a deposit. It is recommended to avoid setting here an amount that can ever be higher than the price of the reservation itself.
Click Save
Repeat this process for each applicable room rate.
NB: After enabling a deposit on any room rate, please make sure that in the payment options of your Booking Engine you have the credit cards you allow ticked.
Update your property policies
You can enter Terms & Conditions, Location Instructions, and Allowable Arrival Times for your property to be displayed on the booking engine.
To set this information:
Click on the Setup tab
Click on the Property tile
Click on the Policies tab
Enter Terms & Conditions
Enter Location Instructions
Select acceptable arrival times from the Allowable Arrival Times list for your guests
Click Save
Terms & conditions are viewable in a tab called " Policies " on the booking page. If you are on the older version of the booking engine, Terms & conditions will show at the bottom of the booking page.
Location instructions can be viewed in the booking confirmation email together with the terms and conditions.
Guest will be able to select the expected arrival time at the time of booking.
Set up cancellation policies and penalties
Cancellation policies and penalties
When your guests book with your booking engine, they need to have information about whether or not they will be able to cancel their reservations without incurring in fees for doing so. You have a space to provide this information in the Cancellations section, under Setup.
The cancellation policies are text spaces where you can explain in detail how your cancellation fees and policies work.
The cancellation penalties are an automated system to inform the booking engine about when to show certain messaging to the guests which relate to cancellation.
The Cancellations section is divided into two sections: "Property Level Cancellation Settings" and "Room Rates". The "Property Level Cancellation Settings" applies to all rooms and rates on your property. The "Room Rates" section has a list of all room rates on your property, and for each, you can set a different room rate specific cancellation policy. See below for more information on how this works in the policies and penalties.
Cancellation Policies
The cancellation policies are text spaces where you can explain in detail how your cancellation fees and policies work.
Setting up cancellation policies
Under "Property Level Cancellation Settings" you can write in the text space "Property Cancellation Policy" the cancellation policies that apply to the whole property. These policies will be shown to guests in the booking engine before and after they complete the reservation.
Under "Room Rates" in the Cancellations section, you can see the list of room types and room rates available for your property. If you click on "Show" on the right of the room rate name, you can edit the cancellation of the specific room rate. These policies are only shown to guests booking the selected room rate, and they only show in the confirmation email they receive after completing the booking. The confirmation email will show the room rate specific cancellation policies first, followed by the property-wide cancellation policy.
Because the cancellation policies that are specific to each room rate are not currently visible before the reservation, it is advised to simply write the full cancellation policies for your rates in the Property Cancellation Policy, explaining the difference in the cancellation policy for each of your rates.
Note: there are some differences in the way the policies are shown to your guests if your booking engine is still set to the old Booking Engine version known as "Modern". You can check your booking engine version in the section Display Preferences under Setup.
Enabling or disabling cancellation policies visibility
There are two points of visibility for cancellation policies: the confirmation email sent to the guests after a booking, and the booking engine.
As long as there is a text written in a cancellation policy text box (under "Property Cancellation Policy" or under a specific room rate) then it will be shown in the confirmation email regardless of any setting.
Visibility of the cancellation policies on the booking engine website instead is controlled by the button Cancellations Enabled/Disabled:
If Cancellations is set to Enabled for "Property Level Cancellation Settings" then all room rates will show the text under "Property Cancellation Policy" if present. If Cancellations is set to Disabled then the text under "Property Level Cancellation Settings" won't be visible for any rate.
If Cancellations is set to Enabled for a room rate, then that room rate will also show the text under the room rate cancellation policy if present. If Cancellations is set to Disabled then the room rate's cancellation policy text won't be visible.
Cancellation Penalties
The cancellation penalties are an automated system to inform the booking engine about when to show certain messaging to the guests which relate to cancellation.
Effects of cancellation penalties
Cancellation penalties control some of the messaging that your guests can see in the booking engine while scrolling through your room rates. When you set a penalty in the system, you let the system know when guests are suffering a penalty for cancelling and the booking engine adjusts its messaging to the guests accordingly.
Penalties also have a small effect on some messaging that appears before the guest cancels with the Confirmation Email Cancellation Link. For more information check the section below regarding the Confirmation Email Cancellation Link.
Note: all the below does not apply if your booking engine is still set to the old Booking Engine version known as "Modern". You can check your booking engine version in the section Display Preferences under Setup.
When browsing your booking engine, the guest can see one of these three messages based on the cancellation penalties you have set up:
(!) Non-Refundable - This appears if the guest is expected to pay the full amount of the reservation if they were to cancel on the same day right after booking.
(!) Cancellation fee applies - This appears if the guest is expected to pay a partial amount of the reservation if they were to cancel on the same day right after booking.
✓ Free cancellation! - This appears if the guest is not expected to pay any fee if they were to cancel at any point in time
✓ Free cancellation before (date) - This appears if the guest is not expected to pay any fee if they were to cancel before the specified date, however from that date onwards, the guest would be expected to pay the full or partial amount if they were to cancel.
If no penalties are set, the booking engine will show "✓ Free cancellation!" on the room rates, since it has no information on any penalty that the guest is expected to pay.
Penalties are made of one or more rules that apply from a certain amount of days prior to the check-in date up until the check-in date.
For example, a room rate could be set to have a penalty that requires the guest to pay the full amount of a reservation if they cancel any day from 7 days prior to the check-in onwards. In this case, if the guest is looking through the room rates 5 days prior to the check-in time, they will see the message "(!) Non-Refundable", but if the guest is looking through the room rates 10 days prior to the check-in time, they will see the message "✓ Free cancellation before (date)" where the date is 3 days later.
A more complex example could be a room rate that is set to have a penalty with two rules, one that requires the guest to pay the full amount of a reservation if they cancel any day from 7 days prior to the check-in onwards, the other that requires the guest to pay 50% of the reservation if they cancel 14 days prior to the check-in down to 8 days prior to the check-in. In this case, if the guest is looking through the room rates 6 days prior to the check-in time, they will see the message "(!) Non-Refundable", but if the guest is looking through the room rates 12 days prior to the check-in time, they will see the message "(!) Cancellation fee applies", and if the guest is looking through the room rates 18 days prior to the check-in time, they will see the message "✓ Free cancellation before (date)" where the date is 4 days later.
Setting up cancellation penalties
Under "Property Level Cancellation Settings", in the Penalties space, you can set the default penalties for your room rates that do not have special penalties in place.
Under "Room Rates" in each room rate's Penalties space (after you click on "Show" for the room rate), you can set the penalties that apply to the specific room rate.
Click on "Add New Penalty" to create a new penalty under "Property Level Cancellation Settings" or under a specific room rate.
The first information to provide is when the penalty applies:
Your property can only have one penalty set as the default policy in the "Property Level Cancellation Settings": the penalty applies on all days if no other penalty is set.
All other property level penalties override the Default penalty on the days in which they are active: the Default penalty is ignored completely and the date-specific penalty is used instead.
There can't be two penalties in the "Property Level Cancellation Settings" or in the same room rate with overlapping dates: you will incur in an error message if you try to set overlapping dates.
All room rate level penalties are also date-specific: you can't set a default for the room rate level penalties, so if you need a penalty to apply at all times for a specific room rate, you will need to choose a very long date range.
All room rate level penalties override the property level penalties on the days in which they are active: the property level penalties are ignored completely and the room-rate-specific penalty is used instead.
After you have defined when the penalty applies, you can start setting up all the rules within the penalty:
The date you set in "Days prior to check-in" indicates that the rule applies on that exact amount of days prior to the check-in or later.
Each rule applies from the date set in "Days prior to check-in" to the date of check-in, or until another rule applies that has a smaller number in "Days prior to check in".
Under "Penalty type" you can set the penalty to be:
No Penalty: only useful if you have set a default penalty and you want to override it for certain rates or on certain dates.
Full amount: the guest is expected to pay the full amount if they cancel at a time when this rule applies.
Percentage: the guest is expected to pay a percentage of the amount if they cancel at a time when this rule applies.
First Night: the guest is expected to pay for the first night of the reservation if they cancel at a time when this rule applies.
Fixed amount: the guest is expected to pay a fixed amount if they cancel at a time when this rule applies (this usually shouldn't be higher than the amount the guest might have paid for the reservation in the first place).
The "Remove" tick-box should only be ticked if you intend to delete the rule. If you are editing a penalty rather than creating one, ticking the Remove tick-box is what causes the rule to be deleted from the penalty.
Once your penalties and rules are set, your room rates will show the expected messages to the guests before they book, as explained in the above section "Effects of cancellation penalties".
Enabling or disabling cancellation penalties messaging
Whether or not penalties messaging appears is controlled by the buttons Cancellations Enabled/Disabled. These buttons can be found under "Property Level Cancellation Settings" and in each room rate under "Room Rates"
If you do not want to use cancellation penalties messaging at all, you will need to simply set Cancellations to Disabled for "Property Level Cancellation Settings" and for every room rate. This will also cause confirmation emails to be sent without the cancellation link for all rates, see section Confirmation Email Cancellation Link
If you only want some of your room rates to show cancellation penalties messaging, you will need to set Cancellations to Disabled for "Property Level Cancellation Settings" and then set Cancellations to Enabled for the room rates for which you want to show penalties messaging. If you set no penalties for a room rate with Cancellations set to Enabled, it will default to show the message "✓ Free cancellation!" to the guests. This will also cause confirmation emails to be sent without the cancellation link for all rates, see section Confirmation Email Cancellation Link
If you want all of your room rates to show cancellation penalties messaging, you will need to set Cancellations to Enabled for "Property Level Cancellation Settings".
Then for each room rate:
If the room rate's Cancellations are set to Disabled - the cancellation penalty messaging shown will be based on the penalties set under "Property Level Cancellation Settings". This will also cause confirmation emails to be sent without the cancellation link for this rate, see section Confirmation Email Cancellation Link
If the room rate's Cancellations are set to Enabled - the cancellation penalty messaging shown will be based entirely on the penalties set under the room rate and "Property Level Cancellation Settings" will be disregarded entirely (messaging will default to "✓ Free cancellation!" if no penalties are set for the rate, even if penalties are set at property level)
Confirmation Email Cancellation Link
If you want the button "Cancel your booking" to appear in the reservation confirmation email sent to the guest, first of all, you will need to ensure that "Cancellations:" at the top, under "Property Level Cancellation Settings" is set to Enabled, then you will also need to enable it for the specific room rates (see below).
On the left of the "Show/Hide" button for each room rate, you can find a button that says "Disabled" or "Enabled" under the column Cancellations. In order for the button "Cancel your booking" to appear in the reservation confirmation email sent to the guest for that specific room rate, both this button and the general "Cancellations:" button at the top need to be set to Enabled. If you set this button to Disabled, the button "Cancel your booking" will not appear for reservations for that specific room rate.
If you set the Cancellations button to Disabled, your guests will be expected to send you cancellations by calling your property on the phone or by sending an email, asking to cancel. This is for properties that prefer to have greater control over what guests are cancelling.
If you set the Cancellations buttons to Enabled, your guests can cancel directly by clicking "Cancel your booking" in the confirmation email. Clicking the button will bring them to a confirmation page, asking if they are sure. If there are penalties, the confirmation page will add "A cancellation fee may apply" besides the confirmation button (the message is the same in this case for full amount or partial being required for payment).
NB: Having penalties set does not cause cancellations to automatically take money from the guest if they process a cancellation through the Confirmation Email Cancellation Link, even if a payment gateway is connected. The hotelier is expected to process all cancellation payments manually.