This article is the first part of the series of articles we’ll publish to go overHotelKey CRS functionality

In lodging, a product is a combination of room type and rate plan that makes-up the guest reservation with the property. In this article, we’ll cover the room type portion of this product.

Every property is different and unique. A room type must be distinguished from another room type by one or more attributes such as the size of a room (i.e. sq.ft), outside view from inside the room (i.e. ocean view), amenities within the room (i.e. sofa), etc. Moreover, in the US and many other countries, all properties are required to support accessible rooms (i.e. Roll-in shower) and these accessibility attributes also drive the creation of separate room types.

In the last few decades, the properties and their revenue managers have spent a lot of time to figure out the room types to maximize product differentiation and price them accordingly. However, this has also resulted in a situation where a 100-room property would have 20 or so room types. This becomes a pricing nightmare as the product requires that every rate plan has a price by room type. Asking the revenue managers to eliminate room types would be counterproductive to the revenue. For example, a standard room with an ocean view can provide an extra $20 per night (vs. standard room) that can provide a meaningful increase in ADR and RevPAR of the property.

When we looked at this problem, we wanted to solve this in a natural way. And we came up with a room type hierarchy approach. Let's take an example. A property sells five room types: Standard Room, Accessible Standard Room, Double Room, Standard Room Suite, Double Room Suite. Using our room type management, the property would set Standard Room at the top of the room type hierarchy. Thereafter, all other room types would be set as offset increase (% or amount) against the Standard Room

Specifically, for our exampl

• Accessible Standard Room would be set to $0 offset as it is legally required distinction vs. amenity-based distinction
• Double Room would be set to $15 as the property values an extra bed at that amount
• Standard Room with Suite would be set to $25 as the property values the spacious room values at that amount
• Double Room with Suite would be set to $35 as it is a combination of extra bed and extra space in the room

Now, once you set this up, you will not need to worry about setting pricing for rate plans respective to every room type. You will set the price for a given rate plan and base the Standard Room. And when you update the amounts, the system will automatically calculate the prices for all other room types and update the Rate Calendar and distribute them across all channels. This not only increases the productivity of the owner, general managers, and revenue managers; it also ensures a consistent room type attributes-based pricing based on the predefined offsets

Lastly, as part of the room type hierarchy, HotelKey also natively supports seasonality (date range periods) in the room type hierarchy offsets. Let's assume our example property is a beach town property. It expects families/business travel mix in Summer and mostly business travel during Winter. The property can do a Summer season that prices the Suite at an offset, to the Standard Room, for the extra space valued by the traveling families. However, during the Winter months, business travelers are mostly solo travelers and would not see the value of extra space. Therefore, the Winter season offset can be set to 0 for Suite room types. This is all configured once and works in an automatic fashion with no manual action required.

For more information, please visit this link for the how-to guide on the room types.

To setup Room Type hierarchy in your property, please contact your Account Manager.