Selling by Specific Rooms or Room Types

BookingCenter supports two basic modes for configuring the Booking Engine.


1) Sell by Rooms. With this option, the guest doesn't have to select how many rooms desired in a booking. They can only book one room at a time by choosing the radio button next to the Room. This makes for less configuration choices for the guest (thus, better merchandising), but it has 2 drawbacks:

-> This guarantees the guest a specific room and therefor no flexibility in placing a booking. And

-> This requires that the 'number of Adults/Children/Infants' is input into the request screen so that the right room to match the party size and the right price per person can be returned.


2) Sell by Rooms Type. With this option, the property is selling a Room Type, which allows a booking of multiple rooms of a given Type, without showing the exact Room booked to an online customer.

The advantage to this strategy include:

-> A guest can book numerous rooms in a single transaction.

-> As a manager, you are not responsible for selling a specific room to a guest, only a Room Type. This gives you the flexibility to move the guest to a room of your choosing.

-> The choices presented to the guest when querying for an booking online are less (there are less Room Types than actual Rooms in most establishments), thus improving the chance of a successful transaction.

-> The Global Booking Networks only sell by Type, so this is the only option available through distribution, regardless of what you choose for your Booking Engine.



Test each scenario before you commit to one. There are advantages to both.

* Remember - you can test online bookings without incurring a commission by simply CANCELLING the booking in your BookingCenter software.

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Here's how you switch between the options of Sell Rooms or Sell Room Types in your BookingCenter product:

Desktop PMS:
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In the Parameters | Internet Configuration | Online Config section of your BookingCenter software, there is a checkbox "Display Types Only". If this option is chosen, and you "Upload All Info" to the Service, then the booking screens will change to allow a user to book Types instead of Rooms. Just toggle this back and forth doing an "Upload All Info" to the Service to see its effect.

Management Tool or MyPMS:
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Be default this is the option chosen for all Management Tool and MyPMS customers. If you would like to see how your Booking Engine can be converted to 'Sell by Rooms', please login to the Support Area at http://support.bookingcenter.com. Here, you can 'Submit a HelpDesk Ticket' to our support staff and ask us to set this to 'Sell by Rooms' or 'Sell by Room Types' and we will do so for you.