There are times when a property must migrate from one MyPMS profile to a new one, usually do to a sale or ownership transfer.  Thus, the old property (SiteOld) becomes a new one (SiteNew).  The steps to do this are as follows:

Get Started

Contact BookingCenter Sales to get a contract established with the SiteNew.  BookingCenter staff will setup the property to reflect the same, or make new changes based on the goal of ownership.

Schedule Migration Date

Schedule a date and time for a ‘cutover’ from the SiteOld property to the SiteNew.

Export Data from SiteOld property

Before their migration date, determine what you want to ‘migrate’ from the SiteOld property to the SiteNew and get your team ready.  The most basic is the ‘Future Arrivals’ so that all in-house and arriving bookings are inside the SiteNew at the transition date.  To do this, use the Search Bookings function under the BOOKINGS TAB in the Front Desk. See Search Bookings in the online manual.  

You want to use the ‘Arrival Date From’ begins and enter the date of the transition, ie September 1, 2023.  You then want to use the Arrival Date To” and enter a date somewhere far in the future so that any booking take for 10 years in the future are contained the in the file.  Choose ‘Save as .CSV’ to get that list into a .CSV file where it can be managed in a spreadsheet program. 

Import Data for SiteNew property

Download the template file we provide here called “sample_import_bookings_file.csv” (under the section ‘Easiest Way to Import” which is also attached here.

This data you have exported from the step above needs to be reviewed before importing to BookingCenter.  Do not import any cancelled bookings (it will cause errors with your availability), and make sure that the data looks appropriate.  Once this file is ready for the SiteNew, send it to BookingCenter by attaching it to a support ticket at: https://support.bookingcenter.com.

Practice the Data Migration

We recommend doing a small sample of the import file a few days before the actual ‘migration date’ so that your staff can quickly download, place the data into our ‘sample_import_bookings_file.csv’ format (which can be saved as CSV, Excel, Google Sheet, or Apple Number), and cleanse it to be ready for the import on the day of migration.

Preparing for the Migration : Data and In-House Guests

A BookingCenter transition rep will be assigned to help import your readied file and manage the guests that are in-house on the date of the migration. These bookings will need Balance Forward adjustments for prior payments and charges that need to be accounted from the SiteOld property to the SiteNew.  See the article here to learn more about making these Balance Forward adjustments.

Merchant Account

Plan to have your new merchant account setup for SiteNew by a few days prior to the transition date. Contact BookingCenter Sales to get this started ASAP as creating a new merchant account and getting devices to your property can take up to a week or longer. 

OTAs and GDS Representation

If the property is not changing ownership, BookingCenter can simply switch the OTA connection for you, assuming the Rams are the same between the SiteOld property and the SiteNew.  If rooms are changing, then we will have to re-map and make sure we ‘cleanse’ any older rooms that are ‘retiring’ so pay attention tot his and make sure to communicate any room changes to BookingCenter when doing the switch.

When a property changes ownership, the major OTAs (Expedia, Booking, Airbnb, etc) usually accept an ‘assignment’ of the old contract and keep the same profile. But not always and BookingCenter has no contract over this decision. It’s best to contact your OTA market manager days prior to the migration to plan for this. If a new ‘Profile’ needs to be built ion an OTA, that can take from hours to days to get a new contract signed and the extent ready for BookingCenter to connect to. Plan ahead!

GDS switches take a minimum of 11 business day to complete, so plan ahead of you are going to perform a GDS switch.

Website

If the website stays the same, y9our webmaster will need to know the SIteID of the SiteNew property so they can make changes to the website to point to SiteNew. If there is going to be a change of websites entirely, then have y9our webmaster read the guide to how the Booking Engine is customized, and can be used, at:

https://docs.bookingcenter.com/display/MYPMS/Booking+Engine

After reading that, have your webmaster view the HTML integration for the 'Booking Engine widget' detailed here as it will provide details on the ‘widget’ code he/she needs.

Email addresses 

Make sure that the email addresses (for support, billing, booking notifications, auto reports, etc) for SiteNew are setup and can be retrieved by the staff of SiteNew, as you don’t want to loose these important communications. You can always update emails them under the Setup area of the SiteNew property

Users

There may be users associated with SiteOld that need to become Users in SiteNew. Let BookingCenter  Support know which Users need to be transferred or connected to both, and we shall do so.

These are the main topics you want to focus on when a property must migrate from one MyPMS profile to a new one. Making sure these steps are followed is recipe for success!