This article is intended to provide a handy guide to testing and troubleshooting your Pricing and Short Break set-up, via your website calendars.
If you wish to preview these prior to putting them on your website, click HERE for instructions.
Using either the your live embedded website calendars, or their preview version, you can test your pricing and short break set-up easily.
For example, in the example below, the dates selected have the correct weekly price showing, and we can also see that a discount has been set-up to apply automatically. If this was what was intended, then you have set-up at least a weekly price for these dates, and the property is bookable.
If you offer short breaks for all/part of the year, when those dates are selected you should also see the correct price for each of those different lengths of stay appearing, and any discounts should appear or not correctly, based on the rules you have set-up around them.
These dates are available but you need to contact us for a price
If you choose a start date and a short break duration (or a stay of longer than 7 nights) and there is a price missing, you may get the message shown below. This message means that you have allowed this length of stay within the Short Break Band covering these dates, but have not entered the Price for that Short Break in the corresponding Price Band. In the example below, a 4 night Weekend Price is missing.
- You should therefore return to the Price Planner for the Property, click on the Blue Price Band covering those dates, and add the missing price(s). In the screenshot below, the red arrow is pointing to the missing price.
Note that you should normally still include, for example, a 1 night price, even if you don't offer 1 night says. a single night won't be bookable if you configure your short break bands with a higher minimum nights stay, but it is still needed if you wish to offer stays of longer than 7 nights, since the system uses the weekly price + short break price to quote for longer stays. Thus, a 1 night price is required to quote a price for an 8 night stay.
If you are using Daily Pricing, your short breaks will simply be the sum of the individual nights involved, thus a 3 night stay, starting on a Wednesday, would be priced as the sum of your Wednesday, Thursday and Friday prices. These are set in the individual Price Planner Blue Bands, and appear as below. In this example, I have chosen to make my weekly (7 night) price slightly cheaper than the sum of the individual days.
However, should you wish, the weekly (7 night) price can the automatically made to be the sum of the individual days too.
Properties > Edit > select property > Settings > Go.
Then, on the Settings page for the individual property simply tick the box below, and Save.
The Setting page for an individual property allows various pro-rata settings to be chosen. These determine how prices are calculated where a week or a short break crosses over two price bands. It is important to understand how these work, since they will determine, for example, how the priced quoted to the guest for a stay that crosses from a more expensive to a less expensive price band is arrived at, and visa versa.
For a detailed explanation of how each Pro-Rata setting is calculated, click Here.
Per Person Pricing is where different prices are quoted depending upon how many guests are selected during booking. If a price seems unexpected, and you have Per Person Pricing set-up, try amending the guest numbers and see if the price changes depending upon the guest number chosen.
The system will use your 2-person price for one guest, and use your 4-people price for 3 guests. This means you don’t have to re-enter prices that are the same if the capacity is lower.
The cause of a higher than expected price is often a result of the Minimum Price specified in your Price planner. The Minimum Price is a failsafe, to protect against the price of a booking falling to low due to a discount or a mistyped price (£30 rather than £300 for example). It can sometimes cause an unexpected price, if the Minimum Price is higher than a Short break Price entered.
For example, the Minimum Price specified for the cottage below is £300.
However, the prices for several of the Short Breaks in this Blue Price Band fall below £300, so if any of these were chosen, the system would default to the £300 minimum and quote that instead.
On the Settings page, which can be reached via Properties > Edit > select property > Settings > Go. there are various settings which can effect the dates that are bookable, as well as the allowed duration of bookings.
1. 'Check availability Before Booking'. If set to 'Yes' this allows you to make the property directly bookable, but to include an additional pop-up message asking the prospective guest to check availability prior to booking before proceeding.
2. 'Accept Online bookings X days prior to arrival'. This setting allows you to specify how close you will allow a booking to be placed before arrival. If a guest chooses un-booked dates less than this number, a message will flag up
3. 'Do not accept arrival Before'. this allows you to stop bookings being placed prior to specified date, and show the dates as either unavailable or to show a custom message instead.
The example below shows, for example, a custom message relating to maintenance closure.
Why isn't a longer stay than x nights allowed?
4. 'Max Duration for online Bookings'. This setting determines the maximum length of stay that could be offered, unless impeded by another booking. This can be important if the maximum stay allowed for a single guest is determined by local laws, insurance or similar restrictions.
A longer stay might also be disallowed due to a subsequent booking, or due to your allowed departure days specified in the price planner covering the dates in question.
Why are the settings in my Short Break Bands in my Price Planner being overridden?
Why are the settings in my Price Planner being overridden?
The Late Availability Short Break option, if activated, allows you to offer different settings for short break minimum and maximum stay a specified number of days prior to arrival, on a rolling basis.
a) To set this up, go to to Properties > Edit > Go.
b) On the Settings page for the property, scroll down to the section Short breaks.
c) Set your minimum and maximum stays for late availability bookings
d) Enter the number of days before arrival that you want these short break settings start to apply from.
e) Save at the page at the bottom of the page.
DO NOT click the Update Short Breaks button.
If you do this, the short breaks you have just set up will be applied to the whole of the price planner and not just the set up number of days prior to arrival.
Example
The example below shows the guest being able to stay for a minimum of 1 or 2 nights and a maximum of the default maximum, when they are booking at 5 days or less prior to arrival.
The minimum of 3 nights set up directly in the price planner will not apply, if the guest is booking in the 5 day time frame prior to arrival.
These 5 days prior to arrival are being applied on a rolling basis.
This means, the guest can book today and arrive today as well as booking an arrival 5 days into the future from today.
Please note:
If the settings in the price planner are not being applied and guests are booking dates and durations, they shouldn't be able to book, make sure that the setting for Allow late availability short breaks is showing a 0.
