Easier Configuration for Hotels, Motels, Campgrounds

For properties where guests book by the room TYPE rather than the specific unit, ReservationKey configuration just got a lot easier. Now, instead of duplicating room descriptions and photos in every identical room, you just have to enter the room descriptions and photos, once, in the Room Types section. The latest blog post goes into more detail on how to set up one of these type of properties.
http://reservationkey.blogspot.com/2012/10/configuring-reservationkey-for-hotels.html

Configuring ReservationKey for Hotels, Motels, Campgrounds

ReservationKey works well for larger properties such as hotels, motels, and campgrounds, where users book by the TYPE of unit. Here are the steps for how to set up this type of property. All of these sections are located under the Properties Tab.

1. Properties / Locations
- Add your property name
- Add descriptions and photos as desired



2. Add Room Types
- Create a type for every style unit you have (use generic names such as King, Queen, Double, etc.)
- Add descriptions and photos for each of the room types



3. Create Rate Plans
- Set up a new Rate Plan for every type of room that has different prices.
- If you have four different room types and each type has different prices, then you will need four rate plans. If you charge the same rates no matter which room type is selected, then you would only need one Rate Plan.
- Inside each Rate plan add Rate Rules to cover your different price breaks (such as low season, high season, etc.)



4. Add Rooms
- The easiest way is to use the Bulk Add feature.


- For room names, keep it generic and make sure it matches exactly what you have set up the names in Room Types. If you have 40 rooms, split between 10 rooms of each type, you would enter the same name 10 times for each type.
- Use the Room Number field for your numbering of the rooms, such as the number that is posted on the door of each room. This number will not appear on the external Reservation Page.


In the Preferences section (Settings Tab) you can set what to show on the internal calendar (room names, numbers, or both).


- From the drop down menus select the correct room type (to match the room name you entered), Rate Plan, and set the Maximum Occupancy. The other settings are not optional so ignore those for now.
- Because you added your descriptions and photos to the Room Types section, you do NOT need to edit each unit and add photos and descriptions. However, if you hadn't set this information in Room Types, then the system would pull descriptions/photos from the rooms settings.

The final step is to set up your Reservation Page, which is under the Website Tab. Go there, and click Add Page. Select Hotel as the type. There are a lot of settings on this page, so go through each section carefully. At the bottom, make sure to select all of your rooms that you want to make available for booking.

New Feature: Scheduled Emails

We have developed functionality to automatically send emails to guests based on dates saved in custom fields. This is useful for sending automatic yearly emails to guests for events such as a birthday or wedding anniversary.

Here's how to set it up:

1. Add Custom Field(s)
Add one or more custom fields of the date type: Website Tab, Custom Fields, Add, Month/Day or Day/Month Date selections, Continue, enter your data, Save.
- enter the question that corresponds to the date you want to capture (ie. When is your birhday, anniversary, etc..)
- required - whether or not field will be required on a public Reservation Page
- show internal - whether or not to show it on the Reservation Details page, internally
- mail merge code - if you want to plug this data into email templates



If you want the custom fields to appear on your Reservation Page, make sure you go to your page settings (Website Tab, Reservation Pages, edit) and select the newly added field(s).



As you or your guests enter dates into these fields, they will be automatically added to list of people to receive an email (once scheduled).



2. Create Email Template(s)
Build a new template for each Scheduled Email you plan to send out (such as one for a birthday greeting and one for an anniversary greeting). Go to Website Tab, Email Templates, Add Template.
- attachments can be included; useful for doing something like "Attached is a coupon for 15% off all food in our restaurant."
- since Scheduled Emails are not linked to a particular reservation, most of the merge codes will not work. These are the codes that can be used:
{{guestfirstname}}
{{guestlastname}}
{{secondguestfirstname}}
{{secondguestlastname}}
{{guestsfirstnames}}
{{guestaddress}}
{{guestemail}}
{{guestphone}}
{{guestbusinessphone}}
{{guestmobilephone}}
{{guestcompany}}

3. Schedule the Email
Go to Reservation Manager, Guests, and click the link "Scheduled Emails" in the header.



Click Add Scheduled Email.



- select template - the email you want to go out
- select a date source - such as anniversary
- set the timing - when you want it to go out - before or after the date, or exactly on the date
- set a from and to emails (and cc and bcc if desired)

Click save, and now your email will be sent once a day, to any guests that match your timing criteria.
- Note, currently we only send emails yearly, based on the day and month of the date.

Once the schedule is set up, the list of Scheduled Emails shows how many are scheduled to go out yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If more than zero, the number will be a link, and it is possible to click on it and see a box listing all the individual recipients.

Changing/Moving Reservations Now Much Easier

From the Reservation Details page, the Change link now opens a small window where quick adjustments to a reservation can be made.



This window contains several useful features.

1. Move Rooms
Simply select the new room to move this guest to. After selecting the room, the system will automatically check to see if the newly selected room is available. If not, as seen in the Lodge Room to Beatrice move in the above example, the system will show a warning, but give options for overriding the warning. The options are to Swap or Overwrite. Swapping the rooms will put the existing reservation in the old room, and the current reservation in the newly selected room. Overwriting will replace the existing reservation with the current reservation.

2. Change the Arrival Date and Number of Nights
Select a new arrival date by clicking in the Arrive box. Add or remove reserved nights by adjusting the number of nights drop down. Note, it is not possible to adjust the number of nights for non-consecutive stays. The entire non-consecutive stay block will be moved to the new arrival date. To change the number of nights, click the Use Calendar link.

3. Remove Room(s)
When a reservation contains more than one room, checkboxes appear to the left side of the window. Check the rooms to be removed, and then click the Remove button.

4. Break Out Room(s)
For multiple room reservations, it is possible to select which room(s) should be taken out of the existing reservation and used to create a new reservation. This is very useful for making new reservations out of a block of rooms being held for a group, such as for a wedding. Simply select the room(s) which will form the new reservation, and click the button Break Into New Reservation.



It is also possible to change rooms from the Availability calendar. Hover over a reservation and click the link Change/Move to bring up the Change window.



When rooms are changed with this feature, any prior changes to room prices will be retained. If new dates are being added, the system will pull rates from the associated Rate Plan. Additionally, emails in queue will automatically update to reflect any new arrival dates.

For a look at how this feature works, click here to watch our video tutorial of the Move/Change link.

Updates to Payments by Date Report

We've added a few new options to the Payments By Date Report.

You can now select which type of date on which to run the query. Select from Payment Date, Arrival Date, Departure Date, and Booking Date.

New options are available by clicking the "Show Advanced Search" link. Now it is possible to select which payment categories to include, and which columns to include in the report. Note, all columns will still appear in the export file, regardless of what has been selected.

More Options in Email Templates

We have added two new enhancement to the email templates section (under Website Tab).

First, is the option to upload images which can be used in the templates, such as a logo, or photo.

The other new feature is the ability to set default To, CC, and BCC email addresses. These are the addresses that will be used internally, when the email template is used in the Correspondence window. This is useful for templates that often get sent to people other than the guest, such as to a housekeeper.



When the template is loaded in the correspondence window, the default emails will automatically fill in.

Rate Adjustment Specials Now Show on Hotel Style Pages

When a rate adjustment results in a price decrease, we now show that information on hotel style pages. Previously this was only implemented on Multiple Unit pages.

Such as is seen here:

Two New Email Template Codes

We just realized we have only had a code for guest phone, {{guestphone}}, which pulls from the first phone field. But we don't have codes for the two other phone fields, business and mobile phones, two fields that appear on the internal reservation form.

So, now we have added these two code, which can be used in email templates. The codes are:
{{guestbusinessphone}}
{{guestmobilephone}}

Use them like this:


They correspond to these fields in the Reservation Details screen:

New Feature for Holding Rooms for Groups

Do you ever want to hold a number of rooms for a group booking, such as for a wedding, but you want guests to be able to reserve individual rooms out of those held rooms? Now, this is possible, thanks to a new status option.

In this example, we can see that there are a block of rooms saved for the Martin Wedding (light green), and that two guests for that wedding have made reservations out of that block (Smith, Westin).


The first step is to go to Reservation Status, under the Settings Tab, and set up a new status to be used for Group Holds.


Next, block out the rooms for the group by clicking all the dates and and rooms to be held on your internal calendar, click Add Reservation, and change the status to your new Group Hold status.


Finally, give your wedding group a special link that they can use to make their reservations. To do this, add "/h|ANYCODEHERE" to the end of any reservation page URL. When this code is added, the rooms that are held will appear as available. To everyone going to your normal reservation page URL (without the code), the rooms will appear as unavailable. Such as, https://v2.reservationkey.com/411/MainPage/c/h|martinwedding . When a code is used, the notification email informing you of a new reservation will contain a line showing which code was used. You also could embed the special page in an iframe on your website which uses the special code, such as something like http://www.besthotel.com/weddings.htm . Or you could use a service like http://bit.ly to shorten the special code link to a more manageable URL, such as http://bit.ly/WIq5Ba.

For example, WITHOUT the code, the rooms show blocked:


WITH the code, the rooms show as available (rooms that show as unavailable are the confirmed rooms booked by other guests in the group):

Using the Search Form and Iframes

If you want to use a "book now" form where guests enter their dates on your website you have to pass the variables to YOUR page which then passes them to the URL in the iframe.  This can be done using programming, such as PHP, ASP, etc, or with javascript.  Here is a way to do this in javascript so that you don't have to write any code. 

There are three things you need to do:

1. Put this javascript in the HEAD section for the page that contains the iframe:

<script lang="javascript" type="text/javascript">
var qrStr = window.location.search;
var spQrStr = qrStr.substring(1);
var arrQrStr = new Array();
// splits each of pair
var arr = spQrStr.split('&');
for (var i=0;i<arr.length;i++){
// splits each of field-value pair
var index = arr[i].indexOf('=');
var key = arr[i].substring(0,index);
var val = arr[i].substring(index+1);
// saves each of field-value pair in an array variable
arrQrStr[key] = val; }
var arrive=arrQrStr["a"];
var depart=arrQrStr["d"];
var numguests=arrQrStr["g"];
</script>


2. Modify the search box code
The first line should be changed like this (put url of your page with the iframe):
<input type=hidden name=respage id=respage value="http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/index.htm" />

The book now button line should be like this:
<input type=button value="Book Now" onclick="window.location=

document.getElementById('respage').value +'?a='+ document.getElementById('checkin').value.replace(/\//g,'.')+'&d='+ document.getElementById('checkout').value.replace(/\//g,'.')+'&g='+ document.getElementById('numguests').value" />

3. Replace the iframe code with this:

<script lang="javascript" type="text/javascript">
var reservationpageurl="http://v2.reservationkey.com/YOUR RESERVATIONKEY URL/";
if (arrive) {
    document.write("<IFRAME SRC='"+reservationpageurl+"s|"+arrive+"|"+depart+"|"+numguests+"' name='publicpage' width=100% height=1600px  frameborder=0></IFRAME>");
} else {
    document.write("<IFRAME SRC='"+reservationpageurl+"' name='publicpage' width=100% height=1600px  frameborder=0></IFRAME>");
}
</script>

If you will be taking credit cards on your reservation page, you will need to consider whether or not you might want your own SSL certificate.  A complete discussion of these issues is found in this blog post: http://reservationkey.blogspot.com/2012/02/do-you-need-your-own-ssl-certificate.html

All About PayPal Subscriptions For ReservationKey Service

We sometimes are asked why we only take PayPal for subscriptions to ReservationKey. The primary reason is because it is easy for us and is generally easy for our users. For us, we are able to keep our costs low by not having to spend any additional resources handling billing. With PayPal subscriptions, all of our payments are completely automated, whether our users pay by the month or by the year. Although we do pay PayPal 2.5% plus 30 cents per transaction, we feel this is a reasonable expense considering how big of time savings we have with PayPal subscriptions. If we didn't automate our subscription process, we would have to track when payments are owed, send reminders to people whose accounts are not current, all of which would take resources away from doing what we love to do, which is continuing to develop a better and better product.

For our users, paying with PayPal is generally very easy. The initial set up of the subscription is quick, as users are redirected to PayPal to set up the subscription. There they can sign in to PayPal to create the initial subscription, or if they don't yet have a PayPal account, they can easily set one up, and fund the new account with a credit card. Once the initial subscription is created, our users never have to worry about remembering to make their payment since payments happen automatically once a month (or year, depending on subscription type). And users can cancel their subscription at any time by logging into their PayPal account.

The only slight issue we have run into is when user's credit cards used as their PayPal funding source expire and their payment does not go through automatically. A few months ago we instituted a 15 day grace period in which users can update their credit card details in PayPal. As long as the funding source in PayPal is updated within this 15 day period there will be no interruption in ReservationKey service. Our users receive a warning that their payment did not go through, when this happens, when they log into ReservationKey.

Updating an existing credit card in PayPal is easy. Simply log into PayPal at www.paypal.com.

Then, on the top navigation bar, select Profile, Update Card.


On the next screen, click Edit.


Then, scroll down and update the expiration date and click Save.


This is all there is to it.

Highlight Reservations By Adding a Star

Now it is possible to "star" reservations in order to highlight certain ones. When a star has been added, the star will appear next to the guest's name on the internal reservation calendar.



To add a star, simply click the star at the top of the Reservation Details screen.



We think there is room for expansion of this feature, and likely will be adding to it over time. Some suggestions we have already received include ability to set symbols other than a star, filter by starred reservations, and automatically star reservations that have items for sale attached. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to pass them along.

A Few CSS Tweaks

We've added a couple of new tweaks for hiding the number of children in the reservation forms.

By adding these lines to a custom theme, the number of children can be hidden.

Hide the number of children dropdown:
.numchildren { display:none; }



Hide the number of children in the reservation summary, on the Reservation Page:
#numguests_children_span {display:none;}



Hide the number of children in the final confirmation page:
#ledger_numchildren {display:none;}



And, one other tweak, in case you don't want to display number of nights in the final confirmation page, it can be hidden like this:
#ledger_numnights {display:none;}

Improvement on Retaining Prices When Changing Reservation Dates

We just made a slight adjustment to the way room prices are set when changing with reservations. Previously, when changing a reservation by adding a few days, the prices for the original days would revert back to the price according to the rate plan. Now, only the newly added dates will pull the price from the rate plan. The original days that were already part of the reservation will retain the prices previously set.

For example, the standard room price is $100 per night, but here we changed the rates to be less than that:


Then, we decided to add two more nights. Instead of overwriting all the dates with the $100 per night price, only the new dates are set to $100 per night, and the original dates retained their price settings.

Thoughts on Phone Support vs Email

Occasionally prospective users will ask us whether we have 24 hour, 7 day a week phone support. The basic answer is no, although sometimes it sure feels like we do. Running a web based, global business, with users spread out across more than 27 countries, we could easily work 24 hours a day and always be talking to someone where it is business hours. The web never sleeps, as they say.

Here is our rational and thinking about why we do not have 24 hour a day phone support, in response to a query from a potential client:

"I understand your desire for phone support over email support, but our business model just doesn't allow for it. Our goal has always been more of the self help model, that is, our users can mostly figure everything out on their own, and we are available for questions, often via email, with phone as a backup for the more involved situations. At our price points, $15 a month for you, we just can't afford the time it takes to have unlimited phone support. While this may cause us to loose a few customers, generally it has been an overwhelming success as our clients understand where we are coming from, and the support we are able to offer, combined with our strong product, and very reasonable prices more than makes up for the lesser phone support. For example, I am able to write you this email at 10:49p, rather than having to schedule a phone call, and take a lot more time to talk on the phone. Email is generally quicker and much more flexible as to when it can be written. Of course for introductory overviews to the system, and more involved questions, we are happy to set up phone calls."

Thank you to our existing and potential clients for your understanding!

Nice Review From a User

Cedar Mountain Farm Bed and Breakfast commented on ReservationKey's status.

Cedar Mountain Farm Bed and Breakfast wrote: "Like the reader you quoted, I looked long and hard for a new reservation system (switching from Webervations). At first I thought Reservation Key was too good to be true. Now I know it is all true and totally awesome. I love being able to see the history on a date--that's helped me know just who cancelled, etc. I love the ease of changing the template for the emails.I love the remarkable, fast, personal customer service. I'm hooked."

Preference Setting For New Reservation Alert

It is now possible to set how many days the new reservation alert should search. The new default is to show the number of reservations received over the last two days. Some users noted that by only showing an alert for reservations received "today" they were not being alerted to reservations made late the previous night. With two days always showing, this won't be an issue. For manually entered reservations, the user name of who entered the reservation also now shows.



To change the preference back to just one day, or to remove the alert all together, go to Settings Tab, Preferences.

New Features in Activity Tab

We've added a column to show which user was logged in when an activity is recorded. This will make it easier to track which users are making changes in the system.

The other new feature is the ability to export all the activity log information to a CSV file. Whatever is being viewed on the screen is what will export. All records will export, even if only the first 50 are showing on the screen.

More Flexibility Using Themes and Custom Text

An existing property management customer is expanding into the tour business, and is using ReservationKey to manage all his tour bookings. Thanks to being able to set up many different reservation pages in ReservationKey, he can set up a different page for each tour offering.

One such page is for the Rhythms of the Night tour. Using themes, he was able to hide various parts of the page, including the Arrive/Depart info at the top of the summary column.

Here is what it normally looks like:


In Custom Text, he changed the word "Arrive" to "Tour Date" such as is seen here:


We just added two new CSS tags so now display on these two lines can be set individually. By setting "display:none" in #reservationsummary_depart the departure date can be hidden.
#reservationsummary_arrive { }
#reservationsummary_depart {display:none;}

After linking the theme and the custom text set to the Reservation Page, the finished result looks like this:


This is just one nice example of how the system is flexible enough to handle a lot of different reservation needs.

Why Switch to ReservationKey?

Just now, a prospective user emailed me with this question:
" I have webervations right now and am considering a change. What can you tell me that would make me think you are better? Thank you."

My short answer to this question is:
I think big reasons are we have a fuller featured system, a very flexible system (it can be set up in many different ways), good customer service, a growing system (we actually work on it every day and build new features very regularly), and a reasonable price.

Our user's are the ones who say this best though, so in my email back I also included some quotes from a user that I was just yesterday discussing this with.

Here is what CS Tomlinson from Rockies Rentals (www.rockiesrentals.ca) has to say:

"Yes - we investigated over 100 reservation systems, and did full trials on quite a few of them. It was a very frustrating process. And now that we have been using RK for 3+ months, we can confidently say that it kick the a$$ of all the other systems. We are so pleased with the functionality and the service. I really could say enough good things about the software. [and you have my permission to use this as a testimonial - or I can write a more detailed version].

As for QuickBooks, I pull a report at the end of each month that shows me all Room & Other Revenue (Items for Sale, Fees, Taxes, Etc) and enter it as one 'invoice' for month end. And then I can look at detailed reports of our Income and Expenses in Quickbooks. That works for our needs.

I can assure you that Webervations is VERY barebones. We did a test of Webervations - it was useless, in my opinion. As a side note, I did the full trial one year ago. I used it for less than 2 hours before classifying it as 'useless'. Homeaway sent me an invoice for the service last week, and then follow up emails demanding payment in full. I used it for 2 hours, one year ago during a Free Trial. I've never received any correspondence from their company in that entire year. Not even a product update. It's a sneaky business tactic in my opinion.

You have nothing to worry about. That user may have saved a couple bucks a month, but she will spend exponentially more in additional Management Time. People often underestimate what their time is worth. And Webervations is now owned by HomeAway - their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. "

New Color Coding in Activity Availability Search

When reviewing activity results for Availability Search (entries that get recorded when someone searches for availability on a Reservation Page), if the search results in no units available, a red "No Availability" tag appears next to the activity log. If the search was within your cut-off period, an orange "In Cut-Off" tag appears. Also, groups of searches performed by the same IP address are now color coded into blocks. These enhancements should make it much easier to spot trends in the activity results.

Example:

NEW FEATURE: Create Custom Reservation ID Numbers

You can now set which number you want your reservation ID numbers to start from. The numbers are unique to each account, and will only increase as reservations are added to your account. Prior to this, the reservation ID numbers were used system wide and increased sequentially as reservations were added to any user's account. You could use this new feature to reset the numbers each year, or simply to start your own numbering system. Setting up your own ID numbers will not affect previously entered reservations. Those will retain the system ID number.

To set up a custom ID number, go to Settings Tab, Preferences, and scroll down. Example:


Once set, all reservations made through Reservation Pages, internally, or through the mobile site will start with your new sequence.

Example of reservation with custom number:

Added Status Column to Payments by Date Report

The Payments by Date report now has a column to show the Reservation Status. It shows the status colors and description, unless the Print link is used, in which case the description only shows.

Example:

New Tax Option For VAT Included

For users in countries where tax is included in the price, we now have an option to set the system to include VAT. Taxes are still calculated, but are not shown to the guest. To see the tax information, a template can be created using the tax merge codes, or export the reservation data to an Excel file.

To enable this, change the setting in Settings tab, Preferences:


Once changed, the system will no longer show taxes in the {{resdetails}} codes, or in the Reservation Summary. In the Reservation Summary, taxes can still be shown by clicking Taxes, such as is shown here:


Example of what {{resdetails_ledger}} looks like without the tax information:


Setting up taxes and rates remains the same, except that the rates should now include the tax. We also added a new enhancement to the split tax rules. It is now possible to select whether Part 1 of the split tax should be a straight money amount, or a percentage of the price (such as tax 50% of the total price at 25% and the remaining amount at 8%). Example:


If you are interested in using this feature, and want to help us refine it, feel free to send suggestions.