Best practice price set-up with linked rates

[damien-ad]

We have a seasonal base price (that varies with local events) for our standard room, with fixed increases for higher levels of comfort (garden view, balcony, deluxe rooms, etc.).
The seasonal price is either a flexible rate or a non-refundable rate (10% discount on the flexible rate).

For some reason beyond my understanding, "you cannot create a link to a linked daily price" (wiki), so I figured I should set-up Rates (one per period with the same price), and then link this rate to other rooms, using the correct offset. This way, I only need to set the price once for each period, and the PMS will do the math.

Before moving further, I would like to make sure this is the right approach ?

But also, using this approach, will I still be able to change daily prices to fine tune them ?

[annettemorgenroth]

Best is you use daily prices because they are easier to handle.

What you do is you create one daily price which functions as you base price and link all other daily prices to it with an offset.

[damien-ad]

What you do is you create one daily price which functions as you base price and link all other daily prices to it with an offset.

But as mentioned, I have two offsets: the comfort level (fixed increase) and the non-refundable rate (10% decrease of total). So how would that work ? It is my understanding that you can only use one offset at a time in daily prices ?

[annettemorgenroth]

You create
1. One daily price which is your base price.
2. One daily price comfort level ( linked to your base price using the settings "Use Price From" and "Offset amount" of x
3. One daily price non-refundable linked to your base price using the settings "Use Price From" and "Offset amount Percent" of -10%

[damien-ad]

3. One daily price non-refundable linked to your base price

That's the problem: our non-refundable price is not an offset from the base price, but an offset from the comfort level price (i.e. it's a 10% discount ON THE TOTAL, which depends on the comfort level).

Taking your numbering:
2 is derived from 1
3 is derived from 2

[annettemorgenroth]

In this case you need to create a separate price for your comfort level. This would be the same if you used rates.

[damien-ad]

That's what I feared...so if I have 8 price periods throughout the year, and 6 comfort levels, I need to manually adjust 8x6=48 prices in the calendar ? That does feel a little backward.

[annettemorgenroth]

so if I have 8 price periods throughout the year, and 6 comfort levels, I need to manually adjust 8x6=48 prices in the calendar ?

No.

If you use daily prices you need a daily price for each comfort level and one linked price for each no-refundable = 12 daily prices of which 6 are linked so you will only need to manage 6.

This is why we recommend you use daily prices.

[damien-ad]

you will only need to manage 6.

But my base daily prices vary throughout the year, according to different periods (festivals, seasons, Christmas, New Year, etc.). So if I have 6 base prices (for each comfort level) and 8 periods, I need to adjust them each manually throughout the year, so that's 6x8 price settings ?

[damien-ad]

For anyone who might face the same issue, this is what I did:

1) I created a daily price for the cheapest (standard) room we have, and used the "Apply to" feature, to include all other rooms.
2) I repeated step 1) for all periods of the year
3) for each room above the standard room, I edited the daily price, selected the whole year, and used the "relative change" feature to set my fixed increment
4) I linked each room's daily price to a non-refundable daily price, where I could put -10% offset, as suggested by annettemorgenroth.

This way I could set-up the whole year with minimal input.