Product Release - 4.12.2018

This release  includes several feature updates on the reservations area and the booking  engine, as well as a major update on the CRM. We have incorporated your  requests and launched the first major extension of this area in hop and provide  powerful tools to better communicate and report on the area of corporate  clients. We appreciate your continuous feedback and are looking forward to  providing you with an even better system to manage and expand your business.

Please share below  with your operational staff and don’t hesitate to contact us via help desk  should you have any queries or requests!

Contents

· Limit group bookings

· Add browser icon

· Close out rooms

· Manage reservations

· CRM Update

Feature: Limit Group  bookings        Area: Booking  Engine

Several members of the hop family have asked us for a way to  limit the amount of rooms that can be booked on the website (booking engine),  so that group bookings get channelled to direct contact with the reservations  team. We have now developed a feature to do so: Under “Administration”, on the left-hand  side main navigation, you’ll see a new sub-menu, “Booking Engine”. Scroll to  the bottom of this screen, in the field “Max Rooms for Group Booking” enter a  value. This value will define the maximum number of rooms that can be booked by  an individual booker through your website. You can edit this number at any  point, click “update settings” when you are done.

Feature: Browser Icon                    Area:  Booking Engine

To allow your booking engine to be more in line with your overall  branding, you can now add a browser icon to the page. The booking engine is the  website that is linked from your “book” button, currently, there is a generic  icon (that is displayed on the top left of the browser-tab with the booking  engine). You can now change this to any icon you like, preferably it should be  an element of your overall branding. Just go to “Administration” and then  “Booking Engine” – on top of the page you can upload your booking engine  browser icon. It needs to be in “.ico” format – you can convert other images  (png, jpg, bmp) to this format using this websitehttp://icoconvert.com/Once you’ve uploaded your icon, please wait  until a green “success” message appears in the top right corner.

Feature: Close out  rooms            Area: Room  Schedule

We were asked to facilitate an additional way to close out  rooms (put them “out of service / out of order”), as this functionality was  previously only available under Housekeeping. We have developed and released  this now and made it available under “Reservations”, on the room schedule. When  you are at the Room Schedule screen, click “view options” on the bottom of the  screen. To the right of the “draw reservation” button, you will now see a  little arrow pointing down, indicating a drop-down menu. Click the arrow and  select “draw service status”. Now you can click and drag on any row in the room  schedule table to set a room out of service straight away. To edit this, please  go to “Housekeeping”, then select Service Status and amend as applicable.

Feature: Manage  Reservations            Area:  Room Schedule

When double clicking on any reservation on the room  schedule, a pop up will show you the reservation details. Prior to this release,  any of the options on the bottom of the pop up (Manage Reservation, Reservation  Charges, Room Charges) opened in a new tab when clicked. This caused  frustration for some users, who ended up with too many open tabs. In order to  avoid this, the pages now open in the same window, unless “open in new tab” is  selected from the drop down, next to the actual buttons. This way you can chose  if you prefer to work on multiple tabs, or just one.

Feature: CRM UPDATE                    Area:  CRM / Reports

In this release we have added a substantial number of new  functionalities to the CRM area. Please be aware that only users with “Admin”  rights have the full range of tools and reports available.

Dashboard

Click on “CRM” and you will see the submenu, with “Dashboard”  on top. Click on Dashboard to get a quick overview of your daily and monthly  stats: The pie chart on the top left of the screen shows your corporate revenue  for the current day. The total amount shows in the middle of the circle, with  split values per corporate client displayed in segments around it. Place your  mouse/cursor on a segment to get more details displayed, clicking on a segment  will take you to the “Projected Booker Report” (more on reports further down).

The chart in the middle of the screen indicates your top  accommodation performer for the current month. Placing your mouse/cursor on the  diagram reveals additional information, clicking on it will take you to the  Projected Booker Report, where you can extract further details.

In addition to those charts your noticeboard (with notices  for any members of staff), your “Notes” (your personal notes) and your tasks  (with the option to display all tasks) are displayed on the dashboard. Here you  can also quickly log any follow up leads, simply by clicking “+new lead” and  filling in a title and a comment. 

Notes, Notices,  Follow ups

Below the Dashboard are the “notice” and “notes” areas,  where you can log and administer any reminders and make note of tasks for  yourself and your staff. You have a calendar and a search box for each of those  and can download the information into a csv document.

“Follow up leads” shows any leads that you have logged (via  the dashboard) and whether they are completed or not. You can filter the data  by using the calendar modules, the search field on top and by clicking on any  of the headers (Title, Created By, e.g.). This view can also be exported as a  pdf or csv document.

Individuals

Next is the “individuals” part of your CRM. This is where  you administer all your individual contacts. We have added a tool to merge  profiles in this release: In some instances, you will have more than one  profile for the same guest/booker. To avoid confusion and keep your database  tidy, you can now merge duplicate profiles. To do so, go to CRM, Individuals  and click the little arrow pointing down, right of the “last name” entry. Then  select “merge profile”, a pop up with a search box will open, type the first  letters of the name you want to merge. Tick the box to “overwrite details” if  you wish to do so and click “merge”. Some instances will lead to guests having  more than one CRM entry (OTA bookings can create double entries if the Email  address for the guest is different than the one logged, e.g.), use this tool to  get rid of duplicate entries.

Clicking on a name in CRM individuals will open this  particular dataset. You can edit details, preferences, contact details and  note. This release also introduces the “correspondence” tab. This is where you  will find a log of all Emails sent via hop (confirmation, pre stay, post stay).

Corporates

The CRM corporate area has also been extended and given a  makeover. Click on any corporate client’s name to view their details: The top  of the page shows your statistics on “Nights Stayed” and “Revenue generates”  for the current month to date and the current year to date. Clicking on the “Nights  Stayed” tab will show you further details on this particular corporate client’s  guests.

Details, Contact and Notes hold all your client’s details,  going forward the correspondence tab will show a log of any communication  through hop with that client (this is currently not yet fully functional and  will be added in the next release). The “Payments” tab, on the bottom of each  client’s profile is a new addition: You can log a preferred rate plan for the  client and you can also log their preferred payment method. You can enter a  credit card for the corporate client and have it saved in the system at this  point – to do so, select “Credit Card” as Preferred Payment Method and click  the “+” icon to the right of the field below, in the pop up window, enter the  details and click “store card”.

Enquiries

This is where you can log corporate enquiries you receive,  regarding events and stay overs. This has already been part of the CRM prior to  this release. In an upcoming release, this area will be linked to the “follow  up” area. 

Documents and  Campaigns

You can now create and run email campaigns straight from  hop. To add a new campaign, click on “Campaign” under the CRM menu and the “+Create”.  Provide a name and brief description for the campaign on the details screen.  Set a date when it should run and set the status to “draft” until you have  finished entering all details. You can have the campaign run repeatedly, make  your selection in the respective drop down (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).

The right side of the Details screen lets you choose the  recipients of your campaign. You can select individual or corporate clients and  make several further distinctions (Countries, Postcode, by arrival or departure  date).

Then, switch to the “Content” tab and provide a subject line  and an Email body – the text editor allows you to format your copy, add links  and images and add attachments. If you have uploaded documents (images, e.g.)  under the “CRM / Documents” tab, you can add them to your campaign here. Save  before leaving this page. “Tracking” only becomes relevant once the campaign  has been sent out – you will get details on the number of recipients; how many  opened your email and how many were deleted unopened.

Apart from running and analysing online campaigns, you can  now also keep track on any offline campaigns (Flyers, Posters, e.g.). Click on “Offline  Campaings” then “+create” to log a new offline campaign. Provide a name,  description, attachments and the date range of your campaign, set the status  accordingly and click save. You’ll be taken back to the offline campaign start  screen, where you have an overview for any campaigns and the usual filters to  search and list.

CRM Reports

In addition to the actual tools to manage CRM entries and  run campaigns, we have added ten additional reports, placed under “Reports /  CRM”. The more data you provide for individual and corporate clients, the more  useful you will find the corresponding reporting area.

Individuals

This report lets you search for arrival and departure dates  and will display individual clients and the rate plans and room types  associated. You can export this dataset to a csv document for external  processing. 

Corporate

As for individuals, you can search for corporate clients by  date range (arrival, departure) and by rate plan and room type, as well as  export your results to a csv document.

Lost Bookings

This report captures any reservations that were cancelled,  you can search by arrival and departure dates, for any individuals or companies  via the search box and export the data to a pdf or csc.

Tasks

The task report lists all tasks logged in the system, you  can filter this by due dates, status and assigned user and download as a pdf or  csv document.

Lead Source Report

This report shows historical revenue aggregated by booking  source and date of stay. This revenue is made up of all transactions against a  reservation (and related reservation items) including accommodation, food,  drinks and related charges. The number of bookings includes all bookings made,  past and future, and will only include reservation items that have not been  cancelled or marked as No Show. Like all other reports this can be downloaded  as a pdf and csv. Please note that the graph on top of the page is not included  in the download, to process it externally, you can right click on the image and  copy/paste it.

Historical Booker  Report

This report shows historical revenue aggregated by a booker  or a company. This revenue is made up of all transactions against a reservation  (and the linked reservation items) including accommodation, food, drinks and  related charges. You can select to have reservation revenue (RES) or  reservation item revenue (RESX) displayed, you can filter by dates, search for  individual bookers and download the dataset as a pdf of csv document.

Projected Booker  Report

This report shows your projected accommodation revenue  aggregated per booker or company and is based upon rate plan data. This is the  graph and data you get displayed when you click on the charts on your  dashboard. Select “Exclude blank values” to get a display of the actual revenue  (minus cancelled or voided transactions) and download the revenue per booker  and per company as pdf or csv documents.

Historical Night Stay  Revenue Report

This report shows historical revenue aggregated and listed  against companies and dates of stay. This revenue is made up of all  transactions against any reservations, reservation items or house accounts  including accommodation, food, drinks and related charges that were made on the  date of stay. The number of bookings is calculated from all rooms that were  booked on the date of stay. Search for individual companies, change the date  range or group the report by “Main Groups”, as all other reports this is  available for download to pdf and csv document.

Company Industry  Report

This report displays your corporate clients by industry (if  you have provided this level of details on the CRM Corporate tab). You can  download this data for external use as pdf and csv documents. 

Campaign Report

This is where you can keep track of your Email campaigns.  The report will show you the number of Emails generates, as well as sent and  opened Emails, download as pdf and csv are available as usual.

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