Feature Release - 03.11.2021

This feature release includes a number of significant changes to several key areas of the PMS, Booking Engine and Shop.

Contents

• Room Configuration on the Booking Engine
• Lock/unlock rooms on the Room Schedule
• Display North American taxation breakdown
  
• Shop - Store Your Order
• Rates - Ability to set number of people for the base rate and additional to be charged above this
• Rates - Limiting rate plans by number of people

If you are using the Hop App, please ensure that you download the latest version from the App Store or Google Play store to ensure you do not miss out on these new features!

Please share this with all relevant staff at your property.

We would love to hear your feedback on our new features; please feel free to use the Comments section below.

Room Configuration on the Booking Engine

We are pleased to confirm that we have now added the ability for your customers to select their Room Configuration (i.e. bed preference) on the Booking Engine. To set this up...

1) Go to Administration > Option Sets and use the dropdown menu to locate the Room Configuration section. Check and edit these as necessary or press the +Add button to create new options:

2) Go to Administration > Booking Engine in the PMS and tick the box called 'Show Room Configuration question' as shown below:

3) By default, this will populate all Room Configuration options to all of your room types. Go to Rooms > Room Types and click on a room type name to edit it and then scroll down to the 'Configuration Options' section. Here, you should ensure that all available options that you want guests to be allowed to opt for are visible. 

4) If a room can only be sold in one layout, you should ensure that only that option is shown (e.g. if your Superior Doubles come with a four poster bed and cannot be changed then you should ensure that the only option visible is "four poster" or "double" depending on how you have worded it). 

5) Now, once a customer has made their room choice on your Booking Engine, they will be presented with a dropdown for each room selection they have made:

6) Whichever Room Configuration is chosen will now also show within your PMS, both on the reservation and also on any reports that include layout as a column choice. 

Lock/unlock rooms on the Room Schedule

At the request of several members of the Hop community, it is now possible for you to lock reservations to rooms (and unlock them as well) from the Room Schedule page. A new lock icon has been added on the Room Schedule pop-up window when you double click on a reservation:

Click on an un-locked padlock to lock a room, and it will ask you to confirm:

Click on Confirm to save or Cancel to ignore your changes. This will then immediately update the lock status of the room for you. 

The same process can be employed to un-lock a room, except that you will be clicking on a locked padlock icon and then confirming that you want to un-lock it:

Display North American taxation breakdown

To cater for Hop users located in territories such as North America we have changed the way that we display a hotel's price breakdown on the Booking Engine. In the example below, there are two taxes applicable to the stay, one called PST and another called GST:

In order to turn on this feature, a hotel simply need to log into the PMS, navigate to Accounting Manager > Company Invoice Details and tick the 'Prices are Standard Tax Exclusive' box. They must also have one or more Global Daily Charge set up (such as GST and PST in the above example, or perhaps City Tax as is common in a lot of destinations).

Shop - Store Your Order

We introduced the ability for customers to log into the HopShop and store their details earlier this year, however to bring the functionality more into line with food ordering apps and websites there is now an option for customers to re-order items that they have ordered before, whether that be the same day or at any other point in the future. 

For this to be visible, the customer must be logged into the Shop when their order is placed however even if they are not then by pressing the 'View My Previous Orders' button which will prompt them to log in or create an account:

Once logged in, a user can browse their purchase history and then press 'Order Again' button next to the order that they would like to purchase again:

Please note that if an item is no longer available (e.g. if they try to re-order breakfast outside of your Breakfast Menu times or if you no longer have those products in stock) then their basket will be recreated with the available items only along with an explanatory warning message:

They can then choose to continue to the payment stage or choose an alternative item instead. 

Rates - Ability to set number of people for the base rate and additional to be charged above this

This new addition will be useful for properties that have rate plans with a standard occupancy and then once the number of guests reaches a certain level then an additional price per person kicks in. Until now, this happened over and above the first person but now if you go to the Rates tab on a rate plan you will see that there is a new 'Base Number of Adults' box that can be filled in.

Using the below example, this rate plan which applies to the Suite and Apartment only, is configured so that the same price is charged for one or two adults (£185) but any additional adults on top of that will be charged £15 or £10 (for the Suite and Apartment respectively)

Rates - Limiting rate plans by number of people

A new tick-box has been added to the Details tab of all rate plans within the PMS so that Hop users can turn on occupancy controls for individual rate plans (by default this is turned off so that no changes are made to your existing rate plans). 

If this box is ticked, however, it will present you with several additional boxes to fill in:

These can then be used to control overall occupancy that is allowed per rate plan and also specify adults and children. Examples of how this can be used include:

• Romance package - limited to minimum and maximum of two adults, no children
• Family rate - limited to a minimum of three occupants (be that three adults, two adults and a child or one adult and two children)
• Single occupancy rate - maximum one adult

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