Feature Release - 28.06.2022

Today, we released our latest update to the PMS and the majority of the changes are centered around your Room Schedule view, however there are also some improvements to the Manage Reservations screen, Rate Plans and a key finance feature. 

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.

Contents

• Changes to Room Schedule
• Changes to Manage Reservations
  • Departure date
  • Adults, Children and Infants
  • ADR
• Mandatory fields when creating a reservation
• Overbooking check
• Property Dashboard Noticeboard
• Expedia Virtual Cards
• Show which rate plans are linked to the Channel Manager
• Warning when deactivating a rate plan that is linked to the Channel Manager
• Period Ends for financial data

Changes to Room Schedule

We have made a number of significant changes to how the Room Schedule looks and operates, all of which are detailed below...

• We have refreshed the colours on the Room Schedule that indicate the status of a reservation and moved the key to the top of the page:

• The number of unallocated rooms now appears next to the date across the top of the screen. This is particularly useful for hotels that prefer not to use auto-allocation and manually assign rooms on check in.

• By going to Administration > Property you can now choose whether you would like the timings of the Room Schedule to run from Noon To Noon or Midnight To Midnight. The default setting (i.e. how it already was) is Noon to Noon and looks like this:

On the other hand, Midnight to Midnight will look like this:

• Room features will now appear on the left side of the screen, when you hover your mouse over a room number:

• When changing a booking's room type or increasing/decreasing its length of stay, you will now be notified of a change of rate with a message in the top right corner of the screen:

• When you double click a reservation in the Room Schedule, you will now be presented with a slide-out from the right of the screen. This replaces the previous pop-up window and allows for Hop to show you even more information than before. This will show the same information and allow you to perform the same actions as the pop-up but also now shows the following:

  • Source of booking

  • Booking creation date

  • Balance

  • Primary contact's email address

  • Deposits

  • Credit Card (the icon will be green if there is a card linked to the room)

  • Booking Notes (RES)

  • Room Notes (RESX)

  • Number of Occupants

  • Room Configuration

  • Extras

  • Services

• The Room Schedule will now highlight if all rates are closed for a given date, so that you do not try to add a reservation in there by mistake (you can still, however, use the 'Override Restrictions on Save' checkbox if needed)

Finally, this page will now remember your choice of settings in the checkboxes in the top left of the screen next time you log in:

Changes to Manage Reservations

The following changes have been made on the Reservations > Manage Reservations screen:

• When this screen is not Grouped by Reservation, a new 'Departure' column has been added between 'Arrival' and 'Nights'
• We have split Adults, Children and Infants into three separate columns
• When this screen is not Grouped by Reservation, hovering the mouse over the Price field now shows you the ADR breakdown (e.g. A three-night booking that costs £150 will now show ADR £50)

Mandatory fields when creating a reservation

On the Create Reservation screen, Hop will now show what fields are mandatory with a red asterisk. Please be aware of the following:

• The Market Source, Source and Referral Source fields will only be highlighted if you have selected them as mandatory in Administration > Property for your property.
• The 'Booker' and 'Account' fields are not both mandatory – a user must select one or the other and the asterisks will disappear once they have done so.

Overbooking check

We have introduced a new feature that, when turned on, will check for overbookings (including those that you may have created manually). This is set to run once per day however will also be triggered whenever a reservation is created that causes an overbooking situation. This will automatically generate an email to be sent to your property's notification email address and also cause an alert to be displayed on your Property Dashboard Noticeboard, which will remain there until the overbooking is resolved.

Given the fact that it is common practice in some hotels to intentionally overbook, we have made this an optional setting. Therefore, if you would like to have this feature enabled, please contact [email protected] or raise a ticket with the Support Team at any time.

Property Dashboard Noticeboard

As part of the above change, we have redesigned the layout of the Noticeboard on the Property Dashboard to make them less obtrusive. Each user can choose to expand or collapse their notifications section-by-section.

Expedia Virtual Cards

We have now enhanced the import of Expedia Virtual Cards to take into account same-day reservations. Any new reservations that have been created will automatically attempt to download the Virtual Card details onto the reservation immediately, if the check in date is the same date as the creation date, as opposed to the existing functionality which performs a check at 6am each morning to see if any of that day's reservations have a Virtual Card attached. If you already have the Virtual Card import turned on then there is no further action required. If you do not, please contact [email protected] or raise a ticket with the Support Team at any time.

Show which rate plans are linked to the Channel Manager

We have added a new column in Rates > Rate Plans to indicate to users whether or not a rate plan is mapped to the Channel Manager. This should help you to make informed decisions when managing your rates.

Warning when deactivating a rate plan that is linked to the Channel Manager 

When a user is editing a rate plan and decides to make it Inactive, Hop will now display a warning message so that users are aware of the implications of doing so. Please contact [email protected] or raise a ticket with the Support Team if you see this message and would like to discuss what you need to do.

Period Ends for financial data

Similar to several accounting packages, we have introduced the concept of lock periods so that you can lock off past dates (e.g. previous month, previous quarter, previous financial year...) and prevent changes made today affecting a timeframe that you may have already submitted accounts for. To set these up, please go to Administration > Lock Periods in the PMS and set your desired From and To dates. Please note that once a period has been locked, certain actions affecting these dates will no longer be possible particularly those that are related to transactions. If you do need to change something that falls within a Lock Period then an authorised user who has access to this section will need to remove (delete) the Lock Period in question. 

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