HOTEL LEISURE RATES

Complete Pricing

Phase II

Description

This enhancement provides for the exchange of necessary information needed to enable our hotel partners to capture leisure oriented hotel bookings in an automated fashion through the Cendant TDS online powered websites and agency channels.

This project will enhance the hotel search and booking functions to better support the booking of leisure hotel products for those travel agents or online products using the RoomMaster system and/or connections to the hotel suppliers. These enhancements will be implemented on Apollo and Galileo via structured data within Galileo Web Services (Jumpstart) and on future releases of Viewpoint, as well as terminal emulation platforms.

The project has been broken into two phases. This document focuses on Phase II.

Participation in Phase II requires the following:

  • Phase I participation (may be done in conjunction with Phase II)
  • Support of Triple/Quad functionality
  • Support of Inside Availability or Inside Shopper

Phase 1 – Complete Pricing

Phase I of the Hotel Leisure Ratesproject provided suppliers with the ability to return a Complete Price(sum of nightly rate, including rate change during stay, plus any taxes or surcharges) on the property Availability (HOC), Property Rules (HOV) and Sell/Modify response. Phase I was implemented in January 2005 and the product has been named “Complete Pricing.” Interested hotel customers may contact their Relationship Manager to schedule implementation.

Phase II – Complete Pricing Plus

Phase II is in now in development.

The following document has been put together to provide an overview of the enhancements and associated benefits that are provided by Phase II along with a summary of the areas of impact for participating hotel suppliers.

Leisure Rates Phase II Enhancement Details

  • Complete Pricing“Plus”– Agent/user will be able to specify new pricing qualifiers (i.e., # of children and ages, # of extra beds/cribs) in the initial property availability request (HOC). The Complete Pricing Plus rates returned in the HOC will reflect the requested charges for children and/or extra bedding in addition to any rate change during stay, taxes, surcharges, etc. Any subsequent transactions (HOV, Sell) for the property will also reflect the Complete Pricing Plus rate

If a property/chain could not provide pricing in all instances for the pricing qualifiers/extra options that were included in a Property Availability (HOC) request, the chain will identify what could be priced and what could not be priced in returned response, with a “matched” or “unmatched” indicator.

Complete Pricing Plus transactions will be supported in new versions of XML Select, Web Services and the Focalpoint agency desktop.

Nightly Rate, along with Complete Pricing Plus, will continue to be available in HOC, HOV and Sell response transactions to enable “apple to apple comparison” for participating and non-participating properties/chains.

  • Multi-room Availability – if multiple rooms of the same type and occupancy are desired, the number of rooms will be included as part of the room/bedding configuration qualifier (example: 2 rooms with 2 queen beds)and sent in the request to the hotel supplier.

In this instance, the supplier validates availability of the room/rate products for which multiples were desired and identifies if the desired number of rooms are available for the desired room type, for each item returned of the requested bedding/room configuration.

Should the supplier only have one of a specific type of room, they may still return this and offer it for sale. It will simply not have the indicator that indicates multiple rooms are available. For example, if there is only one room available with an ocean view, it may still be offered for sale even though the user requested two. This allows the user to accept the one ocean view room and another room to satisfy their request. This will come across to the hotel as two individual sells.

This will only be available for use by Structured Data (i.e., Jumpstart users) – it will not be available for display on the agency Focalpoint desktop. However, the supplier is not expected to distinguish between the requestor platforms. The supplier responds in the same way.

  • Formatted Descriptive Room, Rate and Rule Data – We are planning to transition much of the Property Availability (HOC) and Rules display (HOV) from free-formatted text to formatted data and also include some key room/rule/rate data which may not been provided previously.

To that end, participating suppliers will return standardized “tags” and/or formatted data to enable Structured Data interfaces to translate the tags/formatted data into local languages/text (as desired/required) for display to end user on HOC and HOV. These “tags” include the following:

  • Commissionable - Indicator if rate is commissionable
  • Room View – room view indicator if applicable/specified
  • Smoking - indicator if room is smoking/non-smoking
  • Meal - indicator if Breakfast, Lunch and/or Dinner is included and meal type (if specified)
  • Credentials – indicator if credentials are required for the booking
  • Guarantee, Deposit, or Prepayment - indicator of which is required along with some formatted text.
  • Cancel penalty - formatted text describing the cancel penalty
  • Bedding configuration – code to define bedding configuration (e.g., 1 King Bed = 1K), if known.

We are using OTA standards where they exist. Additionally, where further standards are needed we are petitioning OTA to add them. Our design has been created to allow for flexibility as OTA adds new codes so that we may easily incorporate them.

  • Store Key Rate/Rule Data in Booking Record- Agents and users require that information pertaining to the sale be stored in their record for future reference and/or for printing on the customer’s itinerary. To satisfy that requirement, the following key rule and rate data will be stored in the PNR/Booking File in either the “Prime” or “Extended” BAS (hotel segment) as indicated below, to enable accessibility after sell:
  • Complete Pricing Rate – Extended BAS
  • Nightly rate – Prime BAS (existing field)
  • Number of adults (1-4) – Prime BAS (existing field)
  • Number of rooms – Prime BAS (existing field)
  • Number/ages of children - Extended BAS
  • Extra Bedding (roll-aways, cribs) – Prime BAS (existing fields)
  • Extra children charges – Prime BAS (existing field)
  • Extra adult charges – Prime BAS (existing field)
  • New standardized “tags” (noted above) (Extended BAS):
  • Additional charges formatted fields (Extended BAS):
  • Total Taxes
  • Total Surcharges
  • Other taxes/charges as defined by the Hotel Supplier (up to 5) – each data field for additional taxes (up to 5) should be identified based on OTA or industry standards. One of the 5 fields will be designated as “other” with no specific type of tax indicated.

It is understood that in some cases you may not be able to validate some of the fields above in which case you may include the tag with a defined indicator following.

Multiple Currencies – Return and display of multiple currencies for a Property Availability Display (HOC), when applicable.

This allows a hotelier to send rates particular to a specific market where they offer local market specific rates.

Galileo will send the city and country code across in the HOC request header (as we do today) and upon receipt, the hotel CRS can interrogate this field and respond with not only all of their regular rates but also any that they have that are market specific.

  • "Duplicate" rates are NOT what Galileo are requesting
  • Galileo would like to allow the hotel CRS to return a"local" rate to the applicable agents
  • Galileo is proposing that the hotel CRS use the agent city/country code to determine applicability so that the "local" rate is not distributed beyond the intended audience
  • Galileo does not want discourage the other standard rates in native or requested currency from being returned along with the "local" rate(s)
  • If the agent requests a currency, i.e. USD, Galileo will perform any currency conversions for display purposes just as they do today, andbook the rate in the currency provided by the hotel CRS
  • Each rate will be displayedwith the currency code so as to avoid confusion

Leisure Rates Phase II Benefits

  • Agents and Jumpstart/Web Services customers (and ultimately the end user/consumer) will feel more comfortable booking leisure hotel stays via automation that involve/require:
  • Children and/or the need for extra beds, as the “complete price” of the stay will be made available to them “upfront.”
  • A specific room view or meal component, as this data will be part of the room and rule description, as applicable. In the past, these bookings were usually made direct to property to ensure desired view is “confirmed.”
  • Success of sells will be enhanced as pertinent guarantee, deposit, form of payment and other key info will be provided upfront.
  • Reduced customer service issues as:
  • Additional charges for requested children, extra adults or extra bedding is disclosed at availability and in sell response.
  • Formatted data is provided at availability and in sell response regarding key room and rate attributes (i.e., room view, meals, bedding configuration, etc.)
  • Rates requiring credentials and their associated rate category will be identified in availability response – thus Jumpstart customer can easily identify rates relevant for specific customer.
  • Enhanced data for non-English speaking/reading users, as formatted/indicator driven data can be more easily translated and /or presented by GUI applications.

Areas of Impact for Suppliers

Implementation of the above enhancements will have an impact on several of the transactions received by the supplier and the response blocks returned from the suppliers. Following is a high level summary of the transactions that will be impacted and the processing (validation/data) required to support these transaction changes.

Property Availability (HOC) Request

Following are the high-level areas of impact/change in the Property Availability (HOC) request that the supplier will receive from Galileo:

  • New Availability (HOC) Pricing Qualifiers – The following new pricing/extra option qualifiers can be included on an HOC Availability request:
  • Numberof children and ages
  • Occupancy greater than 4 adults
  • Number of cribs and/or roll-aways.
  • Bedding Configuration – request for a specific numberof beds and bed size.
  • Multiple Room Availability – request for a specific number of rooms with specific bedding configuration (e.g., 2 rooms with 1 King bed) and same occupancy. This is supported for Structured Data /Jumpstart users only – it will not be supported for Focalpoint users.

Property Availability (HOC) Response

Following are some of the components of an HOC response and associated impact from this enhancement:

  • Nightly Rate - no change.
  • Complete Pricing / Complete Pricing Plus
  • Complete Price of stay which reflects new pricing qualifiers and identification of the itemsthatcould and could not be priced as “matched” or “unmatched.”
  • Break out of components of Complete Pricing / Complete Pricing Plus
  • Nightly rate(s) and effective date(s). Multiple nightly rates if a rate change occurs.
  • Nightly and Complete Pricing / Complete Pricing Plus
  • Rate will always reflect one room, even if multiple room availability was specified and validated.
  • Cost and quantity of extra options included in Complete Pricing Plus
  • Other charges (tax, surcharges, etc.) or identify if tax cannot be broken out separately.
  • Currency Code – ability to return rates in more than one currency in which case supplier would specify applicable currency code for each rate.
  • Room/Rule/Rate Tags/Indicators - provide the following datafor each rate/room item returned in HOC:
  • Room View - OTA code for room view, or indicator if can’t be determined
  • Meals – Breakfast , Lunch and Dinner Y/N indicators plus additional defined codes for applicable meal type(s)
  • Bedding Configuration - # of beds and OTA code for bed sizeor indicator if can’t be determined
  • Rate Category - OTA code for rate category
  • Commissionable - Y/N indicator if rate is commissionableor indicator if can’t be determined
  • Credentials - Y/N indicator if rate requires credentials or indicator if can’t be determined
  • Smoking - Y/N indicator if smoking is allowed in roomor indicator if can’t be determined
  • Indicator if Deposit, Guarantee or Pre-payment is required, acceptable credit cards
  • Cancel penalty applies (Y/N)
  • Indicator if meets multiple room availability request

Supplier HOC Processing Requirements

Following is the likely processing required to support the above changes to the HOC response:

  • Complete Pricing PlusPricing Validation– if availability request includes any of the new HOC pricing qualifiers (i.e., extra options), the supplier needs to perform the following for each rate/room product returned:
  • Occupancy – validate that the rooms to be returned in the HOC availability response supports the occupancy requested. For example:
  • Does the room support the number of extra adults or children specified?
  • Does the room support the amount of extra bedding (rollaways/cribs) that is being specified?

Only those rooms that can support the occupancy requested (adult/children/bedding) should be returned in the HOC response.

  • Pricing of the “Extra Options” - determine if “extra options” specified can be priced and reflect that cost in the Complete Pricing Plus. Identify what “extra items” were priced and reflected in Complete Pricing Plusand identify those items that could not be priced via “matched” and “unmatched” indicators. This is for those instances when you can’t include the extra option pricing in the total.
  • Complete Price / Complete Pricing PlusBreakdown ofcomponents
  • Nightly rate(s) and effective date(s), including rate changes.
  • Cost and quantity of extra options included in Complete Pricing Plus
  • Other charges (tax, surcharges, etc.). Identify if tax is loaded in rate and cannot be broken out separately.
  • Numberof Rooms/Bedding Validation - Renewed emphasis on room bedding configuration. If bedding (# beds, size of bed) is specified in availability request, supplier should return ONLY those rooms/rates that meet specified bedding criteria.* A larger bed than what was specified would be a “match” (queen would match request for a double or twin) – a smaller bed would not (double bed would not match request for a queen).If specified bedding configuration could not be determined, or was not available, supplier should return an unknown” or “unmatched” flag (respectively) for bedding.
    *For clarity, it is considered that a twin bed is the smallest, then a double, then queen, then king.
    Approximate Sizes:
    Twin -- 39" x 74" or 99cm x 185cm
    Full (also know as a double) -- 54" x 74" or 137cm x 185cm
    Queen -- 60" x 80" or 167cm x 203 cm
    King -- 76" x 84" or 193cm x 203cm

When multiple rooms of same room type are requested, supplier should ensure that the available room/rate products returned meets both the number of rooms and bedding configuration specified. If specified number of rooms for a specified bedding configuration was not available or could not be determined – supplier should return an “unknown” or “unmatched” flag (respectively) for # rooms.

  • Room/Rule/Rate Data Determination – supplier willvalidate/provide data noted below for each room/rate item returned in the HOC availability response:
  • Room View - OTA code for room view, if applicable, or indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Meals - Breakfast , Lunch and Dinner indicators plus additional defined codes for meal type OTA code for meals included, if applicable, or indicator if meals can not be determined/is not known
  • Bedding Configuration –number of beds and OTA code for bed size, or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Rate Category - OTA code for rate category, or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Commissionable - Y/N indicator if rate is commissionable, or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Credentials - Y/N indicator if rate requires credentials or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Smoking - Y/N indicator if smoking is allowed in room or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Deposit, Guarantee or Pre-payment – indicator of which (if any is required), or defined indicator if can not be determined/is not known
  • Indicator of validated pricing qualifier – identify the requested extra options pricing (if requested) that is reflected in the returned ATP
  • Cancel Penalty – Y/N indicator if cancel policy applies

Rules HOV Response

The data contents of the HOV response will change, as several of the areas will be changed from free-format to formatted, indicator driven data.

Complete Price/ Complete Pricing PlusFormatted Breakdown - supplier will return breakdown of Complete Price/ Complete Pricing Plusin formatted/defined fields as provided in the Property Availability HOC response:

  • Nightly rate(s) and effective date(s). Multiple nightly rates would be included if a rate change occurs.
  • Cost and quantity of extra options included in Complete Pricing Plus
  • Other charges (tax, surcharges, etc.). Identify if tax is loaded in rate and cannot be broken out separately.

If a supplier was not able to programmatically validate age parameters applicable to an extra charge for children, it is strongly recommended that the supplier provide the age related “rules” and associated price via “formatted” text in the free form text area following rates.
For example:

  • children under xx years free
  • children under xx years $xx.xx per night

Formatted Policies (Cancel, Deposit, Guarantee, Prepayment) - supplier will return formatted cancel and deposit, guarantee and/or prepayment policies. Templates of these policies will be developed.