Group Reservations in LodgicalCRS (Booking Engine)

By Mikaela

Do you take on holiday parties and weddings at your property? Send guests to your booking engine to book from a block of rooms!

Here’s the step-by-step on how to set up an Account in Lodgical that talks back and forth to the Booking Engine.

(This feature is currently only supported to the Lodgical CRS booking engine).

Setting up the Account

On the Account tab, within an account, there is a checkbox to indicate that the account should be posted online.

After checking that box, the from and to date need to be entered. This date range needs to be the earliest arrival (from) and the latest departure (to) for all the reservations for the account.

Create a rate class in the Account. You can do this by clicking “Rates” in the upper icons. A rate class set-up like in the rate class manager will pop-up. Fill this out.

Create A Rate Class for the Account in CRS

To use an account for booking online, the account, in Lodgical, must be configured with its own rate class (as seen above). Otherwise no rates/restrictions are posted. That rate then must be mapped in the CRSInterface, and mapped in the CRS Connectivity Set-Up / PMS and Booking Engine / Parameter Set-up / Rate Class.

You can call this rate class anything: GrangerHolidayParty, Account3163, BolderWedding.

There are two places that need to be mapped in order for the rate class to show up on the booking engine.

Connectivity Setup –> PMS Setup 

And Booking Engine –> Parameters Setup

We can help guide you at any part of this process.

Create The Reservations

In addition, reservations need to be created and associated with the account.

Learn how to set aside a block of rooms here.

Availability

Availability for booking group reservations is based on the reservations that have been created for the account and whether the reservation has been picked up.

So, even if a date range is specified for the posting, only those reservations, that are not picked up, are available in that date range.

Below is an example where the posting from/to dates would be 11/1 to 11/7, there are dates that do not have a reservation for the account created. Those ‘open’ spots, are available for ‘general’ reservations.

IMPORTANT: When a reservation is picked up, the dates that the guest picked MAY BE DIFFERENT than what the reservation was originally created at. For instance, a reservation is created for the account from 11/1 to 11/7. This allows the booking engine to sell any of those dates for the group. So, if a guest selects 11/2 to 11/3, the RESERVATION IN LODGICAL IS SET TO 11/2 TO 11/3.

This is important to keep in mind, because now 11/1 to 11/2 and 11/3 to 11/7 are no longer available in inventory, for the account, but will become available for ‘general’ sale.

Ways to manage reservations that take up less days than blocked in:

– add new ‘account’ reservations for those dates.

– set Min LOS  to rate class so that cannot happen

– leaving the rooms open, available to general guests

Retrieving Reservations

Retrieving reservations for groups is slightly different than normal. In the normal retrieval, reservations are created as new reservations.

For accounts, the reservations exist in Lodgical already. Instead of looking for availability, the CRS Interface looks at the account’s reservation and selects one that has not been picked up. It then updates the guest info, charges, etc that come in. (In essence it acts like a ‘modify’). These reservations show up in the Pending Reservations as “Acct Pickup” so that the property can differentiate from a normal reservation.

If the account has no reservations that were not picked up, an error is logged; and will show up as a bad download.

Cancelled Reservations

When a group reservation is cancelled it is returned the to pool of account reservations. Its pickup date is cleared.

IMPORTANT: If the arrival/departure were changed when the reservation was picked up, those dates will NOT BE reset.

Configuring in Lodgical CRS

Now to map the account number (e.g. 2345) to a more friendly group code (e.g. GRANGER2020).

In the CRSInterface, add the Account number to be mapped out. Include the dates the account is active (same as on the Account page).

Next go to the CRS under the Booking Engine navigation to GroupCode Mapping.

Add New GroupCode button

Fill in the PromoCode and mapped information.

1. GroupCode is the code the guest puts into the GroupCode on the calender. No spaces, can be numbers and letters.
2. Group Name is the name of the Account or code.
3. PMS Group Code is the Account number (that you put in the CRSInterface).
4. RateClass Code is the personal rate class for that account.
5. Room Code select all the rooms that fall under this account’s block.

Using in the Booking Engine

In the Calendar View, the group code can be entered by the guest. Then when ‘Check Availability’ is clicked, the rates/availability are shown corresponding to that code. 

Questions?

If you have any questions about using this feature or updating your software, please call our office at 920.746.0606.