Sabre
Offers a suite of technology solutions specifically for the hospitality industry, including property management systems (PMS), central reservation systems (CRS), revenue management tools, and distribution platforms. These tools help hotels manage reservations, optimize room rates, and streamline operations.
Sales and Marketing
Seasons
There is no one set factor for determining how much a hotel room will cost. Rather, hotel pricing is determined by any combination of the following factors: location, seasonality, demand, star rating, amenities, value of services and other hotel competition. In Visual Matrix, a Season is a period with a set of rates. Each season would either have a different base rate (aka rack rate). For our Best Western users, a new season can be created for a short time (couple days) to apply specific guarantee or cancellation policies through the BW 2Way.
Secondary backup
A secondary backup is an additional copy of data that serves as a safeguard against data loss, providing redundancy and further ensuring the integrity and availability of critical information. Secondary backups use external hard drives, and USB drives.
Serial Interfaces
Serial number
Server
Servers host the hotel's PMS, which manages reservations, guest information, billing, check-in/check-out, and other front desk operations. Servers connect various hotel systems, enabling communication and data sharing between departments, servers also store data backups.
Service (Windows)
Service History
Refers to a record or log that tracks the maintenance and service activities performed on specific rooms, areas, or equipment within the hotel.
Share Charges
When you have multiple guests sharing one room, there are occasions when they prefer to individually cover their portion of the room charges and have separate folios. Visual Matrix has the ability for guests to split or share the cost of charges incurred during their stay.
Shift4
Shift4 is a leading provider of payment processing solutions and technology services designed for businesses across various industries, including hospitality, retail, and e-commerce. In the context of hotels and hospitality, Shift4 offers a comprehensive suite of payment-related products and services to facilitate seamless and secure transactions.
Shortcut
A shortcut in computing is a quick way to perform a task or access a program, file, or folder using a specific key combination or an icon, typically placed on the desktop or within the system.
Siteminder
SiteMinder's primary focus is on facilitating connections between hotels and various distribution channels, such as online travel agencies (OTAs), global distribution systems (GDS), and booking engines.
Sleepers Night
"Sleeper Nights" is a term used in hospitality, particularly in revenue and performance analysis. It refers to the total number of room nights occupied, factoring in the number of guests (adults and children) in each room.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a common protocol used to send emails over the internet.
Soft Close
In the context of Minimum Length of Stay (MLOS), a Soft Close is a method of managing reservations for specific dates. Rather than applying a strict MLOS rule to all reservations, a Soft Close typically targets certain nights, ensuring that guests must commit to a minimum number of nights for a reservation on those particular dates. Unlike a rigid MLOS policy that affects the entire length of a stay, a Soft Close provides more flexibility, potentially blocking out single-night bookings for specific nights.
This approach, also referred to as "Soft MLOS," is used when only certain nights within a stay have a minimum length requirement. For example, a 2-night minimum may be required for reservations arriving on a Saturday, but shorter stays could be allowed for other nights, such as Thursday or Sunday.
Alternative terms for this concept include "Dynamic MLOS" or "Night-Specific MLOS", though "Soft Close" effectively captures the idea.
Special Requests
Special requests in hotels refer to specific accommodations, amenities, or services that guests ask for in addition to their standard reservation. These requests can range from simple preferences to unique requirements and often play a significant role in enhancing the guest experience.
Speed Measurements
Transmission speeds on a network are measured in the number of bits per second (bps) that a network interface can transmit. Modern communication speeds are usually millions of bits (megabits) per second (Mbps). On a LAN, 100mbps is standard, while on WAN connections speeds are usually much slower, to the point where they are sometimes measured in kilobits per second (kbps). To do a speed test of you network, you can click
here.
Speed Test
Speedtest measures the speed between your device and a test server, using your device's internet connection. Several factors can impact the speed recorded by a test. To do a speed test of you network, you can click
here.
Split Charges
Refers to dividing the costs associated with a reservation or a guest's stay among different payment methods, folios, or individuals. This is a common practice when guests want to share expenses or allocate specific charges to different accounts
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
An SSL Certificate is a Digital Certificate that provides authentication for a website and enables an encrypted connection. Visual Matrix uses SSL Certificates for Merchant Link credit card processing and for the Best Western 2 Way Interface. The Best Western Certificate has to be renewed every 2 years. If you are on the Desktop version, Visual Matrix Client Experience will contact you to upload the new Certificate in time.
Static IP
A static IP is just as its name suggests, it is specifically assigned to a computer and remains constant. In order to set a static IP, you will also need to provide a subnet mask and a default gateway. The other type of IP Address is a dynamic IP.
STR
A company specializing in hotel strategic positioning and competition utilizes the STR report as a vital benchmarking tool for revenue management, enabling hotels to assess their performance against comparable establishments. While Visual Matrix does not have a direct integration with STR for data transmission, it plays a pivotal role for Best Western properties by sending essential revenue information through a two-way interface. This data typically includes occupancy rates, average daily rates (ADR), and revenue per available room (RevPAR). Best Western then shares this data with STR to facilitate benchmarking and comprehensive analysis.
Subnet Masks, Default Gateways, and Static Routes
The subnet mask determines which addresses are local and which are remote. If a destination address is remote, the computer needs to know how to get to the remote network. This is done by specifying a Default Gateway, which is the IP address of their Internet or WAN gateway. Obviously, the gateway address has to be local to the LAN. Since it is possible to have more than one gateway on a LAN, access to additional gateways is defined using a static route, which routes a defined range of IP addresses through another gateway instead of the default.
Sub-Folio
Supply Usage
Is a functionality that enables you to monitor and record the consumption of supply items in each guest room. This feature helps you keep track of both the quantity and cost of supplies used, ensuring efficient inventory management and cost control.
Switches
Switches are usually used to add more connections to the LAN, using a router as the central connection point for the network. This is done by simply connecting an ethernet cable from a port on the switch to one of the LAN ports on the router, usually referred to as uplinking. In fact, some older switches will have a dedicated uplink port that can only handle that specific function, though these are rather uncommon these days. Since routers can perform the function of a switch as well as pass traffic to a remote network (like the Internet), they function as a gateway for a LAN. The term gateway can be used to refer to both the device that performs this function, or the boundary between a LAN and a WAN that the device represents. Since you can connect multiple switches and routers together via uplinking, you can connect quite a lot of computers to a LAN.
Sync
"Sync," short for "synchronization," refers to the process of ensuring that data, files, or systems are updated and consistent across different devices or platforms.
Synxis
Synxis is a comprehensive hotel distribution and reservation management platform developed by Sabre Hospitality Solutions. It is designed to help hotels manage their room inventory, rates, and reservations across multiple distribution channels, such as online travel agencies (OTAs), global distribution systems (GDS), and the hotel's own website.