There are many different ways to manage rates in Visual Matrix. Before working with tiers, yield management, or peak dates, rates are managed by seasons and by room types. The first step in putting in place your rates will be to create the Season(s). A season is a period of time in which your rates will be constant. That does not mean that your rates will not change, it only means that the base of your rates, the Rack Rate, will stay the same.
Path: Management > Setup > Rates > Seasons
We do highly advise not to have too many seasons, especially if you are connected with a two-way. The more seasons you have, the more data will need to be sent. Sometimes, this creates an overload and the risk of not completing the update correctly. Use Tiers and/or Peak dates to adjust your rates based on your occupancy or special events.
Create a new Season from an existing one
1. Select the season to copy.
2. Click on Copy at the bottom.
From the popup window:
3. At the top, a reminder from which season you are currently copying from.
4. Choose the start and end date of that new Season. The new season must be contiguous to the latest season.
5. Enter the description for your season: this can be whatever you want - a year, a period, a name, ...
6. Choose to offset the rates of the season you are copying from. In this section, you can set up a positive or negative offset per room type, for weekdays and weekends (if you do have weekend rates).
The offset will apply to all the rates of that room type, rack/base, and every tier.
7. Choose to have a different Guarantee Type for that new season.
8. Choose to have a different Cancellation policy for that new season.
9. Click OK to save or Cancel to close, and go back to the previous page.
Create a brand new Season
A new season is generally created based upon actual seasons in the year (winter, spring, summer, fall), or for the new calendar year alltogether. Another reason you may want to create a new season is for a special event. As an example, the special event requires a specific Guarantee and Cancellation policy. Only a new season makes allowances for these requirements.
1. Go to the last line of the list of seasons that is empty.
2. Enter the Start Date and the End Date.
3. Enter the Description.
If you are connected to a 2way Channel Manager, you will not have the option to create a brand new season but only to copy from an existing one.