A "Rate Grid" is a type of Rate Discount in your NightsBridge setup that allows you to override your rates for specific dates and room types.
Booking.com will not setup a promotion when you create a Rate Grid override and will rather receive these rates as the "Standard Rate" on their side.
BEWARE of "Stack Pricing" or double discounting on Booking.com to prevent bookings from coming in at an undesirable amount.
They will only create a promotion if you setup any of the other Rate Discounts types (Eg. Always Valid, Early Bird and Last Minute).
Why would I want to use a "Rate Grid"?
While your default RACK rates will be maintained on a seasonal basis, the Rates Grid allows you to override your rate up/down on a daily basis, per room type.
When could I use a "Rate Grid"?
A Rate Grid would be useful if you would like to do a series of targeted rate adjustments in the following situations:
Changing levels of occupancy.
Your occupancy levels vary from day to day and from room type to room type.
Looking at your occupancy levels as a whole and on a room type basis, you may want to;
- Decrease your rates during periods when your occupancy is low to encourage more guests to book with you.
- Increase your rates during periods when your occupancy is high to benefit from more revenue per additional booking that you receive.
This would be a form of Yield Management or a variable pricing strategy that is used to maximise revenue.
Offer different rates on different dates.
Looking at your RACK rates, you may decide to temporarily adjust your rates for the next 2 weekends but you do not want to setup "Weekend/Weekday Rates" in your RACK rates.
A Rate Grid will allow you to setup weekend or weekday rates with varying discounts or price increases for these targeted dates.
Overriding your rates for short periods and events.
If there is an event in your area where you know that there will be high demand for your rooms, you may want to temporarily increase your rates to capitalise on this increase in demand.
Use a rates grid to target the dates you want to override your rates for.
How do the adjusted rates display on the NightsBridge booking form?
If you apply a rate discount, the booking form will show the % saved for that day as well as a strike-through that show the original rate.
Please note that:
- Discounted rates will show under the "Available Rates" section on the booking form when the guest selects the room they want to book.
- If you increase your rates through the Rate Grid, the increased rate will show as if it's a normal rate with no strike-through.
How do these rates get pushed to channels?
We will send these rates through to all your channels as BAR rates, by default.
This means that the channels that receive the rate may not specifically display a promotion when you set up a Rate Grid because they're only going to receive one rate from us for any given date. They do not know whether or not you have discounted your RACK or STO rate.