Promotional Rates

A promotional rate is any rate meant to be available for a short window of time with the intent of boosting sales at a later time. You may also hear these referred to as "promo codes." Generally, promotional rates are simply dynamic rates (see Dynamic Rates) with a few extra rules to follow in order to make them behave the way you want.

The initial process to create a rate is identical to creating a dynamic rate. We recommend making sure your rate has been built as desired in Chorum before continuing with this guide, as this topic focuses more on the setup of the rate's rules. When creating your dynamic rate, consider the following criteria:

• If your property uses a CRS Central Reservations System: Computerized reservation software used to maintain hotel information, inventory, rates, and manage bookings through online mediums via various booking channels (GDS, IBE, OTA, etcetera). and intends for the promo to be bookable online, make sure the rate in your CRS is built using the same rate code assigned in Chorum (or vice-versa). In most cases, the rate will be built in the CRS before Chorum for this reason.
• The rate's description should concisely refer to the promotion associated with it. For example, if the promo should only be available for Black Friday weekend, consider naming the rate something like "Black Friday Promotional Rate."
• If the rate should only be booked online, make sure the rate has been marked as a Restricted Rate Code. Outside of users granted the override permission (such as a manager), this prevents general staff from locally booking the rate when making new bookings.
• Since dynamic rates do not have their own rate seasons, make sure the source rate (such as your Rack rate or similar) has one or more rate seasons that overlap the entire date range the promo code applies to, starting with the earliest date a guest can book the rate and ending with the last day a guest may stay under the rate. For example, we create a Black Friday promo that extends to March 30th of the following year. So, our source rate's season(s) must cover the entire date range of Black Friday to March 30th.

Once saved, your dynamic rate is just about ready for use as a promo. If your property is planning to make the promotion available via CRS, we recommend making sure the rate has been mapped before continuing (see Mapping CRS Rates).

After the rate has been mapped (if at all), it is time to limit the rate's booking window to the promotion period. To achieve this, we'll use booking rules (see Daily Rate Manager or Booking Rules (Menu) if you are unfamiliar with this process). Using your booking rules, you will need to restrict all possible rate seasons before and after the promotion period.

In our earlier Black Friday Promo example, the promotion period is the day of Black Friday (11/29/2019) through to March 30th of the following year (03/30/2020). Our booking rules should close the rate for all dates before 11/29/2019, then simultaneously close the rate for all dates after 03/30/2020, leaving only 11/29/2019 - 03/30/2020 open.

Advertising and application of the promotion from this point forward is at your property's discretion. Once the booking window has elapsed (in our example, Friday 11/29 - Monday 12/02), you need only return to the Rate Code Maint menu and mark the promotional rate inactive, preventing all further bookings of the rate. Guests who have already booked the rate keep it, so there is no need to worry about whether they may be forced to select a new rate code or not.