Rate plans
Hotel & Rooms is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
What this is for
A rate plan is the commercial package a guest books: what they pay, and what happens if they cancel.
The same room sold three different ways — walk-up, advance purchase, corporate — is three rate plans against one room type.
Adding one
Hotel › Rate Plans › Add Rate Plan:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | What guests and staff see — "Flexible", "Advance Purchase", "Corporate". |
| Description | What it includes and what the conditions are. |
| Plan Type | The kind of plan. |
| Free Cancellation (Hours Before) | How long before arrival cancellation is free. |
| Cancellation Charge % | What's charged if they cancel inside that window. |
| Status | Active or inactive. |
Cancellation terms
Two numbers doing the work.
Free Cancellation (Hours Before) — the deadline. Set 48, and a guest cancelling more than 48 hours before arrival pays nothing.
Cancellation Charge % — what's charged inside that window. 100% means the full booking; 50% means half.
Leave the hours empty for no free cancellation — a non-refundable rate.
A plan's terms show as, for example, 48 h before / 50%, which is what to read out when a guest asks.
Choosing terms
The trade is always the same: flexible terms sell more rooms and produce more cancellations; strict terms produce fewer bookings that are more likely to arrive.
A workable set:
| Plan | Free cancellation | Charge | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flexible | 24 hours | 100% | Highest |
| Standard | 48 hours | 50% | Middle |
| Advance Purchase | None | 100% | Lowest |
The guest chooses their own trade-off. That's the point of having more than one.
Say the terms out loud at booking. Almost every cancellation argument is a guest who didn't know the terms, and the moment to prevent it is when the booking is taken.
How rate plans and base rates fit together
The room type carries a base rate. The rate plan is the commercial package applied to it. A reservation picks both: a room type and a rate plan.
Set the room type's base rate to your standard price, then use plans to express the variations.
Retiring a plan
Set it Inactive. It stops being offered on new bookings and existing bookings keep it — which is what you want, because a guest's cancellation terms shouldn't change after they've booked.
Delete only a plan created by mistake with nothing attached to it.
Extras and taxes
Separate from rate plans, under hotel settings:
- Booking Taxes — tax rates for hotel reservations, offered when creating a booking. These are separate from your restaurant taxes.
- Extra Services — breakfast, parking, airport transfer, added to a reservation on top of the room rate.
- Bank Details — account number, bank name, IFSC, branch code, SWIFT, printed on invoices and used for transfers.
Extra services are the tidy way to sell breakfast without building it into every rate. One "Room only" rate plus a breakfast extra beats maintaining a room-only and a bed-and-breakfast version of every plan.
Good to know
- Rate plans are per branch.
- Hotel Rate Plan permissions are separate from reservations, so someone can take bookings without changing what they cost. See What each role can do.
- Recurring payment is only supported on Monthly and Weekly pricing types, set on the room type. See Room types and rooms.
- Cancellation terms are a commercial promise. Write them somewhere guests can read them, not only in the system.