Setting Up Your Pricing

GO TO: OWcal > Seasons

Setup Your Price Bands (Seasons)

The first thing you should do when setting up new pricing, or updating existing pricing,  is review your Price Bands. These are referred to on your Website Booking System as ‘Seasons’. A Price Band or Season is simply giving a name to multiple dates that share exactly the same weekly prices and daily prices. Once we’ve named our ‘Seasons’ and assigned dates to these Seasons it makes them easier to manage.

Creating Your Seasons

The way you create your Seasons will depend on the way you would like to structure your pricing. Here are a couple of examples of how you could create your Seasons depending on your own personal requirements:

Example 1 – Offer a common price per night and/or price per week for each Season.

If you would like to present a common nightly rate and/or weekly rate to your guests then you would setup your Season similarly to the example shown in Fig S1. In this example we have created a new Season, which we have named ‘Example 1’ and allocated the date range 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021 to it. You’ll notice by default all the days of the week are ticked.

Example 2 – Offer different prices depending upon the day of the week and/or price per week for each Season.

What if you would like to charge a different nightly rate to guests that book short stays over the weekends as opposed to those that book midweek? If this is the case, you will need to create additional Seasons. In the example illustrated in Fig S2, we have created two new Seasons, which we have named ‘Example 2 WD’ and ‘Example 2 WE’.In Example 2 WD we have left the WeekDays ticked and unticked Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In Example 2 WE, we have unticked Monday-Thursday.This will allow you the flexibility assigning a weekend rate that will apply to all Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout the whole month of January 2021.

• To Create a New Season click the Add New Season button.
• To Rename your Season click on the Pencil icon – To Delete your Season click on the Trashcan icon
• To assign start and end dates to your Season click the Plus icon to the Right of the Season Name. You can do this multiple times, adding multiple series’ of dates to each Season

GO TO: OWcal > Rates

Allocate Rates To Your Seasons

Having created your Price Bands you now need to give each one some Prices. Using the Seasons we created above (Example 1 & Example 2 WD/WE), we will demonstrate exactly how we do this

Example 1

Just to recap, the Example 1 Season we created enables us to offer a common nightly rate for all days of the week irrespective of weekends or weekdays.  With this in mind, in Fig R1, you can see we have created 3 rates that apply only to Example 1.

1. A nightly rate – £80 per night
2. A reduced rate for stays of 3 days – £220
3. A reduced rate for stays of 7 days – £500

This model means that the following pricing would be applied to stays of 4-6 nights

• A 4 night booking would result in the 3 day rate plus 1 x £80 = £300
• A 5 night booking would result in the 3 day rate plus 2 x £80 = £380
• A 6 night booking would result in the 3 day rate plus 3 x £80 = £460

Example 2

Previously we created 2 Seasons (Example 2 WD & Example 2 WE) which we purposely did to enable us to charge different prices depending on the days of the week your guests are staying. Look at the example in Fig R2 where we have created 5 Rates and follow our explanation below as to how each of these Rates will effect your pricing

1. The first rate applies a weekly rate of £500 across any seven day period for both your price bands. This means this rate will apply to any 7 day bookings in the period 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021
2. Then we have a rate of £80 per night for weekdays (Mon-Thurs) in 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021
3. Then we have a rate of £100 per night for weekends (Fri/Sat/Sun) in 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021
4. We also have a rate applied only to weekdays offering £220 for a 3 night stay
5. Finally we have a rate applied only to weekend offering £280 for a 3 night stay

GO TO: BOOKINGS > Booking Rules

Allocate Booking Rules To Your Seasons

1. Basic Booking Rules

Specify a Check-in / Check Out Day of the Week. If your housekeeper only works on Fridays then you may want all your bookings to start and end on Fridays. In our example Fig B1 you can see we have created two Booking Rules that will only allow guests to check in and check out on Fridays.

Specify a Minimum / Maximum Stay. We have also created two more rules here. First we have created a 3 night minimum stay rule – and applied it to all Seasons. You may choose to be selective here and only apply it to your low Seasons. Many people choose to create an additional 7 night minimum stay rule and select just their Summer Season bookings.We have also created a Maximum stay length of 28 days.

2. Advanced Booking Rules

The Advanced Booking Rules cater for Owners who have more complex pricing requirements. Perhaps they need to restrict the days guests can check in and out and also offer short stay packaged rates. In these cases you may need a ‘Special Rate’. To set a Special Rate, first click on the ‘Advanced Rule’ button as shown at the foot of Fig B1. In this example we have created Two Special Rates – a 3 Night Stay Rate and a 4 Night Stay Rate. The 4 Night Stay Rate applies a special rate to guests checking in on Mondays that check out 4 days later on the Friday. The 3 Night Stay Rate similarly applies a special rate to guests checking in on Fridays that check out 3 days later on the Monday. Important: After creating your Special Rate(s), you will need to head back to OWcal > Rates (Fig B3) where you can allocate your price for these breaks and also assign / limit the Seasons that these Short Stays should apply to.