Group booking overview
There are three components to a Group Booking: booker (organization or booking agency profile), group bookings, and delegates. A group booking can be made without a booker, but is recommended for organizations and booking agencies that do repeat business with your property for revenue production and materialization statistics. An example of a group booking that could be made without a booker would be a group of people staying at your property one time without any company affiliation, such as a wedding party or family reunion.
The Booker profile is used to maintain all of the general information about an organization or booking agency that may house groups at your property. It contains details such as the organization or booking agency name, address, and contacts. A booker profile provides a template of organization or booking agency information that copy to the group booking. The booker lookup field is a list of existing organization profiles or booking agency profiles. Booker profiles are not required.
The Group Booking is used to maintain date and member-specific information unique to a 'group' of delegates (individual guest). It contains the details that are used by the system for delegates of the group. The Group Booking manages the dates, rates, room blocks, billing instructions, and more for the group staying at your property. The booking provides a template of default details that copy to delegate reservations and folios.
Delegates are the individual guest reservations that belong to the group. Delegate reservations can be made individually through Central Reservations or the Guest Stay modules, or can be made individually or in multiples as a rooming list in the Group Booking. All of the information from a delegate is linked to the Group Booking and consolidated in displays and reports from the Group Booking.
The status of a group booking determines which tabs are available to access and also determines if house availability. When creating a new group booking you can select from three statuses:
- Prospect: The group is unconfirmed at this time, and a block of rooms may not be entered - this is simply a record of the contact and dates required.
- Tentative: The group is unconfirmed, but a block of rooms required may be entered but is not removed from house availability unless the Tentative Room Block Affects House Availability option is checked on tab. This check box is only displayed when the group status is Tentative. When the group is Tentative status and the check box is clear, any block that is entered does not affect availability. When the group is in Tentative status and check box is selected, any block that is entered does affect availability.
- Definite: The group is confirmed and rooms are removed from house availability
A diamond shaped indicator is included in many of the tabs of a group booking to the right of the tab title. When no information exists on the tab the indicator is white, when information has been saved to the tab the indicator is orange which alerts users going into the booking that there is information behind the tab. Group booking tabs that include the indicator are:
- Room Types
- Rates
- Block
- Auto Transfer
- Preferences
- Delegates
- Events
- Traces
- Transportation