Last Room Availability (LRA) Restrictions
In corporate rate agreements, hotels negotiate not only price and room type, but also LRA status. LRA status is a valuable benefit for corporate business. It is designed to ensure better availability of the negotiated rate, meaning the hotel must accept the rate even over high-demand periods.
For G3 RMS, LRA means that the negotiated rate remains available to book as long as the negotiated room type is available, even if the Last Room Value (LRV) is higher than the negotiated rate for that account.
Only after the LRV is above the BAR
Best Available Rate. The lowest non-restricted product with flexible cancellation policy that anyone can book. G3 RMS optimizes the pricing of the BAR product. Other products, like Advanced Purchase or packages, can be linked to the BAR price. price point and all rates for the room type are closed can the negotiated rate be closed. Thus, the only way to close the LRA account is to close BAR as well. View Best Practices for LRV to learn how to set up your selling system to ensure the LRV correctly restricts LRA business.
G3 RMS considers all market segments with the attribute Semi-Yieldable as LRA business.
LRA Impact
During its optimization, G3 RMS automatically checks for dates when lower-value LRA demand might displace higher-value BAR demand. G3 RMS looks at remaining LRA versus BAR demand and overall capacity. The system can also check if the LRA demand books earlier than BAR demand. Based on that information, the system forecasts dates with LRA impact.
For example, you have 10 available rooms to sell. G3 RMS forecasts 10 rooms demand for LRA and 10 rooms for BAR. Based on historical booking pace, if the system expects the LRA demand to book before BAR, then there is LRA impact, because LRA demand will displace BAR demand.
On dates where you applied a specific pricing override, G3 RMS does not check for LRA impact.
When G3 RMS detects LRA impact, the system displays a “Price Impacted” warning icon 
in
Options for Managing Dates with LRA Impact
You have two different options for managing LRA impacted dates:
1. Review and Apply Restrictions
By default, G3 RMS does not intervene when it displays LRA impact icons. You might accept that you are potentially missing out on higher revenues on individual dates because you value the overall business that the LRA accounts bring throughout the year. In that case, you don't need to take action. The icons only inform you how often LRA impact happens and, in general, help you gain a better understanding about the costs versus the benefits of your LRA accounts.
If you want to limit the potential displacement of higher-rated business by LRA demand, you can manually apply restrictions to the room type in your selling system until G3 RMS removes the LRA impact icon.
When G3 RMS expects that the remaining LRA demand is no longer large enough to displace higher-value business, the system removes the icon.
2. Set up G3 RMS to Send Restrictions
To use LRA restrictions, your reservation system must support the functionality and your IDeaS representative must enable the feature. You can then use Last Room Availability Restrictions Setup to tell G3 RMS the level, either rate category or rate code, at which your reservation system can accept LRA restrictions.
When G3 RMS detects LRA impact, it does the following:
- Automatically sends controls to the reservation system that restrict BAR.
- Applies identical controls to the LRA managed rate codes that you identify in LRA Restrictions Setup
- Displays the Price Restricted icon
in , you cannot apply pricing overrides for that arrival date, Room Class, and LOS combination. BAR and LRA business cannot book for the impacted Room Class and, if applicable, LOS. - Removes the controls later in the booking cycle, when there is less danger of BAR being displaced by LRA demand. The property can then capture more revenue from the remaining, higher-value BAR demand, while remaining LRA demand should be lower.
Setup Steps
- Set up your reservation system to yield other rate codes, in this case, the LRA rate codes, together with BAR. This setup means that LRA rate codes are not controlled by the LRV but receive the same controls as BAR.
- Set up all public rate codes to yield with other rate codes, not just BAR and LRA. For example, for an arrival date with LRA impact, the LRV for a given Room Class and LOS is $100, your LRA rate is $110, and the optimal BAR price point is $150. G3 RMS sends a control to restrict the BAR price point, and LRA is closed because you set up the reservation system to yield LRA equally to BAR. If you have other public rates (for example, an advanced purchase option at $135 that is not yielded the same as BAR), they remain open, and you may violate your LRA agreement. Therefore, it is important that you yield other public rates the same as BAR. Alternatively, you can fence them, so they are no longer public and do not display in a public rate search (for example, with an access code).
- Create a case for IDeaS support or contact your IDeaS representative to enable LRA restrictions.
- After IDeaS enables LRA restrictions, set up the level and rate codes for restrictions. Click
and
then Last Room Availability Restrictions. - Select the level at which your reservation system can accept LRA restrictions. See Rate Code and Rate Category Restriction Levels below for information about levels for restrictions.
- If you applied restrictions at the rate code level, you must first add the rate codes that require restrictions in the Rate Headers tab of Restriction Setup. Here you define rate plans at a high level, with a name, description, the full date range for which the plan is available, and the type, either a fixed value or a value derived off the BAR decision. You may already have completed Restriction Setup because some of your selling systems cannot use LRV to control rates. If all your selling systems accept LRV, and you have not completed Restriction Setup, you do not need to complete the second tab, Rate Details to set up LRA restrictions.
- Select the Available Rate Categories or Available Rate Codes, depending on your level.
- Filter the list by typing a string of characters from the name in the Search field.
- Click > to add selected categories or codes to the LRA Restricted list, or click >> to add all categories or codes to the LRA Restricted list.
- Click Save.
When G3 RMS sends LRA restrictions, the system displays the “Price Restricted” icon in
Best Practices
Review Your Pricing Overrides
On dates where you applied a specific pricing override, G3 RMS does not check for LRA impact.
Choose an Optimization Method
When you use LRA restrictions, you can also choose an alternate optimization method that may provide better results than the default method. See Optimization Settings for more information.
Choose Rate Category or Rate Code Level Restrictions
In LRA Restrictions Setup, you choose to apply LRA restrictions at either the rate category or rate code level. Apply restrictions at the rate category level if your selling systems can receive restrictions at that level and if restrictions are delivered to all sales channels. For example, if all public rates exist in a rate category “PUBLIC,” and LRV results in a MinLOS = 2 restriction to this rate category in the selling system, the restriction must apply to all onward sales channels, like Online Travel Agencies, where these rates are sold.
In many cases, restrictions have to be applied at the rate code level for the restrictions to reach all sales channels. For example, BAR and ADVP are the only two public rate codes that you sell on channels that are subject to LRV or hurdles. These public rate codes must be restricted when the LRA flag is active. Applying restrictions at the rate category level does not ensure that restrictions cascade to these rate codes individually and out to the channels. In cases like this, rate code level restrictions are required.
To apply restrictions at the rate code level, you must first add the rate codes that require restrictions in the Rate Headers tab of Restriction Setup.
