Important Reservation and Business Practices

To create the best possible forecasts and decisions, G3 RMS needs good data from your Reservation System The primary reservation system, like a PMS or CRS, that provides data to G3 RMS. The data from that one system is used by the RMS to forecast, optimize and produce controls. The controls are sent to all selling systems, which for some integrations may exclude the reservation system.. These recommendations ensure that the system performs optimally.

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Talk to IDeaS Before Changing Any System

G3 RMS can receive data from and send decisions to many systems. Once your integration with those systems is set up, any unplanned change can have negative impacts on the system's ability to function optimally.

Contact your IDeaS representative if you plan any change to your reservation, selling Any distribution system, like a PMS, CRS or a Channel Manager, that is used to sell your transient guest room inventory. Ideally, G3 RMS sends all controls to your selling systems, but this may vary based on their capabilities. For some integrations, the selling systems may not include the reservation system that provides with data., rate shopping, or reputation management system. We can answer questions and help ensure a smooth process. The same applies to configuration changes to key G3 RMS inputs, like market segments or room capacity.

Business Practices

Practice	Description
Changes to Hotel Capacity	If you are planning changes to the hotel capacity, review the Best Practices for Changing Room Classes. Discuss hotel capacity changes with your IDeaS representative before you apply them in the PMS.
Complimentary Upgrades	Read this topic to understand how G3 RMS differentiates between the room a guest booked versus the room in which a guest actually stayed.
Removing or Changing Market Segments in your reservation system	Do not delete old or unused market segments. Instead change them to inactive. Deleting them causes problems with the data that G3 RMS receives. Discuss any market segment changes with your IDeaS representative before you apply them in the reservation system. These changes might require a chargeable system rebuild or re-assigning attributes in G3 RMS.
Removing or Changing Room Types	Making room type changes in your reservation system after you set up G3 RMS setup might impact the system's ability to produce the best possible forecast and decisions. Before you make any changes, review the Best Practices for Changing Room Classes.
Periods of Restricted Inventory	Read this topic to understand best practices for working with G3 RMS when a large portion of your rooms are unavailable.
Placing rooms Out of Order (or equivalent status)	When you physically can't sell a room (for example, because it requires repair), G3 RMS needs to consider the reduced capacity in its Optimization G3 RMS uses the demand forecast (volume and value), the available capacity to sell, your configuration and your interactions (Special Events, overrides) to calculate optimized controls. Optimization output includes pricing for the BAR, Last Room Value (LRV), overbooking and the constrained Occupancy Forecast.. Share this information by placing the room Out of Order Refers to rooms that you physically can't sell, for example, because they need repair. OOO rooms reduce the Available Capacity to Sell and may lead to changes in forecasts and decisions in the next optimization. Don't use OOO status to hold reservations, see Business Practices Help text for more information. in the reservation system. Do not place rooms Out of Order to temporarily hold rooms. For example, a high-value guest wants you to hold a specific room for some days until they decide. You want to avoid selling the room to someone else in the meantime. In that case, make a reservation and cancel it if the guest doesn't confirm. This way, the system learns the wash pattern for this type of business. If you place the room Out of Order, the forecast and decisions may change due to the capacity fluctuations, and the system doesn't learn any patterns. See Periods of Restricted Inventory for working with G3 RMS when a large number of your rooms are unavailable.

Reservation Practices

Practice	Description
Cancellations and No-Shows	For the best possible overbooking decisions, G3 RMS needs to know how much of your business cancels before arrival or never arrives and no-shows. That is because cancellations and no-shows (together with group cut-off) directly impact how G3 RMS calculates Wash The drop in occupancy due to cancellations, no-shows, group cut-offs, etc. For future dates, the percentage is the expected drop for the Peak Demand. For past dates, it is the expected wash as of the last optimization.. Therefore, correctly record cancellations and no-shows in the reservation system that sends data to G3 RMS (typically your PMS or CRS). Reservations should not be checked in or through for these situations.
Component Room Reservations	If your property uses the Component Rooms module, review Component Rooms Reservation Practices.
Day Use Rooms	Your integration determines if revenue and occupancy data from Day Use reservations is sent to G3 RMS. If you are unsure, contact your IDeaS representative. We recommend that you don't keep Day Use reservations checked in overnight. This way, G3 RMS knows the true value of demand for overnight stays. If your G3 RMS receives Day Use data, we recommend that you use a unique market segment with the Forecast Type None. This way, you can track it separate from business that stays overnight.
Market Segment and Rate Integrity	Define clear standards for assigning market segments and rate codes to reservations and regularly check their observance. Good practices in this area lead to "clean" Market Segments that show clearly defined patterns. Clean Market Segments mean lower uncertainty, which enables better forecasts and decisions. Record rates on all reservations. Ensure rate code and market segment are correct. For example, if a reservation at BAR is changed to Corporate, the market segment should also be changed. Note that some integrations don't send market segment changes during a stay to G3 RMS. If you are unsure, contact your IDeaS representative. Check that the reservation team doesn't override the rate code values. For example, if the price is 200, a team member shouldn't override that to 100. Instead, they should use a discount rate code if the lower price is needed. Help the team avoid shortcuts that might cause incorrect data in G3 RMS. For example, use mandatory reservation fields so that everybody must complete each reservation with the necessary information.
Group Block Management	Following best practices in this area is a key requirement for G3 RMS to provide the best possible forecasts and decisions. For details on how to set up group blocks in your reservation system, review the Group Block Business Practices. These practices also contain important considerations if you don't use a block booking method for making group reservations.
Manually entered reservations	Avoid a backlog of reservations that you need to enter manually, for example, reservations received via fax or email from an OTA. A large backlog means that G3 RMS does not get accurate information about cancellations and new reservations, and the system will have incorrect On Books data. Backlogs also mean that the system does not receive accurate information about when business materializes, and its booking pace expectations may be off.
Multi-Unit or Multi-Room Reservations	Don't create reservations for multiple rooms in the same reservation record (except for Group Blocks). Split reservations that use multiple rooms into individual reservations. If you are using the Opera API, there is not a field for the number of rooms in the data sent to G3 RMS. If you don't split the reservation, G3 RMS will not be aware that multiple rooms are used. Regardless, the Opera PMS requires multiple rooms to be split into individual reservations when checking the rooms into the hotel. For this reason, Opera provides better data to G3 RMS because it requires that rooms be split when assigned, avoiding reservation records being created on or very near to the day of arrival.
Pre-registered guests	How do you handle guests that book and agree to pay for the night before their arrival date, because they are arriving very early that day and want a guaranteed room? As a best practice, we recommend that you do not let them run as no-shows. Instead, check them in the night before their arrival date with zero guests, then update the number of guests when they arrive at the hotel.
Rate Query	In order to pick a rate and rate value, your reservations team may use the rate query or similar functionality in the reservation system, or an availability and rate spreadsheet. In either case, we recommend that you review override rights and look for opportunities to avoid reservations errors. The objective is to ensure that the rates sold by your reservations team match G3 RMS' expectations of what will be sold based on its optimization and its controls. G3 RMS is a decision system, which means that it expects its controls will be deployed and lead to the forecasted results. And G3 RMS is self-learning, meaning it constantly measures its expectations against the actual results in the next data extract Files with new and changed booking data that G3 RMS receives from the reservation system. It includes reservations, group blocks, and inventory summary data. Also called Snapshots or Daily Extracts. from the reservation system that provides data to G3 RMS. G3 RMS applies what it learns and any changes in business conditions in the next cycle. Simplified, if G3 RMS prices BAR at $200 and expects to sell 10 rooms and then none are sold, it can learn from that and adjust forecasts and pricing if necessary. But if instead 10 rooms are sold at a value of $150 for BAR because the reservations team doesn't follow the rate query, those reservations inconsistencies eventually impact the quality of the system's forecast and decisions.
Reservation Types	With the daily data extracts, G3 RMS receives reservations and blocks with reservation types or statuses that reduce the available capacity. Review and follow the Group Block Business Practices to ensure G3 RMS knows the truth about the available capacity.
Room changes or reservation extensions	Move or extend the original reservation, rather than making new reservations. For example, a guest booked an LOS4 reservation. They check in and do not like the room, but can't be moved to the new room until the next day. If you make a new reservation for the move on day 2, then G3 RMS sees demand for one LOS1 and one LOS3 reservation, instead of the correct demand for one LOS4 reservation. It also incorrectly sees the LOS3 reservation as same-day demand. Keep in mind that G3 RMS does not collect any personal information from reservations, so it cannot know that the two reservations are for the same guest. To hold the new room in your PMS for the move on the next day, place it Out of Service or use a similar status that doesn’t deduct from available inventory.
Room Types	Correctly record the room type that a guest booked and paid for versus the room type that you allocated to the guest (the "stayed" room type). Knowing the difference between the booked and the stayed room type helps G3 RMS understand demand by Room Class. For example, when a guest books a Standard room type and, at check-in, gets a free upgrade to a Suite, then G3 RMS understands that this demand represents Standard and not Suite demand. See Complimentary Upgrades for more information.
Same day release reservations	Some properties offer the option to reserve a room without a payment guarantee and then release such reservations on the day of arrival. If this applies to your property, cancel the reservations on the arrival date and don’t record them as no-shows. If you record released reservations as no-shows without payment, be consistent. That way, G3 RMS learns to expect more no-shows. But if you cancel such reservations on some days and let them run as no-shows on other days, it creates uncertainty. That prevents G3 RMS from producing the best possible forecast of last-minute wash.
Share or Share-With reservations	Some reservation systems allow you to assign multiple reservations to one room. This is useful when guests need more than one name on a reservation, for example for billing purposes. Note that G3 RMS sees Share reservations as only one booking. Depending on your integration, your reservation system sends it as one or G3 RMS combines it into one.