Like on the OTAs on ZaK a rate is a price list and contains information about restrictions, cancellation policy, and board included in the price (room only, breakfast, half board, full board, all-inclusive) and currency.
You can set Prices and Restrictions day by day, product by product. Cancellation policy, board, and currency are valid for the whole calendar.
Rates are used for your online sale on OTAs and your website. You can use them in the ZaK Channel Manager's channel configuration and on the Zak Booking Engine. They also allow you to specify in detail sales parameters for each product.
↳ Link: ZaK > Products > Rates
A rate is represented by a calendar that for each product-day, also associates the following restrictions to a price:
- OTA Limit
- Availability Modifier
- Min Stay
- Min Stay Arrival
- Max Stay
- Max Stay Arrival
- No Ota
- Min Advance
- Max Advance
- No check-in
- No check-out
- Closure
The prices and restrictions applied to each rate can be controlled and managed day by day through Tabla or for long periods, through Sytar.
For a more detailed description of each restriction, see the Tabla docs page:
☞ Docs: ZaK - Tabla
☞ Docs: ZaK - Sytar
In addition to the price and restrictions calendar, the following data are also associated with a ZaK rate:
- Board (B&B, Half board, Full board, All inclusive)
- Cancellation policy: the conditions of booking cancellation. For a technical issue, the Channel Manager cannot update it on OTAs, so this data only concerns the sale with the ZaK Booking Engine
-
Currency: If an OTA portal sells your products in markets with a different currency than yours, it becomes useful to create a rate in the currency of the market you are entering. Zak supports automatic currency exchange conversions: you can also use derivations between Zak rates to have a rate for a specific currency with automatic and updated price conversion!
☞ Docs: ZaK - Cancellation policies
Creating a rate
To create a rate you need to indicate:
- Rate name
- Board
-
Cancellation Policy
- Currency
With the appropriate Tabla and Sytar tools, you can then set prices and restrictions.
Please note: As soon as you create a rate, the price on each day of the calendar will be the default price for each product: we recommend that you always set high default prices because you may receive reservations at that price for future stays for which you have not yet set prices manually.
Price and restrictions derivation
You can make price derivations between rates, so that you don't have to define prices for each day.
Derivations can be used to create discounted rates, starting from an existing rate. For example, you could offer a specific percentage discount to customers who choose a "Not-refundable" policy or if they book a stay of min 7 nights.
So a rate doesn't have to be derived in all its values, but you can choose which ones to derive from another rate: you can choose whether or not to derive the price and specify one by one the restrictions to be derived.
NOTE: You can't derive some values from one rate and others from another rate. The derivation is 'unique', i.e. a rate can only be derived from another rate: you can't derive, for example, the price from one rate and the restrictions from another one.
The price derivation can be:
- Equal: maybe you want to create a rate with the same price as another but different restrictions
-
Percentage variation: just choose a percentage to increase/decrease the rate
- Static variation per room: the variation is applied to the room price, regardless of the number of guests
- Static variation per person: the price change is multiplied by the number of guests in the room. Useful in case the price variation refers to a per person service, such as meals included in the price
- Currency Exchange: with an exchange rate automatically updated online
NOTE: If you use the automatic currency exchange derivation, please note that your Currency Rates will be updated automatically every few hours. To honor exchange rate changes, any OTA using these Currency Rates will be systematically updated on a daily basis of a few days at most.
Warning: If you decide to delete an existing derivation, the values will not return to the default Product values for that Rate, but will remain the current values, i.e. as calculated by the derivation. You will just have to start managing the rate manually through Tabla and Sytar.
Double derivation: product and rate
In Zak you can also create derivations among products, not only rates.
☞ Docs: ZaK - Products
If you want to manage a product according to its occupancy, you can set a price derivation starting from the product with the default occupancy.
This derivation between products could be combined with the derivation between rates, but in this case product derivations take precedence. Just consider the following example.
For example, let's suppose that the price of a "Double for 3 people" is + 20% than the price of a "Double room" (products derivation about occupancy). And let's assume that the "Half Board" price is +15€ per person than the Standard price (rates derivation, static variation per person).
If the price of a Double room with the Standard rate is 80 €, then to calculate the cost of the Triple room with Half Board rate, ZaK first applies the products derivation (from Double to Triple): 80€ + 20% = 96€ .
Then Zak will calculate the Half Board rate price from the Standard rate price: 96€ + (15€ x 3people) = 96€ + 45€ = 141€.
! Note that the result would be different if the order of application of the derivations had been the reverse.
"Copy Rates" tool
By clicking on the icon on the top right, you can copy prices and/or restrictions from another rate. You will find a detailed explanation of the functionality in the following documentation:
☞ Docs: ZaK - "Copy Rates" tool