Help Me Understand how travel agent commissons work

Hello!

See https://help.mews.com/s/article/set-up-travel-agencies?language=en_US for reference.

TL;DR: MEWS can only calculate Commission for statistical reporting purpose, not for financal purpose, except when set up correctly the deduction of a fixed commission fee for a TA Contract for ChannelManager reservations coming from that TA.

For actual comission payment/settlment/financial accounting you need to rely on other tools.

There was a german thread on that topic at

https://community.mews.com/dach-based-customers-42/buchhaltung-und-reisebuerokommission-hinterlegen-1498

maybe some autotranslate can bring you up to speed :-)

Kind regards,

JP.

I’m still struggling with this, as it appears Mews is not set up to handle the concept of a RATE being commissionable. 

Everything a travel agent books is not commissionable. A travel agent can book a commissionable Flexible rate one day, and a non commissionable corporate rate another. 

How are we supposed to manage this? I can’t even run a reservation report to track what commissions are due on my own, as the reservation report is showing ALL reservations made by a travel agent to be commissionable. 

Thank you for the response, but unfortunately how Mews handles the concept just goes against how commissions are actually done in the industry. Rates are commissionable on a case by case basis not entire travel agencies. 

So, we have to come up with a completely manual process outside of Mews to determine what commission is due. 

Well I don’t know how you go about it, but we do have the same rate distributed to all kinds of OTAs and GDS systems, and they all may apply or require a different commission rate, and the commission rate even might not be the constant over time with a single OTA… so I guess it’s really difficult to handle commission from within a PMS. I know it hurts, but there is little else left than leaving it up to the OTAs and GDS / Global Commission payment providers / clearing houses  to do the math, and trust it and maybe to some review for individual cases to check them.

So to sum it up, it’s really a very complex issue -  I have no idea how MEWS could possibly implement a comission tracking system. I guess that would really require a very complex and long exploration phase from the product development team. I cannot tell if that might be worth it - How do other properties feel about this? We don’t really see an urgent need here ..

Regards,

JP.

OTA commissions are never a concern in my history as that process is handled on the OTA side, they have a process to remit and track commissions within their own ecosystems. This is not what I mean by a commissionable rate. 

Typically in PMS systems you see a rate plan being able to be flagged as commissionable. For example, BAR is commissionable when booked by a travel agent. The same travel agent could be booking net, non commissionable rates like corporate negotiated rates. 

Usually there is a way to look at a travel agent (or company), see what reservations they have booked, and a commission amount due to them based off what rates are actually commissionable. Then you can check off what has been paid.

The concept of a travel agent being set as commissionable, and not having the ability to mark a rate plan as commissionable/not is absolutely baffling to me.

The workaround I see is this: 

• Keep my own record outside of Mews of what rate plans are commissionable.
• Run a reservation report for each individual commissionable rate plan, grouped by Travel Agent.
• Keep my own record outside of Mews of what travel agent booked what rate, and what commission is due to them.
• Search for the company profile of the travel agency for any remittance details. Because for some reason, this lives in a company profile instead of a travel agency.
  • Which is another issue, because a travel agency is completely separate from a company, and there is no way to track on a single reservation a company, a travel agency, and the remittance details associated with that travel agency. 
• Keep my own record outside of Mews of what has been paid. 

Or, wait until commissions are past due and an agency sends an invoice. 

My experience with Mews so far has me thinking that it has been developed by people who have never worked in operations at a traditional hotel. 

OK, I see what you mean … having the same travel agents use different modes of operation in parallel makes it complicated. I guess MEWS was not designed with a traditional travel agent business in mind where travel agents book directly with the hotel 🤷.

So maybe get your travel agents / tour operates to consolidate on one business model? Net rate OR comissionable … that’s what we have asked the travel agents that book directly with us - that also makes it ewasier for them - then they know like, OK, “this hotel is always on a net rate plan, wheras this other hotel requires us to invoice commission”...

On the other hand, when you have travel agents book via GDS you could mark the individual rates as commissionable in the GDS distribution system and track it there or through your channel manager.

I think a good channel manager might give you the flexibility and accountability you need ?

Just my 2 cents… :-)

Regards,

JP.