Lets talk about sharer reservations 💬

Hello @jones.eth!

thank you for starting this topic! 🌟

I am tagging some of our active community members, and try to kick start the discussion! 💡

@Mick @mauritsbots @j.spiess @smehia @Sanne @barb00sa @Leif Penning @lena.luettgau interested in your input! 

Hello @jones.eth 

Well same problem here as it is not possible to set the person number per night (only per reservation)

What you can also do is split the reservation when the number of persons and therefore the rate is supposed to change.

https://help.mews.com/s/article/split-a-reservation?language=en_US

Remarks:

=> You can only split from an already checked-in reservation.

=> It will create a second reservation and a third, and a fourth and so on inside the same group and you will have to check-out the first to be able to check-in the second (problem will be the same as you described)

=> It will also split the billing of the reservation so some moves might be mandatory to have a correct final bill

NB: We also use this technique to make room moves

Maybe Mews @MarketaOupi  is developping something that we are not aware of to fix this problem 😉🤞

Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful

Have a nice day

See ya around

Stephane

@smehia we do the splitting too but as far as i’m aware of there is no real difference than creating multiple reservations and group them aside from some calculations.

We’ve stumbled over the fact that splitting is only available for checked in reservations wich i really don’t know why that is the case 🧐. @MarketaOupi would be great to know if there is any reason why thats not available at any time.

If it would be available always it would at least be simpler to create those reservation parts i’ve mentioned 🙈.

@jones.eth Agree 100%

Hello!

The splitting works for us most of the time, but we use it mostly in case of room moves. However, a real room move feature would be nice ;-)

Regarding „Sharing“: for me a sharer reservation is when two or more people stay in the same room for the same period, but would like to share their bill, so that each guest can get a separate invoice, sharing the cost equally or with a fixed absolute or percentage split. For this there is no function I am aware of… right?

regards,

jp.

I’ve just created a topic about bill splitting a few days ago 😄.

Seems like we have different definitions what a sharer is. That is exactly why i just defined that because i already thought that this term may be a bit unclear 😉.

How do you handle situations where persons in the same room have different arrival/departure dates?

hi @jones.eth you have made an excellent point, and a great explainer. I agree that this is something MEWS could be developing, however i also believe that @j.spiess his ‘split bill’ idea is a more prioritized option, as that would already made the sharer “problem” resolved to a certain extent?

We are also splitting rerservations and hasseling.. but in terms of numbers, perhaps it happens once a month to 1 reservation.. so it is not pressing for now. the option to split is more requested for those stays were the boss pays for dinner, but not for alcoholic drinks etc. 

Hey @mauritsbots i think the “sharer” terminology is the problem here 😌.

I agree that bill splitting is the most important missing feature in mews and i already made a post about that but thats not what i’ve meant above. Maybe “variable room occupancy” describes it better i don’t know … 😅

Hi All, below is a proposal or better said a thought how it could possibly be done 

To address the issue you described with handling sharer reservations in Mews, let's explore potential solutions for both the administrative and guest experience problems. 

### Administrative Solution
1. **Unified Reservation System**: Implement a system in Mews where a reservation can have multiple arrival and departure dates for different guests within the same room. This will eliminate the need to create separate reservations for each guest.

2. **Price Rules and Logic**: Modify the price calculation logic to accommodate multiple arrivals and departures within a single reservation. This will ensure that the price rules are applied correctly without the need for manual adjustments.

3. **Room & Rate Adjustments**: Allow partial room changes and rate adjustments within a single reservation. This applies to situations where guests might change rooms during their stay or where group rates might apply differently to different parts of their stay.

### Guest Communication Solution
1. **Consolidated Communication**: Design a communication system that consolidates the check-in, check-out, and other notifications into a single, coherent message that reflects the entire stay, including different arrival and departure dates for sharers.

2. **Single View in Guest Portal**: Ensure the guest portal provides a unified view of the entire reservation, showing all sharers and their respective arrival and departure dates. This avoids confusion caused by multiple individual reservations.

### Proposed Features in Mews
1. **Sharer Management Interface**: Develop an intuitive interface for managing sharer reservations, allowing easy adjustments to individual arrival/departure dates without splitting the reservation.

2. **Automated Messaging**: Implement logic to automatically generate personalized messages that cater to the complexities of sharer reservations, reducing the need for manual intervention.

3. **Feedback Loop**: Set up a system where administrators can easily provide feedback to Mews regarding issues they face, making it easier for Mews to make necessary adjustments. ( already operationele) 

Gr Robin 

Hello @barb00sa !

wow, that sounds very thoughtful and complex…

in our previous PMS (Oracle) it was „simply“ solved by having the reservation as a container for the daily data elements. So a reservation has its common data like source, arrival, departure, … and consists of a daily record for all elements that could potentially vary over the days, like price, room, roomtype, number of persons, packages, services, rate type,…

so, to get this feature developers first have to make a concept of what elements may change over a stay, and which need to remain the same… I would suggest to have a look at other PMS, like Suite8 by Oracle that had this solved very nicely… ;-) or make a survey what hotels potentially need to have variable over the days of a single reservation. To get this right is definitely no small feat, but would add value to the product, especially in comparison with other more mature PMS.

regard,

jP.

@barb00sa thats a very nice summary what need to be tackled for this problem and shows how massive the scope of that gonna be. Thank you for that! 💪

I think from an technical standpoint the per day handling would be the most challenging for Mews but probably the most versatile for the users. Very intriguing is the consolidated communication 🙂.

One solution may be to allow connecting reservations. With that all connected reservations would be grouped, bundled in communication, highlighted in some way and checked out and in automatically. For a reservation to connect the departure of one have to be the same than the arrival of the other (probably) 🤔.

On top of that you could allow reservation splitting anytime and add an checkbox “connect reservations”. To make it easier to create these reservation parts.

Hi all,

I support the explanation of j.spiess.
To do this, Mews would have to rework the reservation concept, but this makes it very easy to do all the necessary changes per day, whether rate, price code, room number, source, whatever. 
And I think following the old PMS is a logical solution. You don't always have to invent the wheel again if it is already spinning. Sometimes it seem, Mews likes to be different, for the sake of being different. That is not necessary.

But that doesn't cover the sharer issue if there are two guests who need individual bills. For this we either need splitting, or better, we should be able to put two reservations within a group in the same room, with different routing to he invoices.

And to be sure I don't want to say that splitting isn't necessarily important and should be possible as soon as possible. ;-)

Best wishes

Leif

Well, we don’t see this very often, but usually it’s when an additional guest joins 1 or 2 days later than the main guests… in that case we created a product „additional guest“ that we add to the reservation manually for the days the guests stays. That takes care of the pricing, but obviously not the occupancy statistics… :-(

regards,

JP.

@j.spiess no “Kurtaxe” in austria 😃? Occupancy seems to be a big factor for that 🤔 …

Yeah, right, but not in Vienna - city tax is based on the rate only with a certain factor/percentage applicable. Occupancy doesn’t matter, if rate is correct.

also, manually adding a city tax / kurtaxe would be possible, if necessary - but I agree, if that happens more than a handful of times it’s not feasible to handle it manually…

regards,

JP.

Hello everyone! 

Thank you for this interesting conversation, I have started an internal conversation around this topic, but this is a topic spreading to different teams, so it takes a bit of time get all the info. 

Thank you and we´ll come back to you! 

Hi all! I’m a bit late to the party, but better late…. ;-) 

Great to see that this topic is raised here, it is something our hotels are struggling with everyday; both splitting bills between sharers but also having reservations with various rates and numbers of persons per day. This happens on a daily basis. For now, we have the internal rule that we always book the maximum number of persons and cancel per-persoin items when needed. The online guest journey is totally disrupted with a stay like this; having various splitted reservations while it is actually 1 stay. 

During weekdays, more than half of our business are conference groups; attendees that book a shoulder night now all have separate reservations, same goes for bringing along a partner that pays for his/her own breakfast, city tax etc. They way @jones.eth is thinking could already be a big step ahead while developing a more complete solution for this. Curious to see where this will lead! 

Hello everyone! 

I am bringing some summary from the conversations we had internally: 

• Easier Sharer Reservations: Automating handling of reservations where guests have different arrival/departure dates to avoid splitting them - it is not our immediate roadmap until end of the year, but we do indeed to recognize it as a problem that needs to be solved
• Better Communication: Stop sending multiple check-in/check-out emails to guests - goes hand in hand with the above point - now properties are indeed splitting reservations (due to different number of Pax etc.) - so the system is sending multiple mails correctly. Once the above point is solved, this one follows
• Simplify Room Changes: Make it easier to manage room changes without creating multiple - Yes actively discussing this topic - it needs rate mixing which is rather complicated, so will still take some time.

I just wanted to add that our product team is aware of this thread and all the suggestions and ideas that you shared, which help us a lot to figure out the next steps! Thank you! 

@MarketaOupi thats great to hear 🙌. Maybe as quality of life improvement the production team could enable the “reservation split”-functionality for all reservations or is there any reason that this is only available for cehcked in in reservations 😊?

That would ease handling with such reservations and it seems not to complicated to change 😉.

Hello @jones.eth - the problem is that such reservations would get two confirmation numbers, essentially making online-check-in and kiosk apps unusable. 😥

@MarketaOupi yeah … i think it doesn't matter whether this happens with the split functionality or we create the reservations separately... there have to be two reservations, since this is the only way mews can handle such situations 😄.

That this is not good is the whole reason of my post here 😉. There is no reason to block that, the problem with multiple reservations gonna exists anyway … it just makes it harder for us.