Hello Community!

I’m curious to hear how you manage product rules in Mews, especially when changes are needed.

Have you experienced similar challenges to the ones I’ve described below? For instance, when updating
or replacing products in a rule, do you also find that the changes are automatically applied to existing future reservations - sometimes affecting pricing unintentionally?

If so, how are you handling it? Do you have any best practices or workarounds that help minimize manual work or reduce the risk of errors?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences and any solutions you’ve found helpful!

*Please consider upvoting my idea in the feedback portal
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/918232-property-operations-pms/suggestions/50046567-start-end-date-functionality-in-product-rules

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We work extensively with product rules in Mews and have encountered a recurring challenge: the inability to define a start and end date for product rules. This limitation creates significant complications, particularly when we need to add or replace products in existing rules.
 

The Issue:

When a product is added to an existing product rule, it is automatically applied to all future reservations, including those that were created before the change but have not yet been checked in. This means that even though a reservation was made under the old rule, the updated product is applied at check-in, changing the final price.

This behavior is especially problematic at some of our hotels where we offer premium packages that include exclusive products. If the concept or its included products change, we want the updated product rule to apply only to new reservations - either those made after the update or after a specific effective date. Existing bookings should remain governed by the rules that were in place at the time of booking.
 

Current Workaround:

To preserve the original pricing for existing bookings, we must manually:

• Open each affected reservation,

• Temporarily change the rate plan,

• Revert it back to the original rate.

This forces the system to reapply the updated product rule, allowing us to then manually remove any unintended additional products so that the price matches what the guest originally agreed to.

This process is time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to errors - especially for large hotels or during busy booking periods.
 

Suggested Improvement:

Introducing start and end date fields for product rules would provide much-needed control and flexibility. Specifically, it would allow us to:

• Define the active period for each product rule,

• Preserve backward compatibility with existing bookings,

• Minimize manual intervention and potential for errors,

• Ensure price consistency and maintain guest trust.