1. Cloudbeds
  2. PIE - Price Intelligence Engine
  3. PIE Rate Management

Create, edit or delete occupancy-based rules/alerts in PIE

Juss Reyes
Updated

Occupancy-Based rules are triggered by the changes in your occupancy and affect your daily rates. PIE also allows to set a rule to suggest those price changes, which will need to manually accepted, or that will automatically change your prices based on the parameters set in the rule.

This article explains how to create, edit or delete an Occupancy-Based Rule or Alert on PIE.

To learn more about Rules and Alerts, see: PIE - Rules and Alerts

Things to note

  • When an occupancy rule is created the change can be applied to the dates that already meet the conditions specified in the rule (i.e if a rule is set to increase the price by $10 when occupancy is >30%, the user can select whether he wants all dates that are already above 30% to increase or not)
         
  • If the occupancy rule is triggered (the room rate is changed), then if the occupancy drops back to unsatisfying condition. The price will revert back to the original amount (reverting rules always happens in the opposite order from how they were applied, according to the current occupancy state)
    • If the rule is set to be applied automatically - it will be reverted automatically
    • If the rule is set to be applied manually - the system will suggest to revert it back manually   
  • If a rate change has been applied by a rule and the user wants to revert it back (occupancy still satisfies the rule condition), there is no setting to revert the rate back to the original value. Update the rate manually via the Rate manager in PIE or in the Cloudbeds calendar/Availability Matrix (check the original rate in the Activity log)  
                               
  • Any time your occupancy changes, this type of rule can be triggered. The following actions may trigger an occupancy rule: reservation created/modified/canceled/deleted; accommodation type added/removed; quantity of rooms modified; rooms linked/unlinked, or changed via shared inventory
  • The occupancy rate percentage is calculated considering the number of rooms occupied and the total number of rooms in the property inventory; minus the blocked rooms and the rooms that are currently out of service. The formula to calculate this percentage is:

    Hotel's Occupancy Percentage = Number of Rooms Occupied / (Total Number of Rooms - Blocked room - Total Out of Service ) *100
  • The calendar occupancy also considers calendar blocks (blocked dates, out of service, and courtesy holds) 

Occupancy-based rules/alerts

Create an occupancy-based rule
Step 1 - Set your price limits
  • Before you create a rule, you must set your lowest and highest price limits on Rules and Alerts page.
  • Setting min/max limits prevents the system from recommending/applying prices outside of the selected parameters.
  • You will not be able to create an automated rules before these parameters are configured.
  1. Starting from the PIE section of your Main Menu, click on the Rules and Alerts page
  2. Click on Edit to set your Price Limits
  3. Edit your Master Price Limits. You can also add your price limits per accommodation type (optional)
  4. Click on Save
Step 2 - Create the new rule
  1. Scroll down in the same Rules and Alerts page
  2. Click on +Create new Rule/Alert
Step 3 - Add the rule/alert details
  1. Select Occupancy based Rule/Alert in the Type drop-down menu
  2. Set a rule name
  3. Select whether the rule should be applied:
    • Overall occupancy - the rule will be triggered when overall occupancy reaches a certain number - Rate changes will be applied to all accommodations
    • Individual room type occupancy - the rule will be triggered when the selected accommodation(s) individual occupancy reaches a certain number - Rate changes will be applied only to the selected accommodation(s)
    • Combined room type occupancy - the rule will be triggered when the selected accommodation(s) combined occupancy reaches a certain number - Rate changes will be applied only to the selected accommodation(s)
  4. Select the applicable Room Type(s)
Step 4 - Set up parameters
  1. Set up a condition for rate changes: whether to change the rate when occupancy is greater or less than a specific percentage
  2. Select whether to increase or decrease rates by percentage/fixed amount
  3. Select whether to apply the rule only to the specified number of days out. By checking this box, you can specify how far out this rule / alert should apply.

    If, for example, you are creating an occupancy based rule to trigger a rate increase when the occupancy is over 50%, you may want this rule to apply only for dates that are further than a week out, rather than increasing tomorrow's rate when only being at 50% occupancy. To do this, you can specify to only apply this rule from 7 days out.

In the example above, the rate of the selected rooms room will be increased by 10% once the occupancy is greater than 80%.

Step 5 - Enter a value for rounding (optional)

Skip this section if you do not want to round your rates.

Enter a value for rounding that will ensure that the resulting rates are consistent with your current pricing structure.

For example, entering 9 will result in your recommended/updated rates end with 9 (i.e. $89, $99, $109, etc.), entering 00 will result in the following pricing structure: 1100, 1200, 1300... etc. You will immediately see the example of your prices, once you enter the value in the Round to nearest field.

Step 6 - Schedule your rules/alerts
  1. Select whether you want to have the rule always active or running on a specific schedule
  2. If you selected Specific date range you will need to select start and end dates as well as days of the week when the rule will be active
  3. You may add several date ranges, if needed
Step 7 - Activation

Select whether you want to:

  1. Require manual confirmation of the rule (means that you will need to manually confirm each rate change on Rate Manager)
  2. Automatically apply rule (allow the system to make rate changes immediately when rule is triggered)
  3. Save your changes

By selecting the Automatically apply rule option you are giving the system permission to make automatic rate changes based on your parameters.

If there are dates with occupancy already meeting the rule conditions

If there are dates with occupancy which already meet the condition set in the rule, the system will offer the user to choose whether to apply the rule to these dates.

Example:

  • New rule created: Occupancy rule to increase the rate by 10% if occ > 50%. On 18 March the occupancy is 60%.
  • The user will now see a warning (see screenshot):  If user selects "Yes” - the price will increase for that date. If the user selects “No” - the price will remain the same for all dates and will only increase in the future when the occupancy reaches the required threshold of 50%.

It is not possible to include accommodation types that are linked together in the Rules and Alerts. The system will ask you to change the selection, and review your Shared Inventory settings.

Edit an occupancy-based rule
Step 1 - Access the Rules and Alerts page

To make changes to a previously created occupancy rule, follow these steps:

  1. Access Rules and Alerts page
  2. Find the desired rule and click on the Edit option
Step 2 - Apply the changes

This will open the modal with the Rule details:

  1. Make necessary changes in the corresponding sections
  2. Click Save
Delete an occupancy-based rule/alert
  1. Access Rules and Alerts page
  2. Find the desired rule, and click on Delete (x icon) on the right side
  3. The system will ask to confirm the removal. Click Delete to proceed, or Cancel to go back to the Rules and Alerts page

Frequently asked questions

How to change the mode from manual to auto for an existing occupancy-based rule?

If you have an existing manual rule that you would like to change to automatic, follow these steps:

  1. Access Rules and Alerts page
  2. Find the desired rule and click on Edit, on the right side, as described in Editing an occupancy based rule section. This will open the modal with the Rule details.
  3. Scroll down to the Activation section and select Automatically apply rule
  4. Click Save

If there are any current pending price recommendations that were previously generated by this rule, you will see the following popup notification. To apply those recommendations, click Apply. Otherwise, click Remove. This will delete all existing pending suggestions.

What happens once the occupancy-based rule is triggered?

Once an Automated Rule is triggered:

  • The system will update the prices for you, based on the parameters to specified in the rule settings (including rounding, and min/max price limits).
  • You are allowed to create any combination of occupancy rules.

For example:

  • You are able to create an occupancy rule to Raise rate by $ 15.00 when occupancy is greater than 30.00 %, that would be applied to all dates. 

And an occupancy rule to: Lower rate by $ 15.00 when occupancy is less than 40.00 % , that can be applied within 5 days out. 

  • Rules are triggered according to the direction of occupancy
  • If there’s more than 1 rule to be triggered at the same time, then decreasing rules go first.

Same applies to the process of reverting an occupancy rule:

  • Rules are reverted according to the direction of occupancy
  • If there’s more than 1 rule to be reverted at the same time, then they’re reverted according to the order of their trigger

Once a manual rule is triggered:

  1. On the Rate Manager calendar view, you  will see a yellow notification with the suggested price change.
  2. Approve (green button) or deny (red button) the suggestion, based on your preferences/pricing strategy
  1. Click on cell above the alert to open Accommodation details window, where you may also apply or deny the rule or make additional modifications to the prices or stay restrictions.
  • Once a rule is applied, the price can't be reverted back in one click. Manually update the price from the Rate Manager/Calendar/Availability Matrix to the desired value.
  • If the occupancy rule is triggered (the room rate is changed), then if the occupancy drops back to unsatisfying condition, the price will revert back to the original amount (reverting rules always happens in the opposite order from how they were applied, according to the current occupancy state)
    • If the rule is set to be applied automatically > it will be reverted automatically
    • If the rule is set to be applied manually > the system will suggest to revert it back manually            
  1. You may also filter out Occupancy-Based rules triggered/applied during a specific date range in the Rate Manager list view, and accept or deny it accordingly.

Use Bulk Action to approve or deny several rules at once.

How does the system calculate the price if there are several rules created for one room type?

The occupancy based rule is working on accumulative basis. That means that the rate will be increased/decreased based on the current room rate for the current date

Example:

  • 2 rules are created for today: to increase the rate by 5.00 if the occupancy is greater than 60%; to increase the rate by 10.00 when the occupancy is greater than 80%
  • Base rate is 100.00 for today

Case 1 (if the rules are approved automatically): Occupancy reaches 61% - the system will increase the rate to 105.00 (current rate 100.00 + 5.00). Then the occupancy reaches 81% - the system will increase the rate to 115.00 (current rate 105.00 + 10.00)

Case 2 (if the rules are approved manually): Occupancy reaches 61% - the system triggers the rule and suggests to approve the new price - 105.00 (current rate 100.00 + 5.00). User denies this rule or ignores it. The room rate remains 100.00. Then the occupancy reaches 81%. The system triggers new rule and suggests to increase the price to 110.00 (current rate 100.00 + 10.00)

User can approve only 1 rule for one room type and one date, then save it to approve/deny the next rule (within 1 room type and 1 date)

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