A rate should be open on a given day or days, these decisions are made daily by the front office managers. A rate strategy determines whether or not a rate should be open on a given day or days and automates and simplifies this procedure. By keeping track of the number of bookings made for a particular room type, rate code and rate category during a given period of time, OPERA can change the status of the room type, rate code or category with the parameters correctly set. As the demand for rooms increases or decreases, there should be rate strategies for both conditions; for example, if occupancy reaches a certain level and if it drops below a certain level.
A property should either use the Rate Strategy functionality to control the property availability or use the Rate Availability functionality. The two functions should not be used in conjunction with one another because the hierarchy of the availability check places rate strategies above restrictions set in Rate Availability. This means that a Rate Strategy will always override a restriction set in Rate Availability.
Examples
Set a basic rate strategy where the restriction dates fall within the control dates. On July 4 a property is expecting to sell out. The property wants to make sure that if overall occupancy reaches 65%, all rate codes in the discount rate category should be automatically closed. The strategy will then be executed when the occupancy for July 4 reaches 65%. OPERA does not show any discounted rates in the Look To Book grid. As the property would have also set a counter condition, when occupancy falls below 65% the discount rate category would be reopened automatically.
Set a rate strategy for sell limits for an employee discount rate. The property could set a rate strategy for an entire year that on any given date, only 5 employee discount rates may be given. They would set When Times Sold Reaches 5 and Close the employee discount rate, and set a counter condition of When Times Sold is Less than 5 and Open the employee discount rate.