Siteminder - weekly and monthly discounts

[Lars66]

I was successful to do a "limited SYNC" of three hotel ROOMS and one APARTMENT with our Siteminder - LittleHotelier to Airbnb. 

Syncing the hotel rooms has worked perfectly.  However, I found a potential problem with apartment listings.

I had been using the weekly discount and monthly discount on Airbnb for the apartment before doing the sync. However, I could not find a way to offer a discount for extended stays for the apartment anymore after I did the sync.

Now that Airbnb has added even more options of applying discounts, I wanted to offer a discount for 14 nights and a discount 28 nights.

Today I spoke to LittleHotelier:  The only way to offer the week, two week, or month discount, is to do it manually in Airbnb and not use Siteminder - LittleHotelier as a channel manager.

I also discovered I COULD NOT UNMAP the channel manager if there are any EXISTING Airbnb RESERVATIONS.   To offer weekly or monthly discounts on Airbnb again, I had to stop selling on Airbnb and wait until there are no more reservations before I could unmap the channel manager.

Thoughts?

[Jayesh0]

Hi @Lars66

The only other way around this is to set up a new listing with a minimum night stay of 14 nights and another of 28 nights.  Make sure you fill out the maximum too so that they show correctly in the searches.  I did this for one night stays putting in a min stay 1 night and a max stay 1 night so that we could have one night pricing.

If you are able to add inventory through siteminder and 1 listing represents multiple rooms it might be worth it.  Each of our apartments is very different so they have a listing each and there is only one so I do not know if you can add rooms via the channel manager - seems you should be able to.

When I was first mapping there was a glitch and it resulted in duplicating the listing and they did not merge.  It wound up a tangled mess and I mapped and unmapped rooms with future bookings myself with no issue and no warning messages.  Do you have existing bookings that were made after you mapped?  That could be why... 

I would probably leave it alone and set up the other room types under the one rate plan and set the deviation where you want it to be.  It's so nice not to have to be constantly updating the calendars it would be worth the extra work to me!

Hope that helps, Lisa

[Lars66]

Lisa,

Thank you for your help.  Your suggestions were great.  My appologies for not replying.  I flagged it to respond and then became bogged down with other duites and forgot.  After reviewing options, I decided to just continue with the basic price and give counter offer on inquiries about longer stays.  That seems to be more personal and perhaps better than being perfectly automated.

Since our hotel rooms and apartment were already on Airbnb, we did the "limited" sync on each listing.  I considered unmapping only the apartment from LittleHotelier and returning to updating Airbnb manually in order to handle longer stay discount offers.   If I understood correctly: once Airbnb is synced with LittleHotelier, if a person decides to unmap from LittleHotelier, the entire airbnb listing is deleted on Airbnb.   The Airbnb listing would have to be built from scratch again, losing the reviews and badges.  Since I decided against unmapping, it was not a problem for me.  Yet, I hope I missunderstood or that changes in the future.   With any new system there are always little glitches.  I am thrilled with being able to sync LittleHotelier and Airbnb. 

Lisa, Thank you again,

Lars

[Jayesh0]

Hi @Lars66,

I came to vote on the Q & A and thought I would check in for any Siteminder updates.  I didn’t get any notice of a reply so it is pure chance that I saw your message.  Serendipity I suppose.  I  have been meaning to add an update about multi mapping.  Just found out this week that the system is not compatible for this from a support team message:

"I have consulted our product team and they have advised that although we do allow multi-mapping with Airbnb, the connection is meant to do a one-to-one mapping. Inconsistent syncing or overbooking in some circumstances will occur in multi-mapping with Airbnb.”

"We strongly recommend you to have one room type mapping with one listing because the connection with Airbnb is different from the connection with other channels. We will send the same number of inventory to each listing while they are theoretically the same room type. The conflict here will cause issues that might affect the listings to appear to be abnormal every now and then.”

In a nutshell, you need one room type to one listing so you would have to create whole new room types for the different rates (1 night, 7 night, 14 nights) to not have the calendar go wonky.  Lucky thing you did not take my advice!  Shame you can’t show the true price but those that come will surely appreciate your discount.  If you do decide to connect other rates in future just remember you need to set up new room types for each one and not use an existing one with a deviation.  

You will not be able to un-map while you have any existing reservations in place for future stays.  I un-mapped and re-mapped a dozen times when I was trying to set up the connection without the listing disappearing.  This should not be an issue.  You can’t lose your profile with the reviews as it is also the one you would use as a guest.  It is a completely different thing than the listings but even the listings should not disappear - the same as the extranet on BDC or Expedia would not disappear with disconnection.

I am pretty chuffed with being able to sync with Airbnb too.  So far, for a new venture, I would have to say it is exceeding expectations.  Thanks for the reply Lars.  I do not get any notice if you send a message so please forgive me too if you ever send a reply and it takes a while to respond!!  I try to check in once a month if I can but I might look for a siteminder site and see if it is more active with tips for us multi listing hosts.  Lisa

[Lars66]

Lisa,

You are simply amazing with your detailed answer!  I really appreciated it.   Yes,  we love Siteminder and I think with the new venture of Siteminder working with Airbnb, they are resolving the small gitches quickly.   I may consider experimenting with making an additional room type listing as a month stay with the extra discount and see what happens with the calendar.  It is the best way to learn.

I am glad to hear you mapped and unmapped without loosing the Airbnb listing.   I perhaps misunderstood the warning from LittleHotelier about unmapping and losing the Airbnb listing; I was then afraid to experiment.  Now if I experiment, I will know that if I unmap a thirty day promotional price  lisiting, the other should stay.    I assume since they would be two separate listings, they would have separate calendar listings.  ??  I will see how it all fits together as soon as I experiment. 

Lisa, thank you again for your attention and kindness.

Lars