OTA Promotions Guide

An OTA promotion lives on the portal, not inside Vezpa: once published, the listing shows it to the guest with the prominence and the badges that portal gives to offers. From this screen you create it and switch it off without entering the extranet of Booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO, Expedia or Agoda.

You get here from the Rates tab, entry «Promotions». From the same page, in the bar, you also reach «Market» (only once a download for your property has succeeded), «RMS» (when your plan includes it) and «Statistics».

The two tabs

• «Suggestions» — what Vezpa proposes to you: first the «To check» cards, then the Revenue Management proposals, both ordered by nearest date.
• «Active» — every promotion you have created, each with its own status. It is not the list of the ones actually running on the portal: drafts and failed ones are in there too.

The «New promotion» button only appears while you are on the «Active» tab.

The statuses of a promotion

Every row carries a coloured badge with its status:

Next to the status there is the channel name and, on promotions born from a Revenue Management proposal, a small star.

The nights nobody can book

At the top of the «Suggestions» tab, under the «To check» heading, there are the amber cards. They do not flag just any free night: they flag a gap that is too short — free nights fewer than that room type's minimum stay, closed on the right by a day already taken. Nobody can book them, and a discount would change nothing.

The button on the card is «Reduce minimum stay»: it brings the minimum nights of that room type down to the length of the gap, on the gap's dates only, and republishes to the portals. It asks for confirmation first, with the dates and the number of nights. Once done, the notice disappears by itself.

The action appears only when Vezpa knows the exact dates of the gap: without them there is nothing to write.

The Revenue Management proposals

Below the notices come the proposals themselves: Vezpa looks at how your bookings are going and at the market data for your area, and proposes a ready-made promotion with type, discount, channel and period. The type follows how far away the arrival is: close to the date it proposes a last minute, far away an early booker, in between a plain discount.

Creating a promotion by hand

«New promotion» opens a form with, in order:

1. the stay period, adjusted with «Change Dates»;
2. the «Promotion name», which is there for you to find it again;
3. the «Channel»: the list holds only the channels you have already connected;
4. the «Type», filtered by the chosen channel: switch channel and a type that channel does not know is dropped;
5. the «Room types to discount», with a different percentage for each;
6. the «Publish now» switch, and finally «Create».

Room types you leave out stay at full price. If you pick more than one, Vezpa creates one promotion per room type: that is how they can carry different discounts.

The early booker type also asks for the «Days in advance» and, if you want, a «Bookable from» / «Bookable until» window: those are limits on when the guest books, not on the nights of the stay.

The four types, and what changes

The available types depend on the channel: not every portal offers all of them, and the form lists only the ones the chosen channel accepts.

Publishing, switching off, deleting

With «Publish now» on, the promotion goes out to the channel as soon as you create it. The transmission goes through the channel manager, so it can take a few minutes before the offer shows up on the portal.

With «Publish now» off the promotion is born «Draft», and what sends it to the channel is the switch on its row in the list: turn it on and Vezpa creates it on the portal. It may not get there, and the status says so: if the creation fails the row turns «Error», with the reason written underneath. The type, on the other hand, is not an obstacle: the creation form only offers you the types that channel accepts, so a draft born here always carries a valid one.

Switching off or deleting a live promotion can switch another one on. If on the same dates, for the same channel and the same room type, you have another promotion sitting idle — a draft, or one you had switched off — Vezpa publishes that one in place of the one you are removing, picking the candidate with the highest discount. It is there so a date you had decided to discount is not left uncovered, but the result can be a bigger discount than the one you wanted to remove. The moment it happens the app tells you, with an orange notice at the foot of the screen naming the promotion that took over, its percentage and the channel. If you want no promotion at all on those dates, switch off or delete them all.

Deleting is not local only: Vezpa also removes the promotion from the channel. If the channel does not answer, the promotion is not deleted from Vezpa and you are told why — better one extra row in the list than a discount left running on the portal where you can no longer see it.

When publishing fails

The promotion stays in the list with the «Error» status and the reason written under it, exactly as the portal reported it. While it is in that state, it is not on the portal. Two buttons appear under the row:

• «Retry» — sends the same promotion to the channel again. If it fails once more, it shows you the updated reason.
• «Change Dates» — fixes the stay period, which is the most frequent cause of a refusal.

On rows in error there is no switch: there is nothing to turn off, because it never went out. The two buttons, the other way round, are there only in error: on a draft or on a switched-off promotion you will not find them, and what stands in their place is the switch.

Checking on the portal

The channel has the last word. After publishing it is worth opening its extranet — the Booking.com admin area, say — and checking that the offer is live with the discount and the dates you expect. Vezpa tells you what it sent and what the channel answered; how the portal then displays it is the portal's choice.

Overlapping periods

If the period you are creating touches, even partly, a promotion already live on the same channel, Vezpa tells you with a notice carrying that one's percentage and dates. It switches nothing off: both stay active, and on the channel the two discounts add up. Turning the old one off before publishing the new one is your call, and it is a pricing decision the software does not take for you. Be careful though: switching the old one off can publish, on its own, a third promotion sitting idle on the same dates, if you have one — see “Publishing, switching off, deleting” above. If it happens, the orange notice tells you, with the name, the percentage and the channel of the promotion that took over.

Mobile promotions have a fixed range

For the Mobile Rate type the discount must sit between 10% and 80%: below or above, the portal refuses it. For the other types the discount must be greater than zero and lower than a hundred.

The discounts the automatic engine publishes on its own

If the automatic engine in the RMS is on and you have configured the close-to-date phases for that season, the last-minute discount becomes a real promotion without passing through here. The percentage is the one you wrote in the phase, in full: the RMS percentage ceiling — «May lower at most» — does not apply when a phase is what decides that day, because you wrote that number yourself and the signals did not work it out. What still stops it is the season's «Minimum», the price below which you said not to sell, and that is never stepped over. And on a date that is filling up on its own the phase does not act at all: no promotion goes out. Those offers are named after the distance from arrival, and the guest reads those names on the portal in English, untranslated: Last Minute within three days of arrival, Promo from four to thirty, Early Booking beyond thirty. Look for them in the extranet under those names.

Demo properties

On demonstration accounts creating, publishing and switching on real promotions is blocked: the screen opens and can be explored, but nothing goes out to a portal. A message at the bottom of the screen tells you.

If the suggestions tab is empty

There is nothing to propose when there are no unsellable gaps and the booking picture suggests no discount. On a new property, or without market data for the area, that is the normal state.

Who can create a promotion

You reach this screen from the Rates bar, so it is opened by the roles that have that tab: Manager, Assistant and Revenue Manager. On the server side reading the list is open to any signed-in account, while creating, switching off, retrying and deleting need the permission to write rates: without it the request is refused, even to somebody arriving by another route.

• I cannot find «New promotion». It only appears on the «Active» tab: switch tab and the button comes back.
• I created the promotion but it is not on the portal. Look at the status on the row. If it reads «Active», wait a few minutes: the channel does not show it immediately. If it reads «Error», the reason is written underneath, together with the two buttons to retry or fix the dates. If it reads «Draft» it never went out: you created it with «Publish now» switched off, and what sends it is the switch on the row. If it reads «Not supported», that channel does not offer that type: delete it and create it again with a type that channel accepts, or create it on another channel.
• The «Active» list contains promotions that are off. That is deliberate: the tab lists everything you created, and each row carries its status.
• The type I want is not in the list. The available types depend on the chosen channel. Switch channel and the list changes.
• The Mobile discount is not accepted. For that type it must sit between 10% and 80%.
• I set a discount and the portal price did not drop by that much. A promotion is a condition on the channel: it applies to whoever falls inside its window — booking early, booking from a phone, booking close to the date. Anyone outside it sees the full price.
• I switched the promotion off and discounted bookings keep arriving. Switching off only stops new bookings. The ones already taken keep the discount that was applied.
• I tapped the bin and the promotion is still there. The channel did not confirm the removal: Vezpa does not delete it until it is gone there too, and it tells you which channel did not answer. Try again later.
• I have a free night between two bookings and nobody buys it. Look at the «To check» cards: if the gap is shorter than the minimum stay, it is not a price problem, and «Reduce minimum stay» is what solves it.
• I see two promotions on the same dates. Vezpa switches neither off when they overlap: on the channel the discounts add up. Turn off the one you do not want: if you had a third one sitting idle on those dates, switching a live promotion off makes Vezpa publish that one, with the highest discount among the candidates — and it tells you on its own, with an orange notice carrying that one's name, percentage and channel.
• I found an offer in the extranet that I did not create. If it is called Last Minute, Promo or Early Booking, the RMS automatic engine published it.
• I am on a demonstration account and cannot publish. That is expected: on demo properties real promotions are blocked.