RMS Guide
The engine that sets prices for you, inside the fence you build: how it is switched on, where the fence goes, and how what it did is undone
Contents
What this screen is forA single engine, inside a fence you choose
The RMS (Revenue Management System) is the part of Vezpa that can set prices and minimum nights for you, day by day, inside boundaries that remain yours to set. It is not a price list: the price list is Rates. Here you configure how those prices are allowed to move on their own.
The page is split into two parts that do not blur into each other:
- at the top, the «Configuration» drawer (on a computer, a panel on the right that is already open) with the engine's three doors: the switch, the limits and the last-minute discount. They do not share one perimeter: the switch applies to all your properties at once, the limits too but season by season, and the last-minute discount to one property at a time;
- below, one card per room type with each season's prices, the minimum nights and the rest. When there is more than one room type, tabs at the top move between them.
Where it opens and who opens itThe path, the roles and the plan
The RMS opens from Configuration → «Channels & pricing» → «RMS». That is the way in for anyone opening it for the first time. There is also a shortcut: on the Promotions screen, the «RMS» icon in the bar, which only appears once the module is active. If the module is not active yet, in «Channels & pricing» the manager or the assistant finds the «Activate» button: if the plan includes the RMS it switches it on at once, without going through support.
| Role | What it can do here |
|---|---|
| Manager | opens and configures everything, and is the only one who can undo automatic decisions |
| Assistant | opens and configures everything; not the undo |
| Revenue Manager | opens and configures everything; not the undo. This is the role this page exists for: the revenue manager holds the permission to write rates, and therefore the whole RMS |
| The other roles | do not see the «Channels & pricing» group, so they never get here |
At the top right there is the «RMS Calendar» button, always visible (on a phone it is the calendar icon). The menu next to it leads to «Daily Variations», to «Refresh» and to the two guides.
If you run more than one property, above the tabs there is the property selector: prices and seasons belong to that one, and changing it changes everything you see below.
If the plan does not include the RMS, in «Channels & pricing» the manager finds, instead of «Activate», the «Add the price manager — … per month» button, with the monthly price in the subscription's currency. It only appears to those who pay the subscription by card directly to Vezpa: the price manager becomes a second item of the same subscription, on the same card. Today the card pays only the part of the current month; from the next renewal the amount is included in the monthly charge, and the RMS switches on straight away. Those who pay through the App Store or Google Play cannot add it: the price manager is included in the Pro plan, which you move to from the same store. If your agreement with Vezpa includes it, you find «Activate» directly, at no extra cost.
Whoever added the price manager removes it from the same card with «Remove the price manager»: from the next renewal the add-on is no longer charged, and the price manager stays active until the end of the month already paid. When the RMS is no longer included (add-on removed, move to a plan without RMS) only the engine stops, on the first night after the expiry. At the end of the trial there is one extra day, and a notification announces it. Seasons on dates stay saved for 7 days: if you switch it back on by then you find them again, afterwards they are removed from dates from that day on. Prices already in the calendar, past dates and season settings always stay. Together with the seasons the arrival and departure days are removed too: from that day on guests can arrive and leave on any day, and the removed closures go automatically to the booking website and the connected portals.
The automatic engineJust one, and it starts off
The automatic engine is the part of the RMS that decides on its own. There is only one: it looks at all the signals together and takes a single decision per day and per room type, with price and minimum nights in the same move and a written reason you can go back over.
Where every decision starts
The engine starts from the price already in the calendar for that day, not from the season's base price: the prices you set, also with «Keep current prices», remain the starting point. It always moves within the season's band, that is the base price plus or minus «May raise at most» and «May lower at most»; a price of yours already outside that band the engine can only bring closer, never push further away. The phases of «Last-minute discount» are instead calculated from the season's price, so two phases do not add up.
More than 30 days before arrival, a date still lightly booked is not discounted: it is normal for it to be empty. If instead it fills up early, the engine raises the price even months ahead.
After a booking the engine can raise the price, but it does not lower it: it only goes down when a phase of «Last-minute discount» is active, that is in the last days before arrival.
With the engine on, the «Discount %» field of the Last minute card does not appear: the discount is done by the phases of «Last-minute discount».
The switch
On a phone or tablet it sits at the top of the page, in the «Configuration» drawer, behind the «Automatic engine» pill. The drawer starts closed and opens with a tap on its row; even while closed, that row says whether the engine is «On» or «Off». On a computer the configuration sits in the panel on the right instead, already open. It applies to all your properties at once, not to one property or one room type.
- It starts off and stays off until you switch it on. With the engine off no price moves by itself: the ones you set are the ones that stand.
- Once on, it decides inside the fence you set for the season (The engine limits), and it cannot step outside them.
Premium for far-out dates
On the «Automatic engine» page, under the switch, there is «Premium for far-out dates». Dates far in the future sell slowly because they are far away, not because demand is missing: with the premium the engine raises their price a little instead of leaving it still. It starts off; when you switch it on it suggests 180 days and +10%. You choose «More than how many days before arrival» (60 to 730) and the «Increase» (0.5% to 50%), and confirm with «Save», the same button that saves the rest of the page.
The premium does not kick in all at once: over the 30 days before the threshold it grows gradually from zero. With the threshold at 180 days, for example, a date 150 days before arrival gets no premium, one at 165 gets about half and from 180 days on it gets all of it: there is no jump between two neighbouring dates. It never lowers a price and always stays within the season's limits, that is the raise cap and the maximum. You see it at work in the price cell, in «Why this price», as one of the lines of «How the price was set».
What it looks at
The engine does not go over everything every night: it revisits a date when the lead time left before arrival crosses a milestone. The milestones are 180, 90, 30, 10 and 5 days, plus the last-minute threshold: a rule has to come into force when it starts to apply, not at the following milestone. Five signals weigh on that date.
| Signal | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Occupancy | how full the property already is in that period. It is the most solid one: it counts real bookings, not forecasts |
| Pace | how fast it is filling up compared with recent weeks. It serves to raise while there is still something to sell, not after the fact |
| History | the same period in past years, read at the same lead time from arrival |
| Holidays | how much of that period is made of your country's holidays and long weekends |
| Market | your average price against the area's, from the data in the Market section. It is the only one that does not decide on its own: it can only reinforce a decision taken on your own data |
The engine limitsHow far it may move, season by season
The «Engine limits» are the boundaries the engine decides within. They sit in the «Configuration» drawer, next to the switch, and they are set per season: you can be cautious in high season and freer in low.
The strategy: the short way
You do not have to start from empty boxes. Pick a «Strategy» for the season and the two limits fill in with sensible values; then you adjust them if you want.
| Strategy | May raise at most | May lower at most |
|---|---|---|
| Occupancy | 10% | 20% |
| Balanced | 20% | 15% |
| Yield | 30% | 5% |
They are asymmetric on purpose: someone playing for Occupancy needs to be able to cut deep and raise little, someone playing for Yield exactly the opposite.
The two numbers, and how to read them
They are both positive, they are written without a sign, and each says how far the engine may move in its own direction. The field will not even let you type the minus.
| Limit | What it says |
|---|---|
| May raise at most | how far the engine may go above the starting price. A 20 means: do not raise beyond 20% |
| May lower at most | how far the engine may go below the starting price. A 5 means: do not cut beyond 5%. It is not a minus five, and the sign is never written |
When a booking is cancelled
A cancellation frees a room. Here you decide what the engine should make of it.
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Ignore | nothing happens: the date is not even re-evaluated |
| Review | the date goes back under evaluation and the signals decide. It does not mean lower: on an almost full date, discounting would give away money on a room that sells again anyway, so the price may equally stay where it is or go up |
| Lower | the price goes down, but never below the season's base price |
Minimum nights have a limit too
The engine can also move the minimum stay (Minimum nights), but only downwards. How far down is decided room type by room type, next to the season's minimum nights: it is the same decision, and it sits in the same box.
Gaps between bookings
When only a few nights are left free between two bookings, nobody can book them if the minimum stay is longer than the gap. With «Lower the minimum stay in gaps», in the season's «Gaps between bookings» box, the engine lowers the minimum stay on those nights only, just enough for an arrival to fit. The price never changes: a discount, if you want one, is your decision.
Choose how low it may go (1 means single nights can be sold too) and within how many days of arrival it applies, up to 90. The rule never raises the minimum stay, and in the record the line says how many nights the gap was. It starts off in every season.
Nights without a season stay out: the engine neither touches nor reports them. If a cancellation widens the gap or makes it disappear, or if you switch off or change the rule in the season, the lowered minimum stay goes back to what the engine would set anyway, usually the season's, and a line of its own in the record says so. If instead the gap closes because someone books, nothing changes: the night is sold. If you cancelled the gap action, the engine does not go back over it.
Minimum nightsThe starting value, and the floor it never goes below
Inside each season's card, under the prices, there is the «Minimum Stay» section. There are two fields, and they do different things.
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Minimum Stay | the season's minimum nights: how many nights a guest has to book for those dates to be sellable. It is the starting value |
| Minimum nights | the engine's floor: how far down it may shorten the minimum stay. It only appears if the engine governs that room type |
If the floor matches the starting value, on that room type the minimum nights do not move at all, and the screen says so under the fields instead of leaving you to work it out from a number that never changes. It is the state almost every room type starts in, and it is not a fault.
The floor applies to every room of the same room type: rooms of one type share the rules, and that row moves them all together.
The last-minute discountThe phases, and the curve you choose them on
Behind the «Last-minute discount» pill of the «Configuration» drawer is the part of the engine that comes down as arrival approaches. It is configured in phases, per season and per property: one row per threshold, with the lead-time days, the percentage and, if you want, a minimum stay that applies only during that phase.
- The nearest phase that has started wins: they do not add up. Two days before arrival, with phases at 3 and 1 day, the one at 3 applies. Phases go from 1 to 3 days, because last minute only applies in the last 3 days before arrival; a phase saved with a longer threshold is read as a phase at 3 days.
- The phase percentage does not go through the lowering limit. It is an instruction of yours, not a number from the signals: write 30% and the engine discounts 30%, even if in The engine limits you allowed 5% at most. It stops only at the season's «Minimum», which is never stepped over.
- Phases start empty. A switch turned on with no phase at all discounts nothing, and that is the state it is born in: the screen declares it with a notice instead of leaving it to be inferred.
- They belong to each single property, because each one fills up along its own curve. The selector at the top of the screen (on a computer, at the top of the panel on the left) says which one you are configuring.
- The phase's minimum stay is something you IMPOSE, and it applies even when it raises that period's minimum nights: «3 days out, discount 10% and ask for 2 nights» on a period that normally asks for 1 is your choice, not a mistake. Left empty, the minimum nights are not touched.
The booking curve
Next to the phases is the chart that says how many bookings had already come in at a given number of days before arrival, measured on your own past dates. Along the bottom, the lead-time days, from many on the left down to the day of arrival on the right; on the left, the percentage, from 0% at the bottom to 100% at the top. So the curve rises towards the right. It is not for choosing how many days before a phase starts, which is always 1 to 3 days: it says how much still sells as arrival gets closer, and if little still comes in during the last 3 days, that is where a phase helps.
The stages read are dense near arrival and sparse far from it (60, 45, 30, 21, 14, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2 and 1 days), and on the chart they are evenly spaced, not to scale: to scale, the seven stages of the last week — the ones near arrival, where the 3 days of the phases also fall — would end up squeezed into a corner.
If there are not enough past dates, the curve is not drawn and the screen says why. No invented verdict appears: a curve built on thin data would look as though you fill up entirely at the last minute, which is exactly the conclusion that would push you to discount too early.
How it goes out on the portals
Every night a phase discounts also goes out to the connected portals as a promotion, so it shows up among the offers. The name is decided by how far away arrival is, not by the phase threshold, and these are names the guest reads in English, untranslated:
- up to 3 days before arrival: Last Minute
Phases only apply in the last 3 days, so they always go out as Last Minute: in the portal's extranet, look for that name.
On the portals the discount is paid only once: the channel receives the full price and the promotion discounts it, so the guest pays the same discounted price you see in the calendar.
Prices and seasonsEach season's card, room type by room type
Under the configuration drawer (on a computer, to the left of the panel) there is one card per season of the open room type. There are five seasons: Low, Medium-Low, Medium, Medium-High and High. Which days of the year belong to which season is seen and changed from the «RMS Calendar», with the button at the top.
Suggesting seasons from past years
With the «Suggest seasons» icon at the top of the calendar, Vezpa suggests the season of every day in a period, next year by default. It works it out from what you sold, and at what price, on the same days in past years: the fullest and most expensive periods become High, the emptiest Low.
The calendar shows one month on a phone, also turned sideways, two on a tablet and three on a computer; when the space is not enough, the grid scrolls.
The suggestion only fills days without a season: the ones you have already assigned stay as they are. Tap a day to read where the suggestion comes from; before applying it, choose as in the calendar whether to set the season's prices or «Keep current prices».
On the same screen, «Suggested prices by season» proposes for each room type a price, a minimum and a maximum for each of the five seasons, in the property's currency. They start from the prices the room type already has in the calendar («From the prices in your calendar») or, if there are none, from its base price («From the room's base price»). They are only a suggestion and are not saved: you change the season cards yourself. As with the rest of the proposal, nothing is applied until you confirm, and days that already have a season stay as they are.
Assigning the season to days
In the calendar you tap the first day of the period and then the last one, and the season choice opens. While days are selected, a bar appears above the calendar (on a computer, in the panel on the right) with «Assign season», which reopens the choice if you closed it, and «Clear selection», which removes the selection.
In the same window, before the season, choose what to do with the prices:
- «Set the season's prices» — Prices and minimum stay are overwritten with the season's values.
- «Keep current prices» — Only the season changes: prices and minimum stay stay as they are.
What is in a card
- «Price» — the base price the season's calculation starts from.
- «Minimum» and «Maximum» — the two hard values: it never goes below the first nor above the second, whatever the engine decides.
- «Minimum Stay» and its floor — see Minimum nights.
- «Last minute» — a discount and a shortened minimum stay that apply in the last 3 days before arrival, the day of arrival included. The window is not adjustable: it is fixed. Switching it off leaves the numbers written.
- «Fixed Price» — with this on, the price is always calculated for the room's maximum number of guests, whatever the real occupancy: a room for four costs the same whether two or four book it.
Changes are not saved one at a time: when you change something the save button appears in the bar, and that single tap saves the whole page — prices, minimum nights and channel differences together.
Copying from another room type
Above the cards, the «Copy from another type» button copies another room type's seasons, prices and limits onto the open one. It only appears when there is more than one room type: with a single one there is nothing to copy from.
Daily variations
From the top menu, «Daily Variations» opens a sheet (on a tablet or computer, a window) for the room type currently open, not the first in the list: it is there to adjust particular days inside a season.
Arrival and departure days
Each season card also has the section «Arrival and departure days», with two rows of days: «Arrival» and «Departure». On the days that have that season in the RMS calendar, guests can arrive and leave only on the selected days.
- All days selected = no rule. The last remaining day cannot be removed.
- The rule follows the season: if a day moves from «High» to «Medium», it takes the rule of «Medium».
- The days are part of the season, for every room type: when a day changes season it takes the days of the new season, even with «Keep current prices». A season without a rule, or no season, means open every day. A closure set by hand on the «Rates» page lasts until the next change of season or rule for those days.
- After saving, the closures go on their own to the booking website and the connected portals, as closed to arrival and closed to departure.
- «Copy RMS Parameters» also copies these days: the destination room type takes, season by season, the rules of the source one, and the changed closures are sent automatically.
Excluded room typesThe rooms the engine must not touch
On the same screen as the switch there is the list of «Excluded room types». The engine touches neither the price nor the minimum stay of the types you put in there: they stay exactly as you set them.
- You exclude by room type, not by single unit. Rooms of the same type share a price, and a room you add tomorrow to an excluded type is born excluded too.
- The name counts as you wrote it. The comparison ignores capitals and double spaces, but if you rename a room type the name in the list does not change by itself.
- The list you save replaces the previous one, it does not add to it: whatever you take out goes straight back among the rooms the engine decides.
- The exclusion covers all your properties: if two of them have a room type with the same name, you exclude both.
The two warnings
An exclusion that breaks silently is dangerous in the worst direction: the engine starts again to move prices you believed protected. That is why the screen tells you in two cases, and Vezpa repeats it with a notification if the situation stands.
| Warning | What it means |
|---|---|
| Exclusions matching no room | there is a name in the list that no room type carries any more, almost always because it was renamed. Those rooms are back among the ones the engine decides. Remove the name, or rewrite it as it is now |
| The engine will decide nothing | the engine is on but every room type is excluded: no price will be touched. It can be deliberate, but it looks too much like a fault to be left silent |
OTA differencesThe extra percentage each channel sees
At the foot of the page (on a computer, at the foot of the panel on the right), «OTA differences» is the extra percentage each connected channel sees on top of the price worked out here. The box starts closed: you see a single row, and it opens with a tap on the title.
- A 10 on Booking.com means the price goes out there 10% higher than yours.
- A 0 means the same price as the system, and it is a legitimate value: it shows as zero, not as an empty field.
- -5% — not allowed: the markup cannot be negative, the value is rejected and that channel is not saved
You set one difference for each of the historic channels you have connected, plus a single «Other channels» for all the rest. If you have no channel connected, the box does not appear at all.
RMS actionsThe record of what the engine decided, and how it is undone
Every time the engine changes a price or a minimum stay, Vezpa writes it into the «RMS actions» record. There are two doors to it, and in both only the Manager sees them: the Management page, and the row at the foot of the «RMS Calendar», that is, without leaving the RMS.
Actions are not listed one by one: each card is one decision of the engine, that is one run, one room type and one reason. Two different decisions on the same room type, for example a decrease in November and an increase in December, are two cards: so you never read a price that seems to go up and down at the same time. At the top you find when the engine last ran and how many prices it raised and lowered. On each card you read:
- By how much — the arrow and the percentage: green if the price went up, orange if it went down;
- When — the dates and how many days the decision touched;
- The price before and after, in the property's currency;
- Why — a sentence saying which signal pushed and, if a season limit stopped the price, which one;
- The details — tapping the card shows the rooms of the room type and the day by day, room by room, with the button to undo.
On a phone the details slide up from the bottom; on a tablet the cards sit in two columns and the details open in a window; on a computer the list is on the left and the details of the chosen decision stay open on the right. The details also show where the decision comes from: for the engine «Rates updated automatically».
The record covers the last 90 days: older actions are removed on their own.
What the engine did, even when nothing changed
At the top of the record you find what the last run did and what it did after the last booking: how many cells it decided, how many it changed, how many it left unchanged and how many it skipped, with the reason (never priced, veto, outside the calendar, blackout). A price left the same is a decision, not a stopped engine.
Undoing an action also sets a veto: the engine does not return to that cell until the date. Active vetoes are shown under «Active vetoes» in the record's top bar, and with «Revoke» the engine decides on that day again from the next check.
The same explanation is also available right on the price cell in «Rates»: whoever can edit rates opens a price cell and finds, in its top-right corner, the question-mark button that opens «Why this price», with the engine's decision for that day or the reason it left it unchanged. Nothing is undone from there: undoing stays in this record.
Suggestions and latest actions
At the top of the RMS page the «Suggestions» drawer lists what you can fix: gaps where no guest can arrive (with the reason: rule off, gap too far away, minimum too high), dates without a season and excluded room types that match no room. Each item has its own button, for example «Open the season».
The Manager also sees «Latest actions» next to it, with the same cards as this record: on a computer and a tablet the two boxes sit side by side, on a phone they are two tabs. No notifications are sent: you check the page.
On the «RMS» button of the «Dashboard» page a number shows how many suggestions you have not seen yet; the same number appears on the «RMS» button at the top of «RMS actions». The count is yours and is the same on every device: it resets when you open the «Suggestions» drawer on the RMS page, and goes up again only when a new suggestion arrives.
Special casesThe states that look like faults and are not
The engine that is on and decides nothing
There are four situations where this happens, all legitimate and all declared on screen: every room type excluded; both limits at zero, which holds the price still to the cent; the last-minute discount on with no phase at all; and the minimum-nights floor equal to the starting value, which leaves those alone. In none of them is there anything to repair: there is a configuration to finish.
The most frequent case is another one: days without a season. On a day without a season the engine decides nothing, because the season gives it its limits. With the engine on, the engine screen shows the «Days without a season» warning with the number of days in the next twelve months in this situation: assign them from the «RMS Calendar», also with «Suggest seasons».
Minimum nights that do not move
When the floor matches the starting value, the engine has no room to shorten the minimum stay. It is the state almost every room type starts in, and the card writes it under the fields.
A renamed room type
Renaming a room type does not carry the exclusion with it: the old name stays in the list and no longer matches any room, so those rooms come back inside the engine's perimeter. The warning tells you, and Vezpa repeats it with a notification while the situation stands.
A property that has just opened
Signals without enough data stay quiet, and the engine, once on, moves little at first. The phases' curve may not be drawn either: enough past dates are needed for it to be a measurement and not noise.
More than one property
The engine switch and the excluded room types cover all your properties at once; prices, seasons, curve and phases belong to one property each. They are two different perimeters on purpose, and the selector at the top of the page says which property you are working on.
If something is offThe most frequent doubts, with the short answer
- The engine did something that does not add up. Look at the «RMS actions» record: every group carries the reason and the value before and after. Almost always the cause is a limit set too wide, and it is tightened in the season's The engine limits section.
- I switched the engine on and nothing happens. Check the conditions listed under Special cases: every room type excluded, limits at zero, no phases.
- I cannot find the switch. It is in the «Configuration» drawer at the top of the page, which starts closed. Its row, even closed, says whether the engine is on. On a computer it is already open, in the panel on the right.
- I cannot find the button to copy from another room type. It only appears when there is more than one room type.
- I cannot see the channel differences box. It does not appear until you have connected at least one channel.
- I typed a minus in front of the limit and it will not take it. That is deliberate: both numbers are positive, and the direction is carried by the label.
- The minimum nights went up as the date got closer. A last-minute phase imposed them: its «Minimum nights» applies even when it raises the period's, and it is the only way the engine lengthens them. When the engine decides on its own, instead, it can only shorten them, never lengthen them: see Minimum nights. Check the season's phases.
- I cannot undo an action. The undo belongs to the Manager alone.
- I undid a group and some days stayed as they were. Those are the ones changed afterwards: the restore skips them on purpose, so a more recent change is not wiped out.
- The page says the RMS is not enabled. The module is not active yet. It is switched on from «Configuration» → «Channels & pricing»: with the «Activate» button if the plan includes it, otherwise the manager can add it to the subscription with «Add the price manager — … per month». See Where it opens and who opens it.
- I found an offer in the extranet that I did not create. If it is called Last Minute, Promo or Early Booking, a last-minute phase published it. New phases only go out as Last Minute; Promo and Early Booking can only be offers published before phases moved to the last 3 days, and they stay until they expire.
Need help?
Write to us from the app, from Support in Configuration.