CSS: Opening Windows^® with Inntegrity™, Part 1
Yield Management

CSS has been a developer and vendor of Hospitality Management and Accounting Applications for 26 years, and Windows^® Compliant since ’94. Our Applications have always been designed for full service hotels, resorts and condominiums, with the functionality to handle the complexity of their needs.  CSS management has been on a Quest:  “For the first release of the CSS Windows^® true 32 bit Graphical User Interface version of our Property Management Systems, we were determined to include all of the functionality of our character based software, installed since the early eighties.”

This is the first in a series of Pipeline articles that will detail functionality of the CSS Windows^®  Applications.  The Front Office System has had Yield Management built into it since 1991.  It’s been enhanced for the new release to include a unique Rate Analysis Screen – designed to “yield” consistently higher profits. 

 The first screen viewed when taking a Reservation is current availability. The requested dates are entered, or blocked in the pull down calendars.  Availability is illustrated with a series of colored boxes  that represent numbers of available rooms for both the hotel and individual room types. Hotel management decides and configures at what percentage of hotel availability the colors change from green - free sell, to yellow - sell cautiously, to red - limited number of rooms available. 

 As the Reservationist enters pertinent data – Dates, Room Type, Market Code, etc., the screen adjusts to the new data and the Room Availability switches to Applicable Rates.  Colors still indicate availability on a per day basis for the chosen Room Type and the rates will fluctuate with this availability, per day, through a CSS Yield Management technique known as Dynamic Rate Tiering.

 Dynamic Rate Tiering Yield Management is a CSS feature that can be switched on and easily set up by your management.  Each individual Room Type can be configured to have the rate automatically increase based on the occupancy for each date.  Optionally, you can further set room rates to fluctuate based on Market Codes and other criteria.

Now that you have an automated Yield Management System choosing the appropriate rates, how does your Reservationist sell a stay that can have a different rate for each night?  The Rate Analysis Screen pops up.  This is where you can choose how to apply the Yield Management.  The  Rate Analysis can be set to default to any of 4 choices: Actual = the original rates, varied per night, High = charge all nights the same as the highest rate in the chosen dates, Low = all nights will be the same as the lowest rate, and Average = recalculates the Actual Rates originally shown and displays an average rate to sell.  What can be simpler?  The rate can be offered as an exact average with dollars and cents or the System can round the rate up to the nearest dollar or five dollars if you prefer.   Authorized personnel can also override any of these rate choices for particular guests.

  If you need to revise the dates of the reservation at a later time you can decide if you would use the Current Rates at the time of revision, (remember as dates sell out the rates go up), the Original Occupancy Percent or the Original Rates.

  Good things come to those who wait; better things are available to those who didn’t.