Allows you to offer discounted rates
The Last Minute promotion is a default promotion that allows you to offer discounted rates for bookings made only within a number of selected days before arrival.
There are several parameters you can edit before you can enable the Last Minute promotion to go live. Unlike the other promotions, the Last Minute promotion has a unique parameter that allows you to select the window of when the promotion will apply, taking away the manual work of reducing the prices for short notice customers, and making your prices more competitive.
When a customer places a search online that meet these criteria, Hostelworld will return a discounted price. If you have two or more promotions setup and active at the same time, the customer will receive the lowest discount.
How can you enable the Last Minute Promotion?
To enable the Last Minute promotion, go to the Promotions tab from the Rates & Availability section.
The promotion will show up as inactive by default. Click on the box called Last Minute, and you can proceed to set the desired parameters before activating the promotion.
What conditions can you set for this promotion?
Discount
You can set any value for the discount between 0-100% by using the minus and plus icon. Once the discount has been applied, hit the Update button at the bottom.
For bookings made day(s) or less before check-in
This is the key input for this promotion. This figure dictates how far in advance of a check-in date the promotion will apply. If this parameter is set to 1, the promotion will only be available for bookings made 1 day or less before check-in.
For the minimum night stay of
The default setting for the Last Minute promotion is 1 night – this can be changed to any value between 1-30. Important! These values will override any room rate level settings that are set through the Rates and Availability Calendar
For bookings between the dates
This is the date range when the promotion will be available on app/website. By default, the promotion will always be on, but you can add start and end dates if you wish.
Disable Promotional Rates for the following days
This will allow you to select specific dates, or days of the week (or both) when this promotion will not apply. By default, no dates are selected.
Apply to the rooms
With this input, you can apply the promotion to specific rooms of your choosing. The default setting is for all rooms to be automatically selected. The checkbox will indicate which rooms have been selected.
Discount from the rates
Here you can decide which rates the promotion will apply to. By default, all rates are selected. Please ensure that the rate chosen is live in the calendar, for the discount to appear online.
FAQ:
What happens if your property is connected to a Channel Manager?
No problem!
You can still enable the Last Minute promotion as the discount is manually set and the rate adjustment is carried out in the Hostelworld back-end automatically.
How can you identify if a booking came in with the Last Minute promotional rate?
Bookings made with this promotional rate will include a Promo tag.
How will this promotion work with App only deals?
The promotional discount is applied first. App Only discount is applied to all rates, even those with discounts already applied.
Example:
Standard rate price = 100.00
Active Promotions: Last Minute Promotion (5%) & App Deal (10%)
New price shown on App = 85.50