Overview

A special offer represents a commercial rule (usually related to quantity or time of purchase) that, once met, a product can be sold for less than its usual price. The bonification that impacts the regular price is usually free usage for a limited period or a discount. 

TripBuilder supports special offers in the Inventory Product definition. While the most common use cases for Special Offers are applied to Accommodations, the feature is also available (with restrictions) to other product types.

00:00: In this video, you will learn how to create special offers on Tripbuilder's Inventory products. 00:06: Special offers represent commercial rules that when met, can reduce the price of a Product. They are usually defined by a time period or amount rule. 00:15: This Special Offers can be added to the following Inventory Products: Accommodations 00:21: Transfers 00:23: Transit and Stop Activities 00:26: Base Services 00:28: And Upsell Products. We do not support Special Offers in Rental Cars and Transports. 00:34: To add Special Offers in accommodations, this can be done inside Room Categories. 00:40: To all other Inventory Products, you can add Special Offers in the Services Categories tab, inside the Product details. 00:48: Special Offers can also be added to Amenities, in the Amenities tab. However, this Special Offers can only be Child Reduction Offers. 00:57: Special Offers can be added to each room category, or service category individually. Click on "Add Special Offer" to add one. 01:06: When selecting the type of the Special Offer, in Accommodations Products, you have the following options: - Bonus Nights, - Static Early Bird, - Rolling Early Bird, - Long Stay, - Last Minute, - and Child Reductions. 01:20: On the other hand, In Upsell Products, Base Services, Transfers, Stop and Transit Activities, you can only add Child Reductions as a Special Offer. 01:31: We have a dedicated video on adding Special Offers as Child Reductions. Make sure to watch it in completion of this video. 01:39: For the remaining of this video, we will focus on the remaining options for special offers inside Accommodations. 01:46: Start by giving a descriptive name to your Special Offer. This will be visible in the frontend. 01:52: TripBuilder allows a partial application of a Special Offer or a strict one. If you don't allow partial application, the accommodation dates must be within the Special Offers validity dates for this Special Offer to be applied to the price. 02:06: If you allow partial application of any Special offer this means that if part of the accommodation dates sit inside the Special Offer period and some dates sit outside, then the Special Offer is only applied to the days inside the valid period of the Special Offer. 02:21: Let's see an example. Imagine that you have a Special Offer with the range 1 to 31 of August, and an Accommodation is booked from 25 of June to 5 of August. 02:31: If you allow partial application, and if the rules of the Special offer are matched, this special offer is applied between 1 and 5 of August. However, if you don't allow the partial application, the special offer is not applied because the booking is not inside the special offers date range. 02:48: Let's see how to configure Bonus nights. 02:51: To add an offer, Click on the "Add Offer" button. 02:55: You can add as many offers inside the same type of offer. To do so, Select the "Add Offer" option again. 03:03: Bonus night logic is simple. You can add a minimum number of nights stayed in order to pay a smaller number of nights. 03:10: For example, stay 10 nights in this Hotel, and pay only 9. 03:15: After you defined the Special Offer, you need to define the dates in which this special offer is applied to, based on your contracted arrangements. Click on Add Season to do so. 03:26: Define the start and end dates using the fields. You can either manually introduce the date as the format presented on the screen, or use the calendar pick. 03:35: You can also add more seasons to the Special Offer. They can also be a single day if needed. Click on the "Add Season" button to do so. 03:44: When you are done, click on Save, and this Special Offer will be added to the Room or Service Category. 03:50: On the Room or Service Category, you have a overview of the Special Offer you have created, with Validity, Type and the conditions. 03:58: Let's see how other Special Offers can be configured. To add another Special Offer to the Room or Service Category, click on Add Special Offer. 04:07: Static Early Bird allows you to give a discount on the price, if the user performs a booking before a given date. 04:14: You have a field to enter the Book Before Date, and a field to add a discount, in percentage form. 04:20: Rolling Early Bird allows you to give a discount if a booking is made a certain number of days before the departure date, instead of a specific date. 04:29: You have a field to introduce the minimum number of days in advance to make a booking, and a field to add a discount in percentage form. 04:37: Long Stay allows you to give a discount if a user stays at least for a given number of days. 04:42: You have a field to add the minimum number of days a user should book to have the discount, and a field to add the discount in percentage form. 04:50: Last minute allows you to give a discount if a user books an accommodation at most days before the actual booking date. 04:57: You have a field to introduce the number of days, and a field to introduce the discount given related to the last minute days. 05:04: For child reductions, please see our dedicated video about this type of Special Offers. 05:10: The last topic we will approach in this video is the possibility to combine Special Offers. If you have multiple Special Offers for a room or service Category, and this option is off, only one Special Offer can be applied. 05:23: TripBuilder has an ordered list on which Special Offers to apply first, if multiple are available. The list is on your screen. Therefore, if, for example, a bonus night and a long stay offer are defined, only the bonus night offer is applied. This list is hard-coded and can't be changed. 05:43: However, if the Combine Special Offers option is selected, the user booking the accommodation can take advantage of combining certain special offers. 05:53: The following table in your screen describes which special offers can be applied together when this feature is turned on. 06:00: We hope you enjoyed this guide. Remember that you have a comprehensive knowledge base article about Special Offers available. See you next time!

For Inventory Accommodations, special offers can be defined within the Room Categories tab.

While for Inventory Stop Activities, special offers can be defined within the Service Categories tab.

The following table shows the mapping between product types and supported special offers.

A dedicated article on Child Reductions (applied to products and amenities) is available at Child Reduction on Inventory Products. In this primary case, a single type of special offer is available for selection by the user - Child Reduction.

In the present article, we focus on the special offers for Accommodations, although the process is similar for the single case of Child Reductions.

Types of special offers

Partial or strict application of a Special Offer

We allow a partial application of a Special Offer or a strict Special Offer. In the case of a strict Special Offer, when creating an Itinerary, the selected dates of the Accommodation must be, in its totality, within the Special Offers date period.

You can control this by enabling/disabling this setting while creating your Special Offer:

Enabled

If part of the accommodation dates sit inside the Special Offer period and some dates sit outside, then the Special Offer is only applied to the days inside the valid period of the Special Offer.

Disabled

The accommodation dates must be within the Special Offers validity dates for this Special Offer to be applied to the price.

How to create a Special Offer

1. Click on the Room Categories.

2. Scroll down until you reach the Combine Special Offers toggle.

If the option Combine Special Offers is turned off, then only one Special Offer can be applied at a time. However, multiple Special Offers can be defined. 

Alternatively, if the option Combine Special Offers is turned on, the user can take advantage of combining certain accommodation special offers versus a cascading approach as previously described without using the feature.

While more complex, this gives users more flexibility to apply special offers to their inventory products, meaning more accurate and competitive quotation offerings to their consumers. When loading their special offers, the user will be able to see which special offers have been combined, and they will receive a notification to alert them if they have tried to load a special offer combination that isn't permitted.

The following table describes which special offers can be applied together when this feature is turned on.

3. Click on + Add Special Offer.

4. The screen Add Offer is presented.

5. Enter the Name of the special offer. 

6. Select the Type of special offer.

7. Add special offer details depending on the chosen type.

8. Choose if you want to allow a partial application of your Special Offer.

9. Add validity - Season of the special offer.

10. Once all details are added, hit Save to add the special offer to your room category.