STAAH Max V2- What is Drip Feed Availability and how does it Function
Currently all rooms in STAAH MAX, are pushed out to the respective OTAs (10 rooms in STAAH – 10 rooms are sent to OTAs – meaning all 10 rooms are bookable).
Example
- If you are pushing out the Studio Room, which has 10 rooms in total;
- and for December (full month) you want a maximum of 5 rooms to be available
- You are now able to use Drip Feed to manage the maximum number of rooms available to OTA(s) for each room type.
If you do not have access to this module, please contact your local partner services team
From the Availability & Rates tab, simply select the channel you want to apply restriction, then select the restriction from the Rules menu.
Drip Feed restriction set at Base rate level, will apply to all connected channels.
Next, is setting the Drip Feed restriction. By clicking on the outside of the box select the dates the drip feed option will pop up.
What do the various Drip Feed options mean?
You will see there are 3 options available in the Drip Feed restriction drop down
• Off - Drip Feed is not yet set, this is displayed as ‘OFF’, which shows that no Drip Feed is applied.
• Closed – Allows you to push 0 inventory for the Room type/channel, without reducing inventory, example.
o Standard room has availability of 5.
o For a specific day, you want to offer these rooms direct via Booking engine
o Set restriction to closed, this will trigger 0 inventory to channel for the selected room type.
• Allotment – Works like a counter and will limit the number of bookings that can be made for that Room type via Channel. Set value, as bookings are received the Drip Feed restriction is reduced, example.
o Standard room has availability of 5.
o Restriction is set at 3, as you only want a total of 3 bookings for this room type/channel.
o As bookings are received, the Drip Feed restriction is reduced (i.e 1 booking received now 2)
o Not applicable to updates set at Base rates level
• Number – Allows you to set the maximum rooms that are available on the channel for the set Room type/Channel.
o Standard room has availability of 5.
o Restriction set at 3
o A maximum of 3 available rooms are bookable via channel.
o When inventory is below the Drip Feed restriction, inventory is pushed based on what is available.
- Hit UPDATE.
NOTES:
Drip Feed = Closed => we send 0 inventory to channel even if there is an availability.
Drip Feed = 1 to 10 => If it is 5 and availability = 10, we always send 5 inventory to channel .
What happens if Drip Feed is set for Base Rates, but for Channels it is OFF?
By default, all channels will have same value which we have at base rates level. So, if Drip feed is set for base rates for any room, so same drip feed will be applied to all channels. but at channel level, if we set it as Off or may be some other value on parent room, it will override the value which we have set it up at base rates. So basically, by default all channels will have same set up value what we have at base rates.
Drip feed option is only for our application/channel manager and it is not supported by any OTAs, so while pushing data to channels, we are not sending them drip feed data. We are managing drip feed functionality at our end and sending inventory to OTAs based on configuration at our end.