Planning the Event - Assigning and Managing your Accommodation

To use Accommodation features in Hostology, you will first need to have set up your rooms and features at the Venue Management level. Please check out this article here for how to do this. 

• Accommodation in Hostology
• Assigning a room to the event
• Editing an assigned room
• Booking a room
• Viewing Room booking information
• Cancelling a room
• Payments
• Next Steps

Accommodation in Hostology

Please note, that to be able to see and assign rooms in Hostology, you will have had to have set them up in the Venue management section. This can only be done by "Admins", so please ensure your team have done this before continuing - check out this article here for more information.

Once you have created your rooms, and added in all the details, like images, extras and "general pricing" you can assign them to events and allow your customers to book and pay for rooms using Hostology.

To see the accommodation section for an event, you'll need to go to the event page and select 'Event Planning' then 'Accommodation' on the left hand side menu. Once you do this, you'll then see the page with multiple tabs from "Assign room" to "cancelled":

Hostology is designed to be flexible and allow you control on how you assign rooms to the event, the price for each event and also the availability. This guide will show you some of the options you have when assigning rooms - but if you would like to discuss the best approach, please don't hesitate to contact us at [e-mail]

Assigning a room to the event

When you are ready to assign a room to an event, go to the accommodation tab on the accommodation page, where you will see all the rooms your venue has created in a list.

To assign a room to the event, you can either individually assign rooms or bulk assign:

• To individually assign a room, simply select the checkbox on the left hand side of the room and then select the "Assign Rooms" button. 
• To assign multiple rooms at once, simply select the checkbox for multiple rooms at the same time and select the "Assign Rooms" button
• Finally, you can assign all the rooms available at your venue in one go, simply select the "Select all" button (you will notice all rooms appear to be ticked) and then select "Assign Rooms".

Once you select "assign rooms" a pop-up will show providing you options to add these rooms to the event.

The options you will need to fill out are:

• Room Duration - You will see the actual event duration at the top of the pop-up, but this is where you can choose to assign the rooms to the event for a longer or shorted period of time (i.e. If your customer wants to stay 2 night before the event, or if you can only let them stay for one night of a three-day event). The Default will be for the event duration.
• Agreed Price - This allows you to put in a new price for the rooms, specific to this event. This is a price per night and allows you to apply discounts, or price increases to rooms. If you do this when assigning multiple rooms, all rooms will be affected. If you leave this blank, rooms will be added with their default price (set up at the venue management level).
• Notes - These are just internal notes to be added to the rooms.

If you choose to edit, or leave this as it is - press the "save" button and these rooms will now be assigned to the event.

To see the assigned rooms, go to the "Assigned to event" tab at the top of the page. Here you will see the list of rooms assigned to the event and some of their information.

These rooms are now assigned to the event! If you have added a Customer to this event, they will now be able to see these rooms and assign them to their guests, or make them available to their guests on a first come first serve basis. If you want to learn more about what your customers can see & do, check out their support article here.

Once your customers book rooms, they will then move into the "Reserved" tab, where you will be able to see guest details and follow/track payments.

Editing an Assigned Room

Once you have added a room to the event ("Assigned it") this will now be appearing in the "Assigned to event" tab. Once here, you can still make some changes:

• Global Discount - This is an option to apply an overall discount to the event. Simply select the "Global discount" button, then add the % discount you would like to add to all rooms. This will then apply a discount to the price of all assigned rooms.
• Edit Room - You can change dates/prices of the rooms once you have assigned them. Simply select the 3 dots at the end of the room details box and the click "edit room". You can now update the cost and duration the room is available for.
• Remove from the Event - You can also remove the room from being available to the event. Simply select the 3 dots and then click "Remove from the event". The room will now return to the original "accommodation" tab and no longer be available to your customers to book.

Please note, that if a customer has booked a room, you will not be able to edit the details anymore. You would instead need to cancel the room and then edit information.

Booking a room

On Hostology, you also now have the option to book rooms on behalf of your customers.

Please note, at this moment, your customer will have needed to add their guest list in order for you to book their customers into rooms and then made the rooms available to all. If this is an issue, please contact [e-mail] for support and ideas on how best to do this for your venue.

Once here, you will be prompted with the same options as your Customers to book the room. To make life simple, check out this article here on how your customers can book a room!

Please note, once you book a room for a customer, they will only receive an update and be able to pay for a room if they have an email address associated with their account. If they do not, you/your host will need to contact them directly and make payments on their behalf.

Viewing Room Booking Information

Once a room has been booked by you, your customer, or their guests - you can see this information via Hostology.

To see information on the booking, simply go to the "Reserved" rooms tab in the accommodation page:

Here you will see a list of all the rooms that have been booked for this event.

Once in the reserved tab, you can expand a room booking to see more information about who has been booked into the room. At a top level, you can see:

• The Room Name
• The Duration the room has been booked
• The Name of the lead guest staying in the room
• Two Icons which show:
  • If there are any additional extras with the booking
  • If there are any notes on the booking (added by Guests/Customers)
• The Payment status of the room:
  • Fully Paid
  • Partially Paid (If split between Host/Guest)
  • Unpaid

If you click the room, you will also be able to expand the view and see more information including:

• The Payment details (who is responsible to pay and how much they owee)
• Guest Information (Who is staying in the room, this includes contact info and dietary requirements).

From here, you can also manually change the payment status of a room booking. If you are not taking payments via Hostology, you can manually change room payment info to "Paid Offline". This can be great if you take a payment over the phone for example.

You can also edit Guest information if needed at this point, or add extra guests into the room that are staying - along with updating Guest dietaries. To do this select the 3 dots next to the Lead Guest and select either "Edit" or "Add Guest".

Cancelling a room

If you need to cancel a room booking, you can do this easily via Hostology. To cancel a room booking, go to the "Reserved" room tab. From here, select the 3 dots at the far right of the room booking you wish to cancel and then choose "Cancel booking" from the two options. It will then say "Are you sure". Select "OK" if you want to proceed.

Once you have cancelled a room, this room will now return to the "Assigned to event" tab for you to either edit or remove the booking from the event.

It will also appear in the "Cancelled" tab if a payment or partial payment has been made. In this view, you will be able to mark the room as refunded or not, to be able to keep track of payments.

Please note, Hostology does not automatically administer refunds for any payments. If you are cancelling a booking and need to refund, you can do this via the connected stripe account. For more information on how to do this via stripe, you can see their support page here. You can then mark the cancelled room as "Refunded", by selecting the 3 dot menu and then choosing "Refunded".

Payments

To be able to take payments for rooms via Hostology, you will need to have a connected Stripe account (please see this article for more support on what this means). Your Customers can login to their account and make payments for rooms that will go directly to your account. However, refunds are your responsibility to process back to the customer and not automated by Hostology.

If you would like support in setting up your Stripe account and understanding the best way of using payments, contact us at [e-mail] for a quick consultation.

Next Steps

Check out this article on how to add Event Suppliers

Check out this article on how to add Food & Drink to the event

Check out this article on how to add a Host

Check out this article on how to add Tasks & Milestones