Set up and overview of bookable service settings

AccountingFront Office OperationsMews OperationsRate Management

Bookable services are those your guests can book when they make a reservation at your property. Your original Stay service is the accommodation service you offer to customers, which Mews automatically creates. You can delete a bookable service, but you cannot delete the Stay service.

You can set up long-stay services in Mews, which do not restrict you to offering accommodation services only. With new space types in Mews, the system also supports services like monthly parking, co-working memberships. You can learn about long-stay services here and how to create new bookable services here.

When a customer reserves accommodation at your property, they purchase your stay service or another bookable service. If you want customers to purchase products with their reservation, you need to create products and attach them to a bookable service.

Note: Guests can purchase Additional services and any attached products only at the property. You then manually add the purchased services and products to the customer's bill in Mews Operations. 

Learn more about the relationship between products and services here. 

In this article, you can learn about:

 

Overview of bookable service settings

     

    General settings

    Field

    Description

    Add translation

    In the drop-down, click to select the language you want to add. This creates duplicates of the fields listed below. You can then enter the information again in your selected language. 

    Name

    Enter the name of the bookable service, usually 'Stay'.

    Short name

    Enter an abbreviated name for places in Mews Operations where space is limited, for example, reports.

    Description

    Enter a short description of your bookable service to be shown in Online Guest Services, including important information for customers, for example, hours of service or purchase details.

    Ordering

    Choose the position you want your bookable service to occupy in a list of your property's services. Choose a value lower than all your other bookable services if you want to view this service by default on your Mews dashboard. 

    Note:

    • Mews chooses the default bookable service based on the ordering, not by its creation date, and pre-filters your Timeline and reports to the default service.
    • Mews remembers your default ordering choice for future use across the system.
    • You can change the bookable service that your Mews Dashboard displays anytime by changing its Ordering value.  
    Service keyYou can use this field to store a unique identification code to map the service with other systems. 

    Housekeeping interval

    Set the status of a space from Clean to Dirty after a specified number of days. For example, if the field is set to two days, Mews changes the space automatically to Dirty after two days. Each unit represents a period of 24 hours, with automatic changes occurring between 04:00-05:00.

    Reservation assignment strategy

    Choose how you want Mews to assign incoming reservations:

    • Select Bottom up if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces in ascending order, from the lowest floor number to the highest.
    • Select Preferred space features if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces based on how well they match the customer's preferred space features.
    Note: If you set up the reservation assignment strategy for a space category, Mews Operations prioritizes the space category's strategy first.
    • Select Random if you want reservations to be spread out equally across your property.
    Note: This option is not appropriate for properties that have a lot of business reservations, as this results in groups being split up.
    • Select Top down if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces in descending order, from the highest floor number to the lowest.

    Note: You cannot disable automatic space assignment.

    Availability calculation strategy

    Choose how overbookings impact your availability:

    • Select Diffusive if you want overbookings in lower space categories to take availability from higher space categories. This option helps prevent overbooking your whole property.
    • Select Discrete if you want overbookings to affect only the availability of the overbooked space category. This option increases the risk of overbooking your whole property.

    Note: For both options, you still need to resolve overbookings manually. You can learn more about the availability calculation strategy in the Timeline article here.

    Check-in type

    Choose how and where guests check in at your property and collect keys. This also determines the message they see at the end of online check-in:

    • Select Classic if you want to tell your guests to pick up their keys at reception when they arrive.
    • Select Digital Key if you want guests to use the digital key to access their room. Note: This option is only available if you purchase the Digital Key.  
    • Select Kiosk if you want to tell guests to check in at your Mews kiosk and create their keys with a key encoder.
    • Select Online if you want to tell guests that they will receive an email with more information about how to collect their keys. Note: You need to send this email as Mews does not do it. 

    City tax

    Choose your city tax rate.

    City tax mode

    Choose how Mews adds city tax to bills:

    • Select Exclude from price if you want Mews to add city tax to the price of reservations. For example, if a reservation costs 10 euro and city tax is 2 euro, the guest will pay 12 euro.
    • Select Included in price if you want Mews to deduct city tax from the price of reservations. For example, if a reservation costs 10 euro, and city tax is 2 euro, the guest pays 10 euro.
     

    Options

    Field

    Description

    Channel manager segment

    Choose a segment for reservations created through channel managers.

    Booking engine segment

    Choose a segment for reservations created through the Mews booking engine.

    Default segment

    Choose the default segment for your service.

    Options
    • Select Bill as package to allow bundling products with the bookable service and show only the price of the total package on bills.
    • Select Has configurable business segment to include an optional field in new reservation screens.
    • Select Has expanded bill items to display each item individually on guest bills.
    • Select Has overridable price to let employees with billing permissions override the standard price for this product.
    • Select Has overridable tax to let employees with business permissions override the standard tax for this product.
    • Select New orders automatically processed to automatically process new orders without requiring manual confirmation by an employee.
    • Select Offer to employee to make the service available to employees.
    • Select Order generates email to send confirmation email to responsible employee and members of the responsible department on new orders.
    • Select Order generates notification to display notification to responsible employee and members of the responsible department on new orders. 
    • Select Order requires a segment to require a segment for new orders.
    • Select Order requires completed notes to require guests to complete notes with details about the order. For example, flight details when ordering airport transfer.
    • Select Orderable only with products to make the service available only when some of its products are selected. For example, guests cannot order room service without selecting menu items.
    • Select Proportional charging of partial months to bill guests solely for the days they stay rather than charging for the entire month. Mews calculates the price proportionally based on the average price per day.
      Note:
      • This option is only available for monthly services.
      • Once enabled, it does not impact existing reservations unless you manually change reservation details, such as the start or end date, in which case, the new price applies.

    Visit options
    • Select Apply cancellation fee by default if you want Mews to automatically apply cancellation fees to canceled reservations.
    • Select Change inspected to clean overnight if you want Mews to automatically change the housekeeping state of vacant, inspected spaces from "Inspected" to "Clean" overnight, to ensure housekeeping checks them before guests check in.
    • Select Check-in makes space dirty if you want Mews to automatically change the housekeeping state of a space to "Dirty" when a guest checks into it.
    • Select Check-out makes space dirty if you want Mews to automatically change the housekeeping state of a space to "Dirty" when a guest checks out of it.
    • Select Close balanced bills at check-out if you want Mews to automatically close bills with a balance of zero when a guest checks out.
    • Select Enable automatic after check-out email if you want Mews to automatically send the "After check-out" email to guests after they check out.
    • Select Enable automatic after check-in email if you want Mews to automatically send the "After check-in" email to guests after they check in.
    • Select Enable automatic online check-in email if you want Mews to automatically send the "Online check-in" email to guests 48 hours before check-in. It takes guests to the Guest portal, where they can add any legally required information, for example, address, passport number.
    • Select Enable automatic cancellation for optional reservations if you want Mews to automatically cancel optional reservations on the release date.
    • Select Enable automatic check-in if you want Mews to automatically check in reservations at their arrival time. Automatic check-in only applies to confirmed reservations and does not work if: 
      • The space is not vacant. For example, previous guests did not check out, you reserved the space for house use, or the space is Out of Order.
      • You selected the Require payment or preauthorization for start option, and the payment or preauthorized amount does not cover the cost of all reserved bookable units, such as the cost of reserved nights, days, hours, or months.

    Note: If a reservation is made on the day of the stay after check-in time, Mews still automatically checks in the reservation.

    • Select Enable automatic check-out if you want Mews to automatically check out reservations at their departure time.
    • Select Enable automatic check-out (for online check-outs) if you want Mews to automatically check out guests who complete online check-out on the selected time of departure from the system.
    • Select Enable automatic email reminders for optional bookings if you want Mews to send this email 24 hours before the scheduled release of an unconfirmed, optional booking. Note: This applies to all reservations in an Inquired, Optional or Requested state.
    • Select Enable automatic no-show cancellation if you want Mews to automatically cancel no show reservations from the previous day every morning at 6:00.
    • Select Enable online check-out if you want to provide guests with the option to complete online check-out via the Guest Portal.
    • Select Enable QR code in emails if you want to automatically attach QR codes to the Online check-in, Booker confirmation and Confirmation emails that Mews sends to guests. 
    • Select Enable skip cleaning if you want to enable and choose from the various 'skip cleaning' options available, namely Skip today's cleaning, Skip all cleaning. in the Reservations management screen. Note: This also allows you to view the Skip cleaning status for a space in the header of the Space status report.
    • Select Enable space upgrades in online check in if you want to allow guests to upgrade their space during online check-in. 
    • Select Require payment or preauthorization for start if you want a guest to preauthorize a card before they check in through Mews Operations or an integrated system. 
      • The payment or preauthorized amount needs to equal or exceed the cost of all reserved bookable units, such as the cost of reserved nights, days, hours, or months. For example, if the guest booked a 100 euro room per night for 4 nights, the amount should be 400 euro or more. 
      • With this option enabled, Mews flags the reservations without a payment or preauthorized card to inform you of the necessity for preauthorization to check in. You can override this setting by clicking "Check in without a valid preauthorization" during the check-in process.
      • With this option disabled, you can check in reservations that do not have a preauthorized card on the profile level.

    Note: You can create the preauthorization for any guest assigned to the reservation, including the booker. The preauthorization is valid for all guests within one reservation.

    • Select Send cancellation email by default if you want Mews to email customers when a reservation is canceled.
    • Select Send confirmation email by default if you want Mews to automatically send an email to customers when their reservation is confirmed. Note: This applies to reservations that you create in Mews Operations. 
    • Select Send confirmation email to Booking engine reservations if you want Mews to automatically send a confirmation email to customers who create their reservation in the Mews booking engine.
    • Select Send confirmation email to channel reservations if you want Mews to automatically send a confirmation email to customers whose reservation was delivered via channel manager. Note: These customers are most likely to receive a confirmation email from the channel as well. 

      Booking URL

      Enter the URL for your property's website, where your Mews booking engine is.

      T&C URL

      Enter the URL for the terms and conditions page on your property's website. When a customer clicks Property T&C in the Mews Booking Engine and the Guest Portal, they are directed to this page.

      Note: This field is only valid for the Mews booking engine and the Guest Portal. If your property uses Mews Kiosk, you also need to fill out your T&Cs in HTML.

      Privacy policy URL

      Enter the URL for the privacy policy page on your property's website. When a customer clicks Property Privacy Policy in the booking engine they are redirected to this page.

       

      Responsibility

      Field

      Description

      Responsible employee

      Select the employee who is responsible for bookable services. Mews informs them when you receive new orders.

      Responsible department

      Select the department that is responsible for bookable services. Mews informs each member of this team when you receive new orders.

      Notify responsible employee about

      Choose if you want Mews to notify the responsible employee or department about orders from the booking engine, Mews Operations, or your channel manager.


       

      Accounting

      Field

      Description

      Accounting category

      Choose a default accounting category for your bookable service.

      Rebate accounting category

      Choose a default accounting category for rebate items.

      Canceled item accounting category

      Choose a default accounting category for canceled items.

      Cancellation fee accounting category

      Choose an accounting category for cancellation fees.

      No show cancellation fee accounting category

      Choose an accounting category for cancellation fees applied to reservations that were not checked in because the guest was a no show.

      Positive deposit accounting category

      Choose an accounting category for positive deposit charges. Note: This only applies to countries where VAT is payable at the time of consumption.

      Negative deposit accounting category

      Choose an accounting category for negative deposit charges. Note: This only applies to countries where VAT is payable at the time of consumption.


       

      Reception

      Field

      Description


      Bookable
      period
             		Determines whether the bookable service is based on overnight or day use. Learn more about day use bookable services here. Note: You cannot change this setting once you create the service.

      Arrival time

      Enter the official arrival time of your property, i.e., your property's default arrival time for all new reservations.

      Departure time

      Enter the official departure time of your property, i.e., your property's default departure time for all new reservations.

      Occupancy starting time

      The earliest time you can consider a space as occupied with regards to availability and reporting.

      Occupancy ending time

      The latest time you can consider a space as occupied with regards to availability and reporting.

      Online check-out email timingEnter the number of hours and minutes before your property's departure time that you want Mews to send the online check-out email, for example, 23 hours 30 minutes.
       

      Updating bookable services

      Before you can sell a bookable service, you need to update your bookable service by setting up your spaces, rates, and restrictions. To do this:

      1. In Mews Operations, go to the main menu  > Settings > Services.
      2. Click on a bookable service, for example, Stay.
      3. Update the bookable service settings.
      4. Click Save.


      You can learn more about creating new bookable services here.

       

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