If your property is a hostel or dormitory and you sell by the bed, we recommend setting up room types as beds as it will enable you to sell the beds individually on your direct booking engine.
➕ For example, if you have ten rooms in your property and five contain six beds each while the other five have four beds each, you would need to set up two room types like this:
One bed in a six-bed dorm
One bed in a four-bed dorm
Once set up, there would be 30 beds available across all of the six-bed dorms, and 20 beds available across all of the four-bed dorms, meaning that your property would have a combined availability of 50 beds, which would be split between the two room types above, depending on the number of beds available in your Inventory.
To set up a room type to sell by the bed, you must first configure a room type as a bed rather than a room, and create a room rate for it.
Then, to enable this room type as a bed to be visible and bookable on your direct booking engine, you just need to set the availability of the number of beds found in all rooms of the same types in the Inventory.
To do this, follow the steps below.
Go to My Apps > Direct Booking.
n your direct booking engine, go to Setup > Rooms & Rates > Room Types > click +Create.
Under Details , enter the following:
Name — give the room type a name and specify its beds (for example, ‘Bed in 4-Bed Male Dorm’).
Category — select ‘ Bed ’ from the drop-down menu.
Room Type Configuration — select the bed type from the drop-down menu.
Description — enter additional details about the bed and the room (for example, ‘This room has 4 single beds and is for men only’). Note: this description is used on your direct booking engine; it is visible to customers.
Rates — enter the default rate per bed, then set the extra adult , child , and infant rates fields to ‘0’. (Note: this must be ‘0’ because only one person can book one bed; if your guests require more beds, they need to book more.)
Occupancies — set Included occupants , Maximum adults , and Maximum occupants to ‘1’. If you permit children and infants, enter ‘1’, otherwise enter ‘0’. We also recommend ticking the Adult required checkbox to prevent children staying at your property without an adult present.
Click on +Create.
Now that you have set up your room type as a bed, you need to create a rate plan in order to set the bed’s price.
To do this, follow the steps below.
Go to My Apps > Direct Booking.
Go to Setup > Rooms & Rates > Room Types > find the room type you just created and click +Add Room Rate.
In the Name and Description and inclusions fields, specify that the rate is for a bed, not an entire room. (For example, in the Name field you could enter ‘Bed in a 4-Bed Male Dorm’, and in the Description and inclusions field, ‘This room has 4 beds and is for men only’.
Click +Create.
Your room type and rate plan are now ready to be booked on your direct booking engine, so you just need to set the availability of the beds in Channel Manager, or if you are not using Channel Manager, the Inventory of your direct booking engine.
If you are using Channel Manager, follow the steps below.
In Channel Manager, set up the room type and room rate you just created.
Map the room rate you just created in Channel Manager to the corresponding room rate in the direct booking engine.
⚠️ This step must not be skipped, otherwise the availability of your beds will not be synced between your Channel Manager and your direct booking engine, and the latter will not be able to receive reservations for the beds you have configured.
In the Channel Manager Inventory , add the total availability of beds present in this room type. For example, if you have five rooms of the same kind, with each containing four beds, the total availability of these beds is 20 — because there are 20 beds available across all five rooms combined — so you should enter 20.
Note: when selling by the bed, remember to set the number of available beds, not the number of available rooms; the availability must reflect that of the beds you want to sell.
If you are not using Channel Manager, you must instead set the availability in the Inventory of the direct booking engine.
Once complete, open the live (customer-facing) version of your direct booking engine and check that your beds have been set up correctly and that they are both viewable and bookable. (Learn more: accessing your live direct booking engine.) If functioning correctly, customers will be able to select one or more beds to purchase, depending on the availability you have set on the Inventory grid.