Learning Objectives

1. Learn that there are several ways of creating a new booking in Thynk

2. Know how to create a new booking straight from the Home Page

3. Know how to see availability by room types

4. Know how to  add a room block to the booking

Blocking a Group with Guest Rooms 

You have uncovered a great piece of business and discussed it with your customer. They would like for you to go ahead and check dates and rates, and give them a proposal. 

While you may be tempted to just write the dates on a post-it note or elsewhere and verbally give the information to your customer, it is critical that you enter the information in the form of a booking into Thynk. 

There Are Two Ways Of Creating A New Booking

As we have mentioned in a previous lesson, there are several ways of creating a new booking. The method you chose is entirely up to you because we know that everyone has their own ways of working. 

1. By opening the account or contact first, and then create a booking from the account or contact, or 

2. By creating a new booking from the Home Page.

In another article you have learned how to check guest room availability.  Now, you want to go ahead and block the space. To create a new booking from the Home Page, follow these steps: 

1. At the Home Page, move your cursor to the ‘Bookings’ Tab and click on the down arrow  

2. Click on  ‘+ New Booking’ 

3. If, instead of clicking on the down arrow, you have clicked on the ‘Bookings’ tab, you will see a list of recent bookings.  Here you can just click on the ‘New’ button on the top right 

4. Either method, the ‘New Booking’ window appears, click on ‘booking’ (Maintenance is only to be used for taking rooms out of order for maintenance or otherwise.)

5.  Here, complete the information about the booking by entering the booking name, arrival and departure dates, the company name, the company contact (type in the first few letters and the contact should appear if it’s in the system, select the one who wants to book the business here). 

6. If it’s an agency that’s contacting you, enter the agency, and the agent name in the Agency Contact field. 

7. Select the ‘type’, ‘subtype’ and ‘business segment’ from the drop down lists. Complete the rest of the required fields and click on ‘Save’. 

8. You are now returned to the Booking page, where you can see all the basics of the booking. Now, it’s time to add your guest rooms. 

9. Note that these steps are the same as the previous method of creating a new booking from the account. 

10.  In the booking, scroll up to ‘ Room Block Manager’ and click on the down arrow  to open the grid that shows you the selected dates and availability by room type.

11. Clicking on the plus on the left of the word ‘Total’ opens up your room types for those dates for all the properties you have access to.

12. Now you see the availability by room type. If you hover your cursor over the numbers on the first day, the help text explains that the first number is the number of rooms available of that room type, followed by the 2nd number which is the number of rooms booked definite for that date.

13. If you wish to filter by property, enter in the property field above to select it.

14. To block specific room types, click on the ‘New’ button on the right of ‘Hotel Rooms’ to open up the next window.

15. In the ‘Add Hotel Rooms’ window, enter in the Rate Plan, Occupancy Type (single/double etc.), number of rooms, room type and ‘Save’.

16. After saving, you will see the completed room block, along with the rates for those days.  The rates are already predefined in the system, so they will pull in here based on the rate plan you selected. 

17. Tick the first and last checkboxes to denote the first and last night for the room type. Ticking the last day will automatically tick the remaining days between the first and last.

18. If you need to change the number of rooms for a specific day, you can click into that date and enter the new number of rooms. Rates will automatically show here, but if you need to change a rate for a given day, you can edit it as well.

19. If you need to add another room type, click on ‘New’ and repeat Steps 14-17. 

20. Click on ‘Save’ when done. When you ‘refresh’ the page, you will see the guest rooms you have created appear on the booking ‘related’ page, under Hotel Rooms.

Best Practices for Creating Bookings

• It is critical for you to input all leads, inquiries, bookings you receive from customers into Thynk, because the data is used for revenue reporting, KPIs, paying out manager commissions, customer relationship management and more.

• Many customers say: if it’s not in Thynk, it doesn’t exist. 

• Even if you think a booking will not materialise, you must enter it. If it does not materialise, you will change the booking status to ‘lost’ or ‘turned down’, and you can track lost business.

• Complete as much information as possible to make the booking as accurate as possible.

Resources

1. How to check guest room availability - Knowledge Base article 

2. How to create a new booking from the account - Knowledge Base article