Boutique or Commercial Management Model?

Nomad Stays caters for both large and small Stay operators.  We have a choice of 2 different methods of managing your availability.

1. Hotel style (named 'Commercial'), where you have a standard configuration for a number of rooms, and
2. Individual room style (named 'Boutique'). where each room is configured differently to others.

• If each of your rooms are different from your other rooms, it's likely that you'll use the 'Boutique' model.
  • Each Boutique Room being sold independently from the other rooms, with its own pricing and own availability.
• If you use a standard confirmation for more than 1 room, it's likely that you'll use 'Room Types' in the 'Commercial' model.
  • In Commercial a single 'room type' is used across multiple individual rooms.  e.g. 'my hotel has 15 double rooms'.

Only Boutique Rooms and Commercial room types with only 1 room, will have an iCalendar link.  (This is because the iCal technical standard is designed to manage each unique room individually.)

With Hotel Style (Commercial) there are 2 variations:

1. 'Free Sale' - where you allocate a certain number of rooms for us to sell without checking with you.
2. 'Channel Manager' - where we get your live availability directly from your Channel Manager software.

So, which should you choose?

Really it comes down to the fact this if you manage the availability of each physical room individually then you'll probably choose 'Boutique Rooms'.

Most hotels don't do this for instance. 

As a hotel guest you rarely know which physical 'double room' you'll get when you book a hotel stay.  Hotels usually use a 'Commercial' model that allows them to delay allocating a particular physical room to a guest up until the time they check in.

Hotel accommodation is approximately 90% of the world's traveller accommodation supplier means that Commercial Models are more popular for integrating between members of travel industry.

Boutique Room Model - Pros and Cons

• Simple inventory as each room is either Full or Empty ü
• Availability easily shared using iCal technology ü
• iCal technology providers are free or inexpensive ü
• Some risk of overbooking due to time delays. iCal doesn't allow instant updating of availability. ×
• Room 'types' not needed so less choices to be made in setup  ü
• Greater onboarding time & effort required as each room has its own pictures, description, facilities etc.  (6 rooms means 6 different room entries) ×
• Each room has its own package.  6 rooms means 6 packages ×
• Fewer bookings as finding available dates is harder because rooms and packages are not easily interchangeable ×

Commercial Room Model - Pros and Cons

• Actual room allocation delayed until check-in ü
• Greater flexibility to move guests between rooms before check-in ü
• Single package per Room Type ü
• More interchangeable availability makes it easier for guests to find & book suitable packages ü
• Live Availability requires feeds from a Channel Manager ×
• Channel Managers have instant availability updating so almost no risk of overbooking ü
• 'Free Sale' availability means more updating  ×