home > support > solution library > villa, ski chalet or cottage rental
Due to improvements to TourCMS we now recommend loading villas/chalets using the Hotel functionality. This page exists for those who are using the previously recommended "Freesale seasons" method.
Villa, ski chalet or cottage rental
These style of products tend to have flexible dates (i.e. use freesale tours) but don't wish other customers to book at the same time, for the same accommodation unit. Use for villas, cottages, ski chalets, apartments, yacht charter, hunting lodges etc...
The basics
- Setup each individual villa / ski chalet / cottage as a tour
- Select the Price x 1 rule on the money tab (tour setup) (This makes the pricing per villa / ski chalet, rather than per person)
- Select the NO booking overlap rule (tour setup). This stops more than one booking being valid for a villa for any one date
- Select a price rule (or leave as default: [A] Start date in season
- On the freesale tab leave the duration rule at Quantity.... use the duration multiplier table instead
- Add a tour season (freesale) at the appropriate rate
The no overlap bookings setting is as follows:
- No - but same day OK (e.g. Booking#1 ends 5th, Booking#2 can start on 5th)
- No - but next day OK (e.g. Booking#1 ends 5th, Booking#2 can start on 6th)
Bookings that overlap with other bookings for the same villa will create a warning message. These warning messages appear:
- At the top of the actual booking - including details about which booking overlaps
- On a tab called Freesale issues on the bookings overview page (from where you start your booking search etc). This tab only shows if you do have issues!
- On the villa / ski chalet report (from the reports section)
In the staff booking process you can overlap bookings in the same villa at the same time (but you will know there is an overlapping booking). Customers can't overlap bookings on the web booking engine.
Price rules
Generally leave the price rule at [A] - Start date in season.
The other rules [C] - Start date / end date average - are useful when you have big seasonal changes in price - and want to handle situations where someone books a villa for 1 week in at one season price and a 2nd week at another.
Duration pricing
On the tour setup page you can see a duration multiplier table. Use this to calculate that a two week booking should be twice what a 1 week booking is (set 1-7 as x1, 8-14 as x2)
The duration multiplier table can also be used to exclude certain durations.
There are alternatives to using the duration pricing table - e.g. rule [E] price by duration - please see the Configuration & Setup manual for further details on this method.
Selling Saturday to Saturday
Tick to force dates to only start on Saturday and only end on Saturday.
Or tick to only start on Saturday and only permit 7, 14 and 21 night durations!
Reports
There are three main reports that you will find helpful:
- In resort - by date - who is currently with you
- Arrivals - by date - who is arriving on a particular date
- Villa / Ski chalet report - showing bookings by date and listing any overlapping bookings that need to be resolved. You can also access this chart from that report
Right click on the chart (in the report) to save the image. That way you can print out a nice wall chart of forthcoming bookings (and remaining availability)
Fixed prices by a fixed week
One alternative can be to load freesale seasons as follows:
- Monday - start / end date the same - THE PRICE
- Tuesday to Sunday - 0 price
- Monday - start / end date the same - THE PRICE
- Tuesday to Sunday - 0 price
Selling by the room
If you sell by the room (e.g. a large ski chalet) you will probably prefer to use the hotel functionality rather than this villa functionality. You can set up prices by the room as well as an entire chalet price (for booking the entire building)
See also
- Hotel setup guide - setup as a hotel if you are looking to control inventory / availability on a room by room basis