The history import

In plain words

As soon as your property is connected, MAYA reads your past bookings: your current bookings first, then one year at a time back through up to ten years. You can close the page, because the import runs on its own. The first results (your and the review) are ready after three past years are in, or once everything is read if you have less than three years. Pricing comparisons reach three years back.

When it starts

The import starts on its own. You do not press anything.

Cloudbeds, from the Marketplace: it starts as soon as you create your MAYA account (or sign in) and claim the property, before you have paid. By the time you reach the payment screen it is usually already running, and paying does not start it over.
Cloudbeds or ThinkReservations, from inside MAYA: it starts the moment your connection succeeds.
Mews: there is no history import for Mews yet. See the Mews tab below.

You can start a fresh read later from the Rules tab with Get suggestions from my data. That read makes suggestions only and changes nothing on its own. Read Getting suggestions later.

What it reads, in order

The progress bar names each step as it goes. In order:

Reading your property setup. Your time zone and currency (only where MAYA has nothing yet), and your room types with how many units each has. The import never changes your property's name.
Reading your current bookings. The same read MAYA makes about every five minutes from then on: bookings from 30 days ago to about 13 months ahead. For a large book this takes several passes, and the bar says so: "Reading your current bookings (part 2)".
Importing past years. One 365-day stretch at a time, going backwards from where the current read started. Up to ten stretches, so at most about ten years. It stops earlier when a year comes back empty.
Building your starter rules. After the first three past years are in, MAYA reads what it has so far and writes the review cards, sets floors and ceilings that were still at their defaults, and builds your . From here the bar reads "First results ready. Importing older years", and the review can open while the rest loads.
Checking your full history. Once every year is in, MAYA reads everything again. This pass refines the review cards: it can sharpen a card, add one, or take one away. With less than about two years on record, step 4 is skipped and this is the only read, so your first results come once all of your history has been read.
Import complete.

What is kept

For each past stay night MAYA keeps seven things: the booking's reference number from your property system, the stay date, the room type, the nightly price, the date the booking was made, the time it was made (to the minute), and the number of days between the date and the stay. The reference number is how a booking with several rooms counts as one booking in . On Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, a booking from a group or block also keeps a scrambled key for that group, never its code or id, so booking speed counts the group once. The time is how separate bookings made together for the same dates can count as one, once you turn that on in Settings, and a booking made together with others keeps a key for them, worked out from those dates, the room type and the times alone.

It keeps nothing about the guest. No names, no emails, no card details. For past stays nothing else about the booking is stored, only those fields. What MAYA keeps about your current and future bookings is covered in What MAYA reads and writes.

How long it takes

There is no fixed time, and MAYA does not promise one. It depends on how much history your property system holds and how quickly that system answers. A small property with two years of bookings finishes far sooner than a 200-room property with ten.

The import runs on our side in short bursts and picks itself up again between them, so it does not need your browser open. Close the page, come back later, and the progress bar shows where it got to.

Two things you may see on a large book:

"Reading your current bookings (part 2)", "(part 3)" and so on. One pass was not enough to cover the window, so it is taking another.
A very large history can stop before ten years. MAYA reads up to a set number of (one room for one night), and the limit grows with the size of your property.

The exact limit, for the curious

MAYA reads at most 300,000 room nights, or more for a larger property: about one and a half times your room count, times 366 nights, times ten. It never reads more than 3,000,000. The Harbour Inn's 20 rooms come to about 110,000, so its limit is 300,000.

Your first day: using MAYA while it runs

You can. Here is what to expect:

The dashboard fills in as the import goes. Your current bookings arrive in step 2, so the calendar shows real occupancy early on, while older years are still loading.
Your rules run during the import. MAYA runs them on each night whose bookings changed, within about five minutes, and on every night up to 395 nights ahead once a day, and writes the result in the Change Log tab. Each stretch of runs that change nothing is counted into one line, such as "Prices checked 47 times from Sep 24, 10:05 AM to 1:55 PM, nothing needed to change."
Your property starts in simulation, so no rule, starter or yours, changes anything in your system until you go live.
With Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, MAYA also reads the rate you already have for each night, about once an hour, and your rules work from it. Mews rates are not read.
When the first results are in and there are cards waiting for your answer, a blue banner on the dashboard links to the review (it ends with the link Review →). If there is nothing to ask you, there is no banner. Open the review at maya-rms.com/onboarding/review.

The progress page has a link, Go to my dashboard →, at the bottom.

The progress bar and the progress page

The progress bar sits under the five questions and on the progress page. It shows the current step on the left and, on the right, how many room-nights have been read and, once an oldest stay is known, "back to" that month (for example "back to 2019-03").

The dot beside the step pulses while the import runs, turns green when it is complete, and turns amber if it has paused or stopped.

The bar checks on the import every few seconds while the page is in view, and not while it sits in a tab you are not looking at; it checks again as soon as you come back. Once the import is complete or has stopped for good, it stops checking. A paused import is checked again just after the time it tries again by itself.

If the import keeps running into errors while it runs and an automatic alert about it has reached our team, the line "This is taking longer than it should. We've been told." shows under the step on the bar (and at the top of the review, after the step, if you are there while it runs) until the import moves on again.

The progress page adds three tiles: Room-nights, Years covered (the span between your oldest and newest stay, at least 1) and Oldest stay. It moves on by itself: to the review as soon as there is something to review, or to the dashboard if the import finished with nothing to review. If the work was already done when you arrived, it moves on straight away. Otherwise it waits a moment so you can see it finish.

"Import stopped"

If the bar reads "Import paused" or "Import stopped" with an amber dot, the import has stopped trying for now: your property system stopped answering for a long stretch, or refused MAYA's access, or a read kept ending in the same place. Your connection, your rules and everything already read are safe. When your system refused MAYA's access, reconnecting picks it up again (see below).

When it stops, an automatic alert goes to our team. Then the import tries again by itself, up to three times, each time from where it had got to. It waits an hour before the first try, four hours before the second and twelve hours before the third. While it waits, the bar says when the next try is, for example "Import paused. We've been told, and it tries again by itself around 3:40 PM." Once a try is under way, the bar shows the step it is on again.

If the third try stops too, the bar reads "Import stopped. We've been told." and the import does not try again by itself. Email us and we will restart it from where it left off.

"We've been told" appears only when the alert reached us. If the bar says "Import stopped. Email us and we'll restart it." instead, nothing reached us, so please email us. A Cloudbeds Marketplace property you have not paid for yet does not try again by itself: paying for it (a free trial counts) starts the import again from where it stopped.

If your Cloudbeds connection drops while the import runs (Cloudbeds removes MAYA, or keeps refusing its reads), the dot turns amber, the bar reads "Your import stopped because your property system is no longer connected.", the progress page's heading says "Your import has stopped", and the reconnect prompt appears on your dashboard. On ThinkReservations a lost connection shows differently: the import keeps trying, the bar adds "This is taking longer than it should. We've been told." after a few failed tries, and later reads "Import paused." with when it tries again by itself. An import stopped for any other reason that is not an error (you chose Not now for the property, say) reads "Your import stopped before it finished." Read Reconnect and disconnect.

Reconnecting picks the import up where it left off. A General Manager or Hotel Admin clicks Reconnect Cloudbeds (or Reconnect Think Reservations) on the PMS tab and signs in, and the import carries on from the step it had reached, usually within a minute. Everything it had already read is kept, and an import that is still running is left to finish: reconnecting never starts a second one. This also covers an import that paused or stopped because your system kept refusing MAYA's access while the connection was down. If the dot is still amber a few minutes after you reconnect, email us and we will restart it.

On a Cloudbeds Marketplace property you have paid for (a free trial counts), clicking Connect App for MAYA in the Marketplace again also picks up an import the disconnect stopped. If you have not paid yet, the import picks up when the property next comes up on the payment screen.

The prompt takes the bar's place in one case only: a Cloudbeds Marketplace property you never paid for, left unused for 180 days, whose connection was removed (see Reading again later).

What comes out of it

When the read has run, you have:

your room types with their unit counts, and MAYA's first proposal for which of them are rooms (read How MAYA proposes the answer),
the review cards: closures, room types that may not be rooms, duplicates, rates that look like typos, stays with no rate, stays that point at deleted room types,
floors and ceilings for room types that were still at their defaults, each in its box on the review, where you can change or remove it and the import never writes over what you did,
, if you have enough history and no rules yet.

Your property's own rates (the starting point your rules work from) are not part of the import. The regular cycle reads them once your property is paid for. A free trial counts.

Read Checking what MAYA found, Your starter rules and Floors and ceilings.

Reading again later

Get suggestions from my data on the Rules tab reads your whole history again and turns what it finds into cards you accept or reject one by one. Read Getting suggestions later.
A Cloudbeds property from the Marketplace that never paid may have its booking history removed after 180 days without use. When you come back, reconnecting starts a fresh import, and nothing is priced until it completes. Your rules and settings are kept.

Per property system

MAYA reads each booking with every room in it, each with its own room type and nightly rates. Every booking status is read. Confirmed, checked-in, checked-out and not-yet-confirmed stays are kept. Cancelled and no-show bookings, and any Cloudbeds marks as deleted, are left out, and a booking cancelled or deleted since an earlier read has its nights removed.

A few Cloudbeds accounts refuse the detailed booking read. MAYA then reads a plainer list for your past years. From that list, a past booking's nightly price is an average of its total, and a past booking with several rooms may be counted as one room. A booked so far vs usual rule then reads past group nights as fewer rooms than they had, so group nights can read as ahead of usual. The list holds only the kept stays, so a past booking cancelled since an earlier read keeps its nights. Current bookings are read in full either way.

Cloudbeds reports how many rooms each room type has, so your occupancy percentages are right from the first read. Bookings marked Confirmation Pending count as booked, as they do in Cloudbeds' own occupancy.

The Harbour Inn's import

Sam connects The Harbour Inn (20 rooms) on a Tuesday evening. The bar reads "Reading your property setup", then "Reading your current bookings". Within a few minutes the calendar shows the coming nights with real occupancy. The bar moves to "Importing past years" and the right side counts up: "4,120 room-nights · back to 2024-09". After three past years it reads "First results ready. Importing older years", and the review opens with two closure cards and the starter rules. Sam closes the laptop. In the morning the bar reads "Import complete", "Years covered" says 7, and one extra card has appeared: a seasonal closure that only showed once four years of history were in.