What MAYA does

A rule in one sentence

A rule is a sentence you fill in: when a night looks like this, change the price by that much.

Here is one from The Harbour Inn, a 20-room property we use in every example: when a night is more than 80% full, raise the price by 10%. On the Rules tab that rule is a name ("Busy nights"), a condition (Sellable occupancy (%), Greater than, 80), a direction (Increase the rate) and an amount (10%). That is the whole rule.

Sellable occupancy is rooms booked divided by rooms you can sell that night. When The Harbour Inn has 17 of its 20 rooms booked for November 14, that night is 85% full, so "Busy nights" acts and Standard goes from $150 to $165. When it has 16 booked, the night is exactly 80% full, which is not more than 80%, so the rule leaves it alone.

A rule can look at nine things about a night (eight on Mews), such as how full it is, how fast it is booking compared with your own past, how many rooms it has booked so far against your own past at the same point, and how many days away it is, and it acts only when all of its conditions are true at once. You build rules by filling in dropdowns, not by writing code. What a rule is lists the nine, and Build your first rule walks through one click by click.

What happens after you write a rule

1. 1

   You set the rules

   You add a rule on the Rules tab. With Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, setup also adds starter rules built from your own booking history, when there is about 60 days of it. They are added for you and switched on, but while you are in simulation they only show what they would do. Nothing is sent. You can switch any of them off or delete them before you go live. Later, Get suggestions from my data can offer more as cards, which you accept or turn down. Each rule has an On/Off switch.

   Example: What this looks like on screen

   The Rules tab lists every rule in a table: its name, how many times it has fired, its conditions, the room types it applies to, the price change, its On/Off switch, and Edit and Delete buttons. Under the table, + Add a rule opens the builder. Above it, a panel called How rules behave plays three short animations.

2. 2

   MAYA runs them

   About every five minutes, MAYA reads your bookings and room types from your property system, refreshes your own rates from it about once an hour, runs every rule on each night whose bookings changed or that a change of yours reaches, and sends the prices that changed. In the first cycles after midnight at your property it runs every rule on every night from tonight to 395 nights ahead, nearest first. Sending only happens once you have gone live, and never to Mews yet. Until then MAYA runs everything and sends nothing.

   This all happens on MAYA's side, day and night, whether or not anyone has MAYA open. Nobody needs to be signed in, and the office computer being off or your own internet being down does not stop it. What stops it is MAYA being unable to reach your property system's service (read Connection lost), or a subscription that has stopped.

   Example: What this looks like on screen

   Nothing, most of the time. Each stretch of runs that changed nothing is counted into one quiet line in the Change Log, such as "Prices checked 47 times from Sep 24, 10:05 AM to 1:55 PM, nothing needed to change." You only see the runs that changed a price unless you click Show All Cycles.

3. 3

   You watch the log

   Every price change is recorded: which room type, which night, from what to what, which rule acted and why. For a booking speed change, a Show the numbers button opens the past nights this night was compared with and the counts behind the change.

   The Change Log tab shows the latest ones first: the 10 most recent runs that changed a price, and Older adds the 10 before them, back through 90 days. Each run shows up to 40 changes, the biggest moves first. The runs and the detail behind every change are kept for 90 days. For a change you cannot find, email us within those 90 days and we look it up for you. The change log has the limits.

   Example: What this looks like on screen

   Each change reads like this: Nov 14 · 7 room types · Busy nights +10%, then "Busy nights" raised this night 10%, from $150.00 to $165.00, and a sentence such as "It was 85% full, past the 80% mark you set." The Calendar tab shows the result: each night's current price per room type.

What MAYA reads

MAYA reads only what pricing needs:

• Bookings: the stay dates, the room type, the nightly rate, and the date the booking was made. Cancellations are read the same way and taken off the count.
• Room types, and how many rooms each has: read from Cloudbeds, and counted from your list of rooms on ThinkReservations and from your spaces on Mews. Your room count and what you pay says why that matters.
• Your own rates for each night, read from your property system about once an hour, so your rate is the starting point a rule works from. This applies to Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations. Mews rates are not read.
• Property details: with Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, the property's name, time zone and currency are read at connection. On Cloudbeds the time zone and currency are checked again once a day; a live property's currency is never changed that way. With Mews we set them with you when we connect it.

Guest names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, notes and payment details are never stored. What is kept about a booking is its structure: dates, room type, price, party size as a count, and the booking channel. What MAYA reads and writes lists every field.

What MAYA sends

One nightly price per room type, and nothing else. On ThinkReservations, the other standard rate types you tick also get the same change on their own rate.

Only prices that changed go out. A night whose price has not changed since MAYA last sent it is not sent again. On your first live run, every night in the 396-night window that has a price is sent once, including nights your rules left at your own rate. A price of 0 is never sent. For a free night, type 0 in MAYA and set 0 in your property system yourself.

What MAYA never touches

• Reservations. MAYA never creates, changes or cancels a booking. So when a rule raises or cuts tonight's price, guests who have already booked keep the rate they booked at. The new price is for bookings made after it reaches your system.
• Availability, overbooking limits or room allotments.
• Minimum stays, closed-to-arrival, closed-to-departure or close-outs.
• Guests, guest profiles or guest messages.
• Packages, promotions or non-refundable plans directly, on Cloudbeds. Plans set up to follow your base rate move with it by your system's own rules. A package or plan with its own separate rate does not move. On ThinkReservations, rate types that follow your main one move with it the same way, and a standard rate type with rates of its own (a package, a wedding or group rate) gets the same change on its own rate when ticked on the PMS tab.
• Booking.com, Expedia or any other channel directly. Your property system and channel manager carry your base rate to them, as they do today.

The two words you will see everywhere

Sellable occupancy is rooms booked divided by rooms you can sell that night. Only room types you have ticked as rooms count, and rooms you have marked out of service come off first. Twelve Standard rooms, three out of service, eight booked: 89%. Sellable occupancy has a slider to try.

Booking speed is how many bookings a night received in the past day, week or month, compared with how many your own similar past nights had received by the same point before arrival. MAYA turns that into one of seven levels, from Stalled to Surging, and a rule can act on any of them. After a booking speed or pickup count rule changes a night, it counts only the bookings made since then, while that change is still on the price, and so does every weaker rule that moves the price the same way. So one burst of bookings brings one raise, not one from every rule. Standard rules (rules with no booking speed or pickup count condition) are not limited this way. Booking speed explains the levels, and Counting after a change explains the counting.

Where the prices come from

From your own rates, your own rules and your own past bookings. Nothing from outside your property.

• With Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, the starting price for a night is your own rate, read from your system.
• With Mews, no rates are read, so a Mews night has no starting price until you type one. What a guest paid is never a starting price, on any system. Mews has the detail.
• A night your system has no rate for is not priced and not sent until it has one. The day card says "No rate in Cloudbeds for this night yet" (or your system's name). Load a rate there, or type a price in MAYA.
• A rule raises or cuts the starting price by a percentage or a fixed amount, and the result stays between that room type's floor and ceiling. Floors and ceilings says where they come from.
• Booking speed compares a night with your own similar past nights: the same weekday, the same time of year, the same position around a holiday, from the last three years. It is a comparison with your own past nights, and it says nothing about your future.
• MAYA does not read competitor rates, rate shoppers, weather, events or market data. There is no feed to switch on.

MAYA counts and compares

You set the rules, and MAYA runs them against your bookings and your own past years. Each cycle it counts your bookings, compares a night with your own past nights, checks each rule you wrote, and sends the result. That is all it does. Nothing in it adjusts itself over time or builds a picture of your hotel. A rule never changes by itself. The starter rules are added at setup where you can see them, and later suggestions come as cards for you to accept or turn down.

You can check any change by hand. The change log names the rule behind it and says why it acted, and on a booking speed change the Show the numbers button opens the past nights it was compared with and the counts behind the change.

There is nothing to install. With Cloudbeds you connect from the Marketplace or by signing in, with ThinkReservations you sign in, and we connect Mews for you. With Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, starter rules come from your own history, so you are not starting from a blank page.

No forecasts

There is no forecast of occupancy or demand anywhere in MAYA. Your rules act on what is already on the books: how full a night is now, how many days away it is, how many rooms it gained in the last 1 to 30 days, and how fast it is booking compared with your own similar past nights at the same point. Booking speed describes the pace so far, not where the night will end up.

So a price moves after bookings arrive, not before them. When you know something your bookings cannot show yet, such as a festival or a wedding in town, type a price for those nights. Hold a price for an event shows how.

Who sets the prices: you do

• You write the rules. The starter rules from your history are added for you during setup and switched on, but while you are in simulation they only show what they would do. You can switch any of them off or delete them before you go live. A rule that is switched off holds the changes it already made. A deleted rule undoes them.
• You can type a price for any room type, for tonight or any night up to 399 days ahead, from the Calendar tab. It has to sit within the room type's floor and ceiling, or be 0 for a free (comp) night, and it needs Revenue Manager, General Manager or Hotel Admin access. Your typed price becomes the night's new starting point. The changes your rules had already made there are set aside, and any rule that acts after that works from your number. No rule raises a night set to 0, and a 0 is not sent, so set the night to 0 in your property system too.
• Floors and ceilings hold every rule. Each room type has a floor and a ceiling that no rule can take its price past. On ThinkReservations they hold your main rate: the other standard rate types MAYA moves get the same change on their own rate, past them if it takes them there. Setup fills them in from your answers to the five questions and, with Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, from your own rates. Check them before you go live, on the review (where you change or remove one in its box) or in the Guardrails column of the Rate Simulator tab. A price you set yourself can sit outside them (0 for a free night, or a rate you changed in your property system), and no rule takes it further out. Floors and ceilings has the detail.
• You go live. Every property starts in simulation, and an amber strip across the top of every screen says so. MAYA runs every rule and writes every change in the log, as what would have happened, but sends nothing to your system until a General Manager or Hotel Admin clicks Go live on that strip on the dashboard, or asks us to switch the property live. Going live says how.

What keeps prices in check

Each rule moves a price by the percentage or amount you set in it, and four things keep your rules in check:

• No rule takes a room type's price below its floor or above its ceiling (on ThinkReservations, your main rate's; your other standard rate types aren't held by them). Setup fills them in where your answers or your own rates give a number. Check them before you go live: a room type still at the defaults, 1.00 and 99,999.99 in your currency, is held back by nothing. Floors and ceilings has the detail.
• When three changes by one booking speed or pickup rule are on the same night's price, an amber banner asks you whether it should keep adjusting or stop for that night. Rules that keep adjusting explains it.
• Nothing is sent until you go live, so you can watch what your rules would do for as long as you like.
• You can type a price for any night, or switch any rule off, at any time. The change log shows every change and the rule behind it.

How MAYA differs from a channel manager or a rate shopper

A channel manager carries your rates to Booking.com, Expedia and the rest. A rate shopper shows you what other hotels charge. MAYA does neither. Your rules move your base rate using your own bookings, and MAYA sends the result to Cloudbeds or ThinkReservations. Your channel manager keeps distributing that rate, as it does now. Nothing about your channels changes when you connect MAYA.

Simulation first

Every property starts in simulation. Everything runs: bookings are read, rules act, prices are worked out, the change log fills. Nothing is sent. You can watch for a day or a month, type prices, add rules, and open the Rate Simulator to make up a night and see what your rules would do to it. When you are ready, you go live, and from the next run MAYA starts sending prices for the next 396 nights to Cloudbeds or ThinkReservations, nearest nights first. Simulation mode covers what changes when you do.

Who makes MAYA

MAYA is made by Modern Hospitality Solutions LLC. Support is by email, and we aim to answer within one business day. Getting help has the address and what to include.