Room types and rooms out of service

Where it is

Open the PMS tab. Under the connection cards sits a section headed Room types, with a ? beside the heading. Everyone on the property can see it. Ticking or unticking Counts as a room needs General Manager access or higher, since it changes the room count you are billed for. Below that the boxes show what is saved, greyed out, and the ? says "A General Manager or Hotel Admin can change which room types count as rooms." Adding or clearing rooms out of service needs Revenue Manager access or higher.

The list

One row per active room type, in name order. Each row shows the room type's name, its unit count ("12 units"), a small tag when it is unticked, and the checkbox Counts as a room. The tag reads "not a room" when the room type has been unticked, and "needs your answer" when nobody has ticked or unticked it yet. A room type that is not ticked is dimmed. A row you have changed and not saved shows "Not saved" beside its box.

On a property with room groups (on ThinkReservations, its Room Group column), the rows sit under a heading for each group, in group order: the group's name and its units, such as "Garden 8 units", the units of all its room types. Within a group the rows run in name order with numbers in order, so Garden 2 comes before Garden 10. Room types in no group come last under "Other". Each row, its box and Save work exactly as above.

While the list loads you see a grey placeholder. If it cannot load: "Couldn't load room types." with Try again. Before the first sync: "No room types have synced yet."

Counts as a room

A ticked room type is one guests sleep in. Ticked room types are what MAYA divides by. They make up:

• the sellable count behind sellable occupancy, on the day card and in every occupancy rule,
• the rooms and room revenue behind RevPAR, which a day can show and the calendar's colours rank,
• the room count you are billed for.

A room type tagged "needs your answer" is one nobody has ticked or unticked yet, whose name reads like something nobody sleeps in (see "How MAYA proposes the answer" below). It shows unticked and is left out of your bill until you answer. Until then it still counts in occupancy and in the calendar's revenue per room. Tick it if guests sleep there, press Save, and it joins your bill. If they do not, tick it and untick it again, then press Save: it then shows "not a room" and leaves occupancy and the calendar's count too. The ? beside the heading says the same in one line, and that your ticks wait for Save.

Untick a room type and it leaves all three. Its bookings also leave the history booking speed reads, so a court selling six slots a night cannot read as the hotel filling up. It is still priced, and sent when you are live, like any other room type, and its revenue still counts in the day card's revenue figure, though not in the ADR or RevPAR a day can show, or in the calendar's colours.

A rule cannot measure an unticked room type. A rule that measures only unticked types measures nothing and never fires. When an occupancy rule measured a mix, the change log says which were left out: "That 82% leaves out Meeting Room." Measure one set of room types, change another has the detail.

Saving your answers

Ticking or unticking a box changes only the screen. Under the list a strip appears: "1 change not saved" (or "3 changes not saved"), with Save and Discard. A box you tick back to where it was saved is no longer a change, except on a type tagged "needs your answer", where ticking and unticking is your "not a room" answer. Discard puts every box back as it was saved. Save (it reads Saving… while it works) saves every change in one go. The boxes cannot be changed while it works.

Your room count is checked again the moment you save. The room count you are billed for is measured from the ticked room types straight away, the same way every sync measures it, instead of at the next sync. If it is now no more than you are billed for, the amber "You're billed for 20 rooms but running 22" banner at the top of the dashboard goes at once, without a reload, and no email or correction follows. If more rooms are still counted than you are billed for, the banner stays, with the new numbers. Your room count and what you pay explains both fixes.

After a save, the strip gives way to one line: "Saved.", or, while more rooms are counted than you are billed for, both numbers, for example "Saved. 22 rooms are counted and you're billed for 20." If a save fails you see the reason, or "That didn't save. Try again." The list then shows what is saved, and the strip stays with the changes that did not save, ready to try again.

Changes not saved are kept in this browser tab, for each property: they are still there after you switch to another tab of the dashboard, open another page such as Billing, or reload, and switching property shows that property's own. Closing or reloading the page while changes are not saved makes your browser ask first, since closing the browser tab loses them.

Your rules then run again across the 396-night window, since every occupancy figure has moved: within a few minutes for the coming nights, and over the next few cycles for the furthest, nearest nights first. A save of several changes asks for one run. Each change is recorded with who made it. Saving needs General Manager access or higher; a save from below that is refused with "This needs General Manager access or higher on this property." Thirty saves in ten minutes is the limit, per person, shared with prices you type and rooms you take out of service: past it, "That's a lot of room-type changes at once. Give it a minute and try again."

How MAYA proposes the answer

When your history is first imported, MAYA reads each room type's name. A name with a word that is never a bedroom (parking, boardroom, conference, meeting, storage, a kayak store) and no bedroom word beside it is proposed as not a room and shown unticked on the review screen, where one click puts it right. Bedroom words are words like king, queen, double, twin, suite, studio, villa, cabin and bed; "room" on its own is not one, since "Meeting Room" has it too.

Two things win over such a word, and the type waits for your answer instead of being unticked:

• A bedroom word. "King Room with Parking", "Queen, Free Parking Included", "Studio with Storage" and "Conference Suite" are bedrooms by their names.
• A nightly rate like your rooms'. Once the import has read your bookings, a type proposed as not a room whose usual rate is between a third of and three times your rooms' usual rate goes back to waiting for your answer. Your rooms' usual rate is the middle of the usual rates of your room types whose names read like bedrooms, and the type needs at least 5 booked room nights for its rate to count. A parking bay at $20 a night beside $200 rooms stays unticked, while an "Executive Conference Room" that sells at $190 waits for your answer.

A name that only might not be a bedroom (a "Pool Cabana", a "Spa Deluxe") waits for your answer too. Every type that waits shows unticked on the review screen with a "needs your answer" tag, and the review asks "Is "Pool Cabana" actually a room?". Until you answer, it counts in occupancy and in your starter rules, and is left out of your bill.

None of this happens on a property that is already live: there an import unticks nothing, and every name that reads like something nobody sleeps in waits for your answer.

After that, MAYA never unticks a room type on its own. A new room type from your system whose name reads like a bedroom arrives ticked as a room. If its name reads like something nobody sleeps in, it waits for your answer: it shows unticked, tagged "needs your answer", and counts in occupancy (your existing rules do not include it, see "What a new room type starts with" below), but it is left out of your bill until you answer. To answer, tick it if it is a room, or, if it is not, tick it and untick it again, then press Save. A sync never overwrites an answer you have given. You can change any room type from the PMS tab at any time.

Rooms out of service

Under each room type, click + Rooms out of service. A short form opens:

Click Save (it reads Saving… while it works) or Cancel. The block then lists under the room type as "2 out of service", the first and last night, "· Renovation", and Clear.

For those nights only, the units come off the room type's sellable count, for your rules, on the calendar day card and in the RevPAR the calendar's colours rank. Occupancy then reads against what you can sell, so an occupancy rule does not stay quiet because a renovated wing looks empty. Take every room of a type out of service and, for those nights, that type drops out of occupancy altogether, any bookings on it too, in your rules and on the day card alike. Nothing is sent to your property system. Your rules run again on those nights within a few minutes of saving.

Limits and messages

Clearing a block

Click Clear beside the block. The rooms are back on sale from the next run, within a few minutes. MAYA keeps a record of the block and who cleared it, but it no longer shows. A block already cleared by someone else answers "That block is already cleared."

There is no edit. To change a block's dates or units, clear it and add a new one.

Booking speed is not changed by a block

A block changes sellable occupancy, the rooms left count and the rooms to sell a booked so far vs usual rule reads, and nothing else. Booking speed counts the bookings a night has received against what similar past nights had, and a room off sale changes neither count. Booking speed explains the count. A booked so far vs usual rule works its usual out on the night's rooms to sell, so a block makes each percent fewer rooms and never makes a night read as behind. Blocks on nights already past aren't used. Read Booked so far vs usual.

Blocks in your property system are not read

MAYA reads bookings and rates from your system, not room blocks, out-of-order rooms or allotments. A wing you close in Cloudbeds, ThinkReservations or Mews still counts as sellable in MAYA until you enter it here. This is also why MAYA's occupancy can differ from your system's headline figure. Occupancy looks wrong walks through the differences.

Room types added, removed or resized in your system

What a new room type starts with

Delete a room type in your system and create it again, and your system treats it as a new room type. So does MAYA, even when the name is the same. Nothing carries over from the old one. On Cloudbeds the old one is switched off by the next daily read, as above, so for up to a day you may see two room types with the same name. On ThinkReservations the old one is switched off on the next cycle. On Mews it stays: email us and we switch it off.

A brand new room type, or a rebuilt one, starts like this:

• Your rules do not cover it. A rule covers the room types that were selected when you saved it. A room type added later is not in any of your rules, not even one that covered every room type you had. That goes for rules you built and for the starter rules. The Room Types column on the Rules tab shows what each rule changes.
• It has no history. The old type's past stays remain under the old type, so the new one starts with none. A booking speed rule that measures only the new type has nothing to compare with, so it stays quiet at first. Once the type has bookings of its own, readings with fewer than 5 similar nights are capped at one step. A booked so far vs usual rule that measures every room type reads a type your property system stopped listing on the nights it sold, so a type replaced by new ones reads as the rooms it was. Read Room types that started selling later.
• Occupancy works at once. An occupancy rule that measures it reads its bookings against its units from the first cycle. A pickup count rule that measures it waits until MAYA has kept a record of the type for the whole lookback (1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days).
• Its floor and ceiling are MAYA's defaults, $1.00 and $99,999.99, which stop nothing in the currencies MAYA works in. They stay there until real ones are set for it. A suggestion card is the quickest way (below).
• Prices you typed stay with the old type. A manual price belongs to one room type, so the new type starts without any.
• Its units are its own: read from Cloudbeds, counted from your list of rooms on ThinkReservations, or counted from your spaces on Mews, as the tabs above explain.

To bring the new type into your pricing, add a rule for it, or change an existing rule to include it. A saved rule cannot take on a room type, so changing one means deleting it and adding it again with the new type selected. Change a rule walks through it.

Then, on the Rules tab, click Get suggestions from my data. The review can offer a floor card and a ceiling card for any room type still at a default. For a type with no history yet, the cards offer your answers to the five questions, if you gave them. Without those, a floor card needs at least 30 room nights sold in that room type, and a ceiling card needs at least 200. A room night is one room for one night at a rate above 0, so a room type with 12 rooms can reach 30 in three full nights. Floors and ceilings has the detail.

Something to try