First rates and prices: launch sequence

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Why	Take an empty property to “something to sell”: without a rate plan and prices per date, neither your website nor the channels can show an offer.
Who	New hotels going through the launch checklist; administrators without an IT background.
What you’ll get	Your property has a base rate plan attached to room types, with prices set day by day — and the Booking Engine is ready to show it to guests.
Limitations	This is the launch sequence, not a full tour of rate plans: the tree, inheritance, and selling restrictions live in the rates articles. The widget and the channels are connected separately; channels are not covered here.

Rates and prices are what the guest ultimately pays for, so nothing on your website or in the channels will work without this step. The sequence is four steps: the rate plan, attaching it to room types, prices per date, and turning on selling on your website. This is the third step of the launch checklist: by this point the property profile and the room inventory are already in place.

Step 1. Create a rate plan

A rate plan is the set of selling rules: the meal plan, the cancellation terms, restrictions. Prices for specific dates are set separately — that is step three — but without a rate plan the prices have nothing to attach to, so start here.

Open “Rates” in the left menu.
Create your first rate plan — for example, “Standard Rate”. This is the property’s base rate plan: a convenient parent for the others to inherit from.
Pick the meal plan. The built-in types are: RO — room only, BB — with breakfast, HB — half board (breakfast + lunch or dinner), FB — full board, AI — all inclusive.
Set the cancellation terms — each rate plan has its own.

Later, once the base is working, you can add child rate plans — for example, a non-refundable plan that inherits the “Standard Rate” prices at a discount. How the tree and inheritance work is covered in the rate plans article.

Result: the base rate plan is in place — meals and cancellation terms are set.

Don’t confuse a rate with your subscription plan: the subscription pays for the HotelsCalendar service itself, while the rate plan is the rules under which you sell rooms to guests.

Step 2. Attach the rate plan to room types

A rate plan does not apply to the whole property at once — only to the room types you tick in it.

Open the rate plan you created and tick the room types it sells — you created them in “Rooms” at the previous step of the launch.
The nightly price is calculated for the combination of rate plan, room type, and date: the same rate plan can cost differently for a Standard and a Suite.
Inside a room type, prices are set for occupancy options — party makeups like “2 adults”: a room type has a base option, and the others are set as a surcharge or a discount.
Rate plans also decide the storefront: a room type not ticked in a rate plan is not sold on your website.

One base rate plan covering all room types is enough to start; splitting room types across rate plans can wait until you need a different pricing policy.

Result: the rate plan has room types — time to set prices.

Step 3. Set prices for your dates

Prices are set in the “Price Manager” — that is also where they will live and change day to day.

Open the “Price Manager” in the left menu — the Calendar tab opens.
Pick a rate plan, room types, and a start date: rows are room types with their occupancy options, columns are dates.
Change the price for a specific date by clicking its cell — the editor opens right in the cell and saves instantly; there is no separate “save” step. Next to the price field, the editor has restriction fields: minimum stay, closed arrival and departure.
For a season, use the “Bulk update” tab: the period, room types, days of the week (with the quick buttons “Weekdays”, “Weekend”, and “All”), the way to change prices (“Set price”, ”+/− amount”, ”+/− percent”) — and a preview of the affected dates before anything is applied.
To read your prices, use the Calendar tab: the price of every date is visible at a glance, and you can page the 14-day window forward and back.
Meal prices are managed in the same manager — in the ”+ Meals” mode.

Result: the rate-plan-and-room-type combination has daily prices — from a single date to a whole season ahead.

Learn more → Change prices: one date or in bulk.

Step 4. Turn on selling on your website

Rates and prices are ready — now give guests a way to use them. The Booking Engine is connected separately from the rate plans.

The module’s settings live in the “Online booking” section in the left menu.
On your website the module lands as a widget: open the “Embed code” page and paste the two lines of code into your website page.
In the widget the guest sees exactly your rate plans: they pick the dates, then a room type, then a rate plan with its price — and book without leaving your site.
Without prices for the dates, the module shows no offer: if the dates a guest is searching for have no price, they will not see an option for those dates.

Result: the website is ready to sell — the rate plan with daily prices is visible to guests in the widget.

Learn more → Booking Engine.

How to check that everything works is a separate article: a test booking before your first guests.

Common mistakes

Prices exist only for the nearest dates. Guests often plan ahead: the widget calendar shows prices up to 370 days ahead. Fill in at least the next few months and extend the horizon as the season approaches — the Calendar tab helps you lay in the seasonality once, instead of revisiting prices every week.
Prices exist, but the rate plan is not attached to room types. A price lives in the “rate plan × room type × date” combination: if no room type is ticked in the rate plan, the prices have nothing to apply to and the website has nothing to sell. Go back to step 2 and check the ticks.
Promising zero commission. Do not promise guests “zero commission on everything” — not in the rate plan description or anywhere else. The engine charges no commission: the hotel pays only the subscription, and the engine adds no fees to your price — but card processing is handled by a third-party acquirer with its own terms. The correct phrasing: “no engine fees”.