The hotel and catering industry is a service industry and, depending on the circumstances, recurring costs are included in invoices to the customer. These taxable services must be listed separately by law. In some countries, for example, it is very common to include tips in the bill as a fixed rate (12.5% in the UK).
For this reason we offer the possibility to charge taxable fees according to your needs and to display them separately in the cost breakdown.
Creating a taxable fee
- Navigate to the homepage of your MICE booking engine and click on the "Taxes and Fees" button within the inventory & rates explanation text.
- If you have not yet created a fee, click on the yellow button "Create Tax/Fee Now". If you have already created one or more fees, the yellow button is hidden. Instead, click on the "Create new tax/fee" tab in the page navigation (green arrow).
- Choose whether you want to charge a fee or a tax and click on the button "Taxable Service Charge" (more information about taxes can be found here).
- Define the type of fee you want to charge. Currently you are only able to create a percentage fee. We are already working on a second option, the collection of a fixed amount per guest, which will be available shortly.
Click on the button "Percentage service charge" and then on "Next step". - You now have the option of defining the service to which the fee is to be charged. Choose at least one of the following services (you can also select several services at the same time):
a) Lodging Revenue
b) Meeting Room Revenue
c) Food & Beverage Revenue
d) Equipment Revenue - Now define the period in which the fee is to be levied. Choose either...
a) "always applies" or
b) "Fee has a specific duration"
The latter could occur if a fee is linked to a statutory calendar period. In this case, define the exact period in which the fee is to be levied.
- The penultimate step is now the definition of the percentage fee amount (1% - 100%).
- Finally, give the created fee a name so that it can be clearly assigned within the tool. The name of the fee is communicated directly to your customer, which is why you should choose your name wisely and understandable for the customer. The flag function also enables you to store names in different languages. We will show you further down in this article where the name of the fee will be communicated to the customer.
All fee rules created are listed in the overview and grouped according to active and inactive status. The status can be changed very easily by clicking on the "Activation / Deactivation button".
Representation in the cost overview
Once a fee rule has been created and activated as described above, it is immediately applied to transactions and quotes from your MICE booking engine. The following example shows how an activated rule affects the cost overview on the hotel detail page of your booking engine.
Set fee rule:
"10% fee on food & beverages".
(therefore not affected by the fee: meeting room charges, equipment and lodging services).
Effect on the cost overview:
Depending on how you have named your fee, a corresponding category with a 10% value of F&B costs will be displayed. The calculated amount is added to the total amount of all services.
Special case: Fees on lodging services
As already mentioned, you have the possibility to collect individual fees on sales from overnight stays, meeting rooms, catering and equipment. While fees for the latter services are created directly in the MICE extranet and added to the total amount as explained above, it is a little different with fees on lodging services.
In principle, the prices for overnight stays are not defined in your MICE Extranet, but directly in Expedia's Partner Central and transferred to your booking engine via an internal interface.
If you now store a fee on accommodation services in your MICE Extranet, this fee amount is not added to the total amount, but offset against it, and the offsetting amount is displayed as the fee amount. The final total amount does not increase, but remains constant.
Set fee rule:
"10% fee on overnight stays"
(therefore not affected by the fee: catering, technical and meeting room services).
Effect on the cost overview:
The cost of lodging is reduced by 10% and the difference is listed accordingly. The final total amount remains constant.
Advice: To actually add an additional fee amount to your overnight stays, it is not sufficient to create an individual fee for overnight stays in the MICE Extranet. You must also adjust your rate for the corresponding room category in Expedia's Partner Central.