Let's imagine your property is hosting a wedding. Secret Closures allow you to create a specific rate with a unique access code that only allows the wedding guests to book. This video demonstrates what the guest booking process looks like – both before and after entering the code.
Great! So how do I do it?
To begin, you need to create a Rate Type that your wedding guests can use.
Go to Prices > Rate Types.
Click New Rate Type.
Give your rate type a name, e.g. Hannah and John’s Wedding.
Select a price basis for your rate type. (If you’re unsure how to do this, check out this guide).
Tick Invisible to guests booking online, but can be unlocked with a code?
Enter the code you’d like guests to use e.g. SMITH2019.
Add additional features such as an expiry date or the maximum number of codes available.
Click Save Rate Type and Start Loading Prices.
Add the prices you’d like wedding guests to pay. (If you’re unsure, see this guide to using the Price Updater).
You can add prices for the night of the wedding, two nights, the full week or even the month of the wedding if you're happy for wedding guests to book longer stays.
Bear in mind that you can’t inherit prices and rules for your wedding Rate Type. This is because you'll need to add closures to the new wedding Rate Type (which won’t be applicable in the Rate Type you inherit from), as well as closures to the old Rate Type (which are different to those within the new Wedding Rate Type).
Let’s see that in action:
Next, you need to close all other Rate Types for the dates of the wedding. (Remember to send this information to any online travel agents you sell with too).
NB- AIRBnB does not understand closed rate types, so if you use AIRBnB you must block out availability on secret code days to stop them selling to non secret code guests!)
Go to Prices > Price Update.
Select the value as Closed.
Enter all the bookables and rate types you’d like to close.
Enter the dates of the wedding in the from and until boxes.
Click the days of the week.
Click Update Prices and Rules
Finally, you can add closures to the wedding Rate Type for all dates other than the wedding. This makes it really clear to the guests when and where they’re booking.
Let’s see that in action:
Now you can go to Guest View and test out the code for yourself!
Top tip: If you’d like to incentivise wedding guests to stay longer, you can leave a few days available either side of the wedding (and even give these dates preferential prices!)