Keyword

Definition

Account

Accounts are the individual company profile records for your customers.

An account contains crucial information about the client, such as an address, phone, and fax, location and link to the customer’s website, if available, industry in which the customer is involved, product interests, special contract rates, etc.

There are master accounts and sub-accounts to group parent companies and affiliated subsidiaries.

Activity

An activity is a task that you want to carry out by a certain date and time.

Activities can include emails, phone calls, letters, faxes, meetings, visits, contract negotiations, etc. NetHotel Sales helps you automate the process of recording activities.

Activities are always attached to the contact person of an account, i.e. call the contact with the new rate offers or to wish happy birthday.

According to the selected activity type, NetHotel Sales will offer corresponding templates, default email addresses or fax numbers, and merge other contact data. However, for sending emails and faxes directly from the activity screen, special software is required, e.g. Outlook for emails, Tobit Faxware for faxes.

Agent

Agents are the profile records for all your intermediaries (i.e. travel agents, incentive agencies, organizing agencies, etc.)

Just like regular accounts agent accounts contain crucial information about the intermediary with whom you are working. In NetHotel Sales you can link accounts to agents and agents to accounts.

Contact

Contact persons are your links to an account or agent. Contacts are the bookers and decision-makers you deal with in your booking and contract negotiations, on the phone, and for your visits.

Activities in NetHotel Sales are always linked to a contact. You can determine a primary contact for each account, i.e. the main person to deal with when working with this customer.

Contract

Contracts are binding written agreements between the customer and the hotel or chain.

They usually contain information regarding the expected room nights or revenue the customer has negotiated in return for a special contract rate. Contracts can define general conditions for the number of room nights per year for a customer and the respective company rate or refer to a specific booking scenario.
(See also distribution)

Distribution

Distribution is a process by which users transfer enriched account data from within NetHotel Sales to the PMS systems of all or selected hotels. Enriched data typically includes profile information of accounts and/or contract details. This ensures that all linked hotels are kept up-to-date.

Subsequent changes to the data in NetHotel Sales trigger an automatic redistribution to all subscribed hotels.

Event

An event is an occasion or happening linked to a certain date or time range.

Events can be meetings, trade shows, receptions, exhibitions, or any other occasion that may have a bearing on your bookings.

Function

A function is an event that takes place in your hotel.

Function space

The function space in a hotel covers all non-sleeping rooms that can be reserved and sold individually or in combination for certain events or other occasions.

Hotel ID

The hotel ID is a code made up of numbers and/or letters that serve as a unique identifier of a hotel in the hotel group.

It is crucial for the data synchronization of hotels linked into NetHotel. The hotel ID does not affect your individual daily work.

Incentive

An incentive is a motivation or team-building event for the employees or clients of a customer, for example, a bonus trip for all employees that have achieved a certain goal.

Industry codes

Industry codes are used to determine the various working sectors in which the account is involved.

For example, hardware, software, e-commerce, consulting, etc.

Leads

A lead is an inquiry to one or more selected hotels about a potential booking with the request for a corresponding offer from the hotel.

In NetHotel Sales, you can record a potential booking and create corresponding leads. The system will automatically fill the lead with the booking data, such as arrival and departure dates, number of rooms, etc.

You can send the lead to the selected contact at the hotel by email or fax directly from NetHotel Sales, provided you have e.g. Outlook, Lotus Notes, and/or Tobit Faxware.

Master account

A master account is the highest account in the corporate hierarchy of a company with branches and subsidiaries. Master accounts are at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

An account in NetHotel Sales is a master account if sub-accounts have been attached to the account and the account itself is not attached to a higher account.

NetHotel Sales allows for an unlimited number of layers in this hierarchy.

Member ID

A member ID is equal to the account number of a NetHotel Sales account. Using member IDs and passwords customers can log into the web portal of the hotel group.

Merge

Merging is a function NetHotel Sales offers to eliminate duplicate accounts by consolidating them into one account in order to improve data quality.

Mobile field sales

This term is used for the sales representatives who work out in the field and do not have an office at the hotel or headquarter.

NextGuest B2B

NextGuest B2B (former: Serenata NetHotel) links all properties of a group into one central database. This enables the exchange of local business data such as guest history, statistics, revenue details, and profile information of guests, companies, and travel agents from the individual hotels in the group on a chain-wide level.

Offer

An offer is a proposal for an agreement referring to a certain amount of room nights, a special rate, or an event booking.

Offline hotel

An offline hotel is a hotel that is not part of Serenata NetHotel.

PMS

Property Management System – also called Front Office system; IT solution for the front office of the hotel.

PMS account

PMS accounts are company or agent profiles from the Property Management Systems of the hotels.

They contain the actual revenue, stay and reservation details pertaining to a corresponding Sales account. (This information is extracted from the individual hotels in the chain by Serenata NetHotel and transferred to NetHotel Sales.)

With NetHotel Sales you can assign PMS accounts to sales accounts and promote PMS accounts to sales accounts.

Potentials

Potentials are details from the customer regarding a prospective booking including probable room nights and persons and possibly the budget the customer can spend or has paid in the past for the same or similar bookings.

Primary contact

A primary contact is the main person to deal with when working with this customer.

(See contact.)

Primary sales rep

A primary sales rep is the owner of the account; he has all rights to the account and may carry out changes.

(See secondary sales rep.)

Production

Productivity of an account. How much revenue and stays have an account generated over a certain amount of time.

This information is generated through the PMS accounts.

Profile

A profile is a data summary for a person, agent, or account containing crucial information about the respective subject, such as an address, interests, special requirements, etc.

In the Front Office section of a hotel the term profile is used to denote the accounts (individual guests, companies, agents, and sources) of the hotel.

Promote

You can promote PMS accounts to sales accounts if you want an individual sales rep to take care of this account. The sales rep can then proceed to develop a customer-focused strategy in order to obtain more revenue from this new account.

Sales account

A sales account is a company profile in NetHotel Sales. This term is only used if it is necessary to make a clear distinction for the reader between accounts in NetHotel Sales (which are owned by a given sales rep) and PMS accounts (i.e. company and agent profiles owned by the front office system.)

(See PMS accounts.)

Sales rep/ representative

A sales representative (sales rep) is a person responsible for selling rooms, group rooms, and function space for a hotel or hotel chain.

In NetHotel Sales, the sales rep is any member of the sales team to whom accounts, contacts, or activities might be assigned. This is independent of the real position of the person (which might range from Director of Sales to Sales Assistant).

(See primary sales rep and secondary sales rep.)

Sales team

A sales team in NetHotel Sales consists of sales reps and possibly other persons (such as for instance a Sales Assistant) who work together and may have varying access rights to the accounts administrated in NetHotel Sales.
Usually, members of a sales team are allowed to view the accounts assigned to other sales reps belonging to their team. For further information on teams and sales reps, see “About Team Leaders and Secondary Sales Reps” on page 24.

Secondary sales rep

The secondary sales rep of an account has rights to view the account for information purposes, add contacts and activities. Unless he has been assigned additional rights a secondary sales rep cannot make any other changes.

(See primary sales rep.)

Sub-account

Any account linked to another account (i.e. the respective parent company or headquarter) is called a sub-account.

Sub-accounts can also be parent accounts when one or more sub-accounts are in turn linked to the record.

Task

A task is a job or duty that has to be carried out for a contact.

In NetHotel Sales tasks are recorded in the form of an activity. Activities can range from a phone call to a visit.