What Is the Rules Framework for Hotel Administration?

The Administration Portal is designed to provide configuration flexibility in order to accommodate the various business models of the hotel industry. This flexibility is achieved through a framework of rules.

Rules are managed at three levels:

•Chain level

•Brand level

•Property level

The rules defined are inherited from the top level (chain) to the lowest level (property). However, rules can also be defined at each level, or inherited rules can be discarded, according to requirements. This ensures that you can either have a high level of compliance to brand or chain standards, or give greater freedom to properties.

If different rules apply to the same area, the system verifies that rules are coherent and not redundant.

There are two basic types of behaviour for rules: cumulative and exclusive.

Cumulative Rules

For cumulative rules, all the rules matching the input criteria apply at the same time.

Example of a Cumulative Rule

The Additional Language rule is used to set the additional languages in which a property can be described.

Table: Additional Languages Rule Example

Brand-level	Property-level	Additional Languages
Brand A	–	Spanish, French, German
Brand A	Property 1	English, Italian

In this example, all hotel properties belonging to Brand A can define content in Spanish, French and German. However, Property 1 can also define content in English and Italian in addition to the brand languages.

Exclusive Rules

With exclusive rules, only one rule can be applied at a time.

When multiple rules can potentially apply, a weighing mechanism determines which rule has the highest priority. This is the rule used by the system.

The weighing mechanism gives a weight to each optional criteria set for a rule. When evaluating the weight of each rule, it calculates the sum of the weights of all the optional criteria belonging to that rule. The rule having the highest weight at a given time applies.

In effect, the rule that applies is the one containing the most specific details, conditions, and restrictions.

Some business rules are period-dependant. Period-dependant rules are a special type of exclusive rule where the optional criterion evaluated by the rule weighing mechanism is time. These rules are used to define generic rules for long periods of time as well as more specific rules to manage special behaviours on specific days.

Table: Exclusive Rule Management

Rule Type	Description
Default Rules	Default rules are created either by the system during the initialization process, or by you to act as a catch-all if no other more specific rule has been set. These rules are defined for long periods and are composed of basic, generic criteria. Default rules have the smallest weight and all other types of rules can replace them.
Standard Rules	Standard rules are used to define your normal working process. Standard rules are often period-dependant or only apply on certain days of the week. This enables you to set other working rules in parallel, for example: to set a different price for rooms sold during the working week and on weekends. These rules replace the default rule whenever they exist.
Exception Rules	Exception rules are used to define extra conditions or restrictions for specific periods or events. These rules override the standard rules and are used to manage special needs without recreating a complete rule structure. For example, exception rules are used to cater for out-of-order rooms. They carry the highest weight, but typically only apply for limited periods as they are used to manage exceptional situations.