Maximum recommended hotel rate

The Hotel median rate feature has been renamed to Maximum recommended hotel rate. The Maximum recommended hotel rate setting now allows administrators to set the calculation based on either the median or mean rate as well as providing a few more features.

The Maximum Recommended Hotel Rate allows you to use either the median or mean rate to generate the base value that will be used to calculate your recommended maximum rate. The difference between these calculation methods is described below:

• Median rate: The middle value when all comparable rates are sorted from lowest to highest. This means, the value at which half of the comparable rates are higher and half are lower.
  • For example, assume a hotel search returns five comparable hotels with nightly rates of USD 200, USD 220, USD 250, USD 300, and USD 950. The median rate is USD 250 (the middle value).
• Mean rate: The average of all comparable rates. Every rate contributes to this value, so a few unusually expensive or low-cost properties can shift this value significantly.
  • For example, assume a hotel search returns five comparable hotels with nightly rates of USD 200, USD 220, USD 250, USD 300, and USD 950. The mean rate is USD 384 (i.e., a total of all rates divided by 5).

Once enabled, any hotels which exceed this median or mean rate (plus any buffer you provide) will be marked as out of policy.  

You can customize the factors taken into account when calculating the median rate, ensuring that hotels located too far away or outside a range of approved star ratings are not included in the calculation. You can also set whether taxes and fees should be included in the calculation and whether the maximum rate should be displayed to travelers in their hotel searches and rate comparisons.

The median/mean rate calculation parameters can only be defined within the default policy. This ensures that a consistent formula is used when calculating the median/mean rate. However, the buffer above median/mean rate that is added to the calculation can be customized for any policy

To enable and configure the maximum recommended hotel rate

The specific name of the settings in this section will differ slightly depending on how you set the Calculation method field. For example, if you set the calculation method to Mean rate, then the buffer setting will be called Buffer above mean rate. In most cases, the procedure below will refer to this variability as "median/mean". 

1. Select Policies from the Program menu. 

2. Expand the Policy menu on the left.

3. Select the Default Policy (or other policy) from the menu. 

4. Expand the Hotel section.

5. Scroll down to locate the  Recommended maximum rate section.

6. Enable the toggle to turn on Recommended maximum rate feature. Note: Once enabled for the default policy, this feature will automatically be enabled for all other policies, but only the Buffer above median/mean rate setting can be customized on those other policies. 

7. Set the Buffer above median/mean rate field. This setting allows you to set a specific percentage or amount above the median/mean rate value that will still be considered in policy for hotel rates (e.g., if median/mean rate was calculated to be $100 and the buffer was set to 15%, any hotel rate under $115 would still be in policy with this feature enabled). This setting can be set individually for each policy (or linked to the default policy value).   

8. Enable the Tax and fees toggle if you want to include taxes and fees in the calculation used to generate the median/mean rate. 

9. Set the Star rating range fields. You do this by selecting the minimum and maximum number of stars a hotel can have to be considered when calculating the median/mean rate. Only rates for hotels within this star rating range will be used to calculate the median/mean rate. 

10. Set the Search radius field to the desired number of miles/kilometers. This is the radius in miles/kilometers around a location searched by your travelers and is used to determine which hotels will be considered when calculating the median/mean rate.

11. Set the Limit calculation to preferred properties only field. By default, the median/mean rate is calculated using all the comparable hotels returned in the search results. However, if you want the calculated rate to only include the rates of preferred properties then you can use this toggle to limit the calculation to preferred properties only.

12. Enable the Show maximum recommended rate to travelers toggle if you want the median/mean rate (plus any buffer) to be displayed to travelers in search results. When enabled, travelers will see the maximum recommended rate for the location they searched at the top of their search results.

13. Click Save changes when done. 

Related Topics

• Set hotel property exclusions
• Restrict hotel bookings by keyword
• Set lowest property rate at hotel property
• Restrict hotel bookings by room rate conditions