Selection, Determination of Currency
HotelRSV is a multi-currency hotel booking engine and allows you to sell rooms with rates in multiple currencies. If your payment processor allows it, you can even charge in different currencies.
In HotelRSV, the Currencies are configured in the Define Agencies application. However, the Define Agencies application is not available to the hotel administrator and can only be edited by the Novohit Support Team.
If your hotel captures rates in different currencies, here are the different ways in which the guest can book in different currencies. By default, when running the HotelRSV booking app, rates will be shown in the standard currency that the hotel chooses (e.g. USD or MXN or CLP), however there are ways in which the guest can book and pay in the different currencies offered by the Hotel. Below we will see these modalities.
Remember: in order for the hotel to show availability in different currencies, you must upload Rates and Restrictions in the Seasons of each Currency.
Customer Self-Selection
The customer can change currency in the upper right-hand side of the Booking engine window:
Pre-determined selection on the hotel Web (Buttons / Links)
Depending on your business strategy, target market and the HTML5 programming capabilities of your Webmaster or Web Agency, you can dynamically implement the currency selection functionalities at the time of initialization of the booking engine as appropriate:
Booking Buttons (on Web page)
You can configure buttons according to your target. For example, if the page is in Spanish and is oriented to your customers in Chile, you can configure the buttons with the parameter data-hotelrsv-currency-code="CLP":
- <button class="rsv-app-launcher rsv-mobile-launcher otras-clases" data-hotelrsv-currency-code="CLP">
Whereas if the page is in Portuguese or English, use the parameter with value USD data-hotelrsv-currency-code="USD".
See the manual Booking Buttons - Calls to Action - Additional Parameters for more details.
If you use Wix, WPML or other plugins for multi-language websites
Wix, WPML and others detect the "localized" language of the browser, which usually carries the "localized" language of the device's operating system, which is usually tied to the language and country of the device owner. Once the language is detected, it automatically redirects to the page in the corresponding language. Example: www.hotel-excelente.com/en-us (for US English), www.hotel-excelente.com/pt-br (for Brazilian Portuguese).
This methodology is standard and is much more effective than geolocation (which can be rejected by the user) or IP detection (which is expensive and can be bypassed with VPN or Apple Relay).
Follow the WPML or Wix guidelines for implementing these solutions.
URL One Click Launcher (newsletter, social network links, chat links)
For Links, if your campaign is for customers in Mexico, the link to the booking can have the parameter currency_code=MXN, example: www.hotel-excelente.com/landing_promo/?f_name=hrsv_launcher&lead_src=campaign183¤cy_code=MXN
See the manual Call to Reservation URLs and Direct Links - Parameters.
Reservation Conditions and Rate Type
Remember: every buyer must accept the Terms and Conditions before booking. They are legally binding and support you. We recommend that you keep your terms simple and up to date at app.hotelrsv.com > Settings > General > Reservation Conditions. This is where you should indicate which restrictions apply according to national tax law.
This information can also be added in the rate description in Settings > General > Rate Type.
Why not to use Geolocation or IP?
Most of the public Internet engines or portals oriented to the sale of products or services do not implement such restrictions as they have an extremely high and costly level of complexity that would risk preventing the sale and would require high investment. This is because there are cases that are virtually impossible to cover such as:
(a) Persons with dual nationality.
b) Nationals abroad
c) Foreigners in national territory (who make last minute purchases).
d) People with VPN or similar products (Apple Private Relay).
These cases can NOT be covered in their entirety by virtually any portal, in fact Booking, Expedia, Amazon, do NOT implement these restrictions due to their high complexity.
Rather, the standard techniques mentioned here are implemented, which as a whole can reduce the frequency of situations that may generate tax conflict.
The dynamic determination of the currency is left to the Web site developer's strategy to give full freedom and flexibility in its implementation. With the indicated manuals, your developer can make the necessary programming according to your strategy or business rules of preference to determine the currency to be pre-selected at the time of execution of the application.