Last week’s Niseko Classic 2024 marked the 11th event of its name—and the 9th year since it became an official UCI Gran Fondo World Series qualifier event.

This year’s 150km and 80km flagship racers had to show even more resilience and technical skill in their battle against gravity and the elements; tackling the Classic’s winding climbs, speedy descents and historically rare bouts of inclement weather, amidst another incredible turnout for Niseko’s premier summer sporting event.

RoomBoss is once again proud to have been a sponsor of the Niseko Classic, which proved to be another resounding success this year!

Great passion and determination was demonstrated by all involved, with ever-impressive riders, a fantastic spectator showing, and incredible local support—all tied together by an eclectic range of events, stalls and eateries for spectators and competitors alike to enjoy throughout the weekend.

As you may know, RB offers a POS for customer-facing sales. Our POS provides a quick and easy way to sell non-accommodation products and services. It’s integrated with Square Terminal for payments, and Epson thermal printers for receipts and tickets. Two exciting new POS features were released!

New Room Charge Functionality

In addition to charging by credit card etc, now PMS users are able to room charge.
Rooms that are checked-in can be selected for charging. Guest name(s) are displayed to help ensure the right room is charged.

POS-only User Role

It’s possible to provide a user with access only to POS (no access to other parts of the system). This can be appropriate in situations such as a hotel restaurant that’s operated by an external contractor. Our POS allows them to room charge, while avoiding access to any PMS functions.

As well as limiting a user to POS, it’s possible to limit which vendors they have access to. In the restaurant case, this allows charging for meals while preventing restaurant staff from purchasing ski lessons etc.

We’re excited to extend a big RoomBoss welcome to Shun, the latest member of our growing Client Success squad.

Prior to joining the RoomBoss team, Shun leveraged his business and communications skills at Amazon Web Services Japan, playing a role at the world’s leading cloud service provider.

During his free time, Shun has honed his communication and creative problem-solving skills to perfection as a veteran Dungeon Master, and can often be found crafting new questlines for his three-year long ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

His creativity and adaptability go beyond the dice rolls, allowing him to provide seamless insight and front-line support—no matter what our users encounter.

With such a diverse background and unique approach to looking at problems, we can’t wait to see what else you’ll bring to the table—welcome to the team, Shun!

Flywire is now supported by RoomBoss Widget Payments, making it quick & easy for guests to make international payments—without ever leaving the booking engine.

Once enabled and a booking is made, Book and Pay guests are immediately presented with a “Pay Now” button, allowing them to choose from a variety of payment methods (including card and bank-transfer) via the Flywire checkout screen.

As with all Flywire payments, Card Tokenisation is also supported, allowing you to securely authorise payment methods for future use when the Save Customer & Card setting is enabled.

Widget Payments are available for Accommodation Booking Engines using Flywire and Stripe—contact us at support@roomboss.com for more information, or for assistance getting started.

The new “Staying” column on our PMS Room Status page allows users to quickly see whether a room is occupied or vacant at a glance.

The “Staying” column also provides detailed information about the current or upcoming booking for each room, including the booking ID, check-in and check-out dates, and the current check-in status. This feature is designed to assist accommodation staff in making informed decisions about accepting walk-in guests, thereby improving efficiency and enhancing the guest experience.

It is now possible for the account Admin User and users who have been granted the new Rate Restrictions Override role to select any rate plan on a booking—even when restrictions such as minimum days to check-in are not met.

For these users, the system will now show all rate plans, regardless of restrictions, when:

• Selecting rate plans when making or editing bookings
• Viewing rate plans on the Search & Quote page
• Viewing rate plans on the Price Calculator page

To grant users this role, navigate to the Users page, edit the user you wish to update, and add the Rate Restrictions Override role.

Two exciting new ECS features providing enhanced control of vendor & product settings were released this week!

Hide Product Options from Agents & Direct Customers

Accessible by editing a product on the Product Details screen, the new setting allows you to designate specific Product Options as “Hidden”.

When checked, the product option will be visible only for bookings made inside your account, and will not show to agents or direct customers.

Per-Vendor Invoice Strategies

Where previously all ECS/SSMS vendors within an account shared a single set of rules, users are are now able to define Invoice Strategies on a per-vendor basis, allowing fine-grained control of Invoice & Cancellation Policies between vendors.

To use a new strategy for an ECS/SSMS vendor, simply create a strategy via Invoicing & Cancellation Strategy, then navigate to the Policy tab in the Product Details page. Select the newly created strategy in the Override Invoicing & Cancellation Strategy section, and save.

Once a new booking comes in for this vendor, the invoice will be automatically created by the selected strategy.  When no specific strategy is selected in the Policy tab, the Default invoicing strategy will apply.