1) What is SMARTROOMS?
Ans: SMARTROOMS is a web-based Hotel Room Reservation software. SMARTROOMS Room Reservation Software is integrated with your Hotel's website and the entire Room Reservation process takes place under your Hotel's Website(Domain) name.

2) Why is SMARTROOMS Licensed and Not Sold?
Ans: SMARTROOMS is a web-based Hotel Room Reservation software. The software is not installed at the Hotel's Personal Computers nor is it offered on a CD or as a Download. SMARTROOMS is installed on Our Web-Servers located at a Data-Center. The web-servers are maintained by Point 2 Point Communications and all costs like annual data center costs, software license fees, bandwidth costs, server backup costs, server maintenance costs, software maintenance costs, etc... are paid by Point 2 Point Communications. Since, these costs are recurring in nature, SMARTROOMS is licensed to the Hotel and the recurring costs are recovered from setup fees, sales commissions, transaction fees and application hosting fees as long as the Hotel uses the SMARTROOMS software.

3) What are the different License options Available?
Ans: SMARTROOMS is a room reservation software that is integrated with YOUR Hotel's website, You can SELL YOUR Hotel rooms online through your OWN Website. There are 2 Types of SMARTROOMS Licenses: TRANSACTION TOKENS and CORE License.

Transaction-Tokens License: No Commissions, No Monthly Fees. One Transaction Token is charged per booking; irrespective of the booking amount. You do not pay any commissions on total revenue or fixed monthly fees.

CORE: No Monthly Fees. Sign-up for the CORE License and pay a small annual license fee and commissions on sales. No Monthly Fees, No Annual Hosting Fees, No Maintenance Fees. Pay Commissions only when you receive a Booking through SMARTROOMS.

4) Are there any restrictions to the number of Rooms that our Hotel Can sell online?
Ans: There is no Limit to the number of Hotel Rooms that you can sell under the CORE and Transaction Tokens License.

5) I want to accept credit cards.
Ans: Choose the CORE License.

6) What is a Payment Gateway?
Ans: In order to accept credit cards online you need a payment gateway. A payment gateway is basically the same thing as a physical point of sale (POS) terminal in a retail store. Instead of a POS Terminal you get a Virtual Terminal that allows the customer to input their credit card information.

Payment gateways:
* Securely Store and Authenticate credit card transactions over the Internet
* Send/receive transactions over the wire using the secure socket layer (usually128-bit encryption behind a firewall)

In short, Payment gateways link the virtual terminal ("buy" page) to the merchant account at the credit card organization securely. This protects the credit card data and any other personal information from being exposed to computer hackers.

7) Which Payment Gateways are Supported by SMARTROOMS?
Ans: SMARTROOMS can be quickly integrated with PAYPAL Payment Gateway, HDFC Bank Payment Gateway and ICICI Bank Payment Gateway. SMARTROOMS can also be integrated with ANY payment gateway that your Hotel decides to Sign-up with at no additional cost.

We can integrate SMARTROOMS With PAYPAL Payment Gateway as soon as you Sign-up for the PAYPAL Premier Account. There are no Sign-up Fees for the PAYPAL Premier Account. Paypal will charge you a Per-Transaction Fee.

The Verification Procedures of HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank take nearly 4 WEEKS. We assist in Testing and Completing All formalities required for the integration of the Payment Gateway.

8) I don't want to accept credit card payments online and prefer to collect the guest payment through our Hotel's offline manual process. Which License should I choose?
Ans: Choose the Transaction Tokens License.

9) My Hotel already has a website and we would like to integrate SMARTROOMS. Do I have to move the website to your server?

Ans: SMARTROOMS runs on Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP environment and requires additional components which have been setup on our servers. Ideally, we would like to move your entire website to our servers to enable SMARTROOMS to work efficiently by integrating the booking form on your home page.

However, you can also point the booking link/button to our servers and continue hosting the site on your existing host.
For e.g. you domain name is smarthotels.com and you wish to continue to host with your existing hosting company. We will setup SMARTROOMS under a sub-domain bookings.smarthotels.com on our server and you will not have to move the existing website to our servers. Only the reservation software will be hosted on our server and the guest will always see your hotel's domain name during the reservation process. An A record will have to be created to point the sub-domain to our servers.

Whichever method is chosen, our experts will assist you in creatively integrating your website with SMARTROOMS Reservation Software.

A mandatory requirement of most Payment Gateways in INDIA is that the domain name linking to the payment gateway should be of the website owner and not of a third party service provider. Hence, SMARTROOMS is setup to run under your hotels domain name or sub-domain name.

10) How many rooms do I enter in the inventory with the CORE and Transaction Tokens License?

Ans: This depends upon the number of rooms you want to be made available online. You can retain part of your rooms in your offline inventory.

11) During the Booking Process the Guest is shown an Availability Graph. Why Are the actual number of available rooms not shown to the guest?

Ans: The number of available rooms are not shown by default. Only available and unavailable status is shown. Guests may delay their booking decision if many rooms are available. Hence, only available and unavailable status is shown and the number of available rooms is not displayed to the guest.

12) How are Room-Rates entered in case of double and triple rooms etc?

Ans: The default Room-Rate is for minimum occupancy of 2 people and is called the Basic room rate. Therefore, if there is a room reservation for a single guest, then the charge of 1 additional guest is reduced from the basic room rate. If there are more than 2 guests then additional charges will apply depending upon the number of additional guests allowed per room and whether the additional guest is an adult or child.

While entering Room-Rates for Triple Occupancy, you can select the Room-Type as Triple. The Room-Rate displayed will be for a minimum occupancy of 3 people. The Room-Rate displayed is same even if 1, 2 or 3 guests book the room. If there are more than 3 guests, then additional charges will apply depending upon the number of additional guests allowed per room and whether the additional guest is an adult or child.

13) Can I specify the minimum and maximum number of guests that can occupy a Room-Type?

Ans: Yes, you can enter the minimum and maximum number of guests for each Room-Type. If your Room-Type has a maximum occupancy of 2, then the Room-Type will be not displayed if the Guest enters 3 or more adults while checking room availability.

14) Do I have to manually update the inventory when a booking is confirmed or cancelled?

Ans: No. SMARTROOMS handles this for you. When a booking payment made by a guest is confirmed by the payment gateway, SMARTROOMS will decrease the room inventory for the booking dates. If a guest decides to cancel, you get a cancellation request. When you approve the cancellation request, SMARTROOMS will increase the room inventory accordingly so that the room is again available for booking.

15) Can Discounts be offerred on Room-Rates; once they have been entered in SMARTROOMS?

Ans: Yes, You can Offer a fixed discount on the displayed room-rate or an early-bird discount if the guest books a room in advance.

16) What is the Hotel Stay-Package Module?

Ans: With SmartRooms CORE License, your guests can also book Stay-Packages from your hotel’s website through the SMARTROOMS Hotel Package Module. The SMARTROOMS Hotel Package Module is an optional module and requires a one-time license fee of Rs. 44,000.
You can sell only stay-packages OR link them to your Room-Type. If the stay-package is linked to your Room-Type, then the Stay-Package is available for booking only if the Room-Type is available. Click Here to Know More.