Elina 2022: End of Year Recap and Onto 2023

It’s been another year of evolving and changing challenges for hospitality. Our team at elina have been determined to keep supporting our customers, and actively making a difference. We have continued to invest and push in bringing enhancements that will make a difference day to day, tactically and strategically.  

Not everyone will be aware that some of the members of our development team are based in the Ukraine, and they are heroes. We are pleased to report that they are all safe and in good spirits, we want to commend them for their commitment and tenacity in helping us achieve these goals this year.  

Here’s a summary of elina releases in 2022 and a look ahead to 2023. We will write am article on integrations separately; this blog focuses on features in the modules of elina. 

2022: Review of elina releases 

In 2022, we have tackled 522 development tasks - 237 fixes and 285 improvements. We have made 29 releases, which is one every 1.8 weeks during 2022. We’ve also got one more release to come before the end of the year which will take us up to 30. 

So, what’s new? We had several favourite highlights of the year. Here’s a handy summary. 

Payments

We launched Elina PAY to offer great rates on PDQ and online payments to our customers, alongside super technology with real-time reporting and next business day payments. 

Booking engine

We made significant speed improvements to the booking engine; launching custom filters in the booking engine to help people find the accommodation they want with you (for example dog friendly, cities, room set up, bathroom type); improving direct corporate booking experience for customers in elina; adding some more control via settings. Plus, allowing multi-rates to be displayed directly in website pages via our APIs. 

In the same way that types in elina, can have an internal name and a marketing name for the booking engine, we introduced this for areas too.  

Guest & company billing

A lot of tasks around new charge statements (for managing charges and invoices) were completed in elina. This has enabled customers use it without compromising processes. Customers using the new charge statements have given feedback it makes the day-to-day management of billing easier. If you have not switched to use this yet, please speak to our support team ref: invoice charge statements. 

A new user interface has made it faster and more intuitive when managing invoice rules on reservations, rates, companies, or properties. This included improvements for interval bookings: separate triggers for due dates (ie 30 days after 1st day of interval stay period), and assigning the invoice number earlier than the period (ie 30 days before the 1st of interval stay period). 

There is a new engine for handling debits and credits on reservations, minimising the creation of account credit. This reflects the best balance between automation and working in the way customers want for creation of invoices based on changing reservations (booking change events). If you have not switched to use this yet, please speak to our support team ref: booking change event finance engine. 

Reservations & guests

We added new arrivals and departures lists in elina, making it easy to see all the important information you need to manage guests arriving and departing. Plus, making the check-in screen easier to use. 

Add ons can now be limited to accommodation, using property filters, areas, or types, meaning that they are only bookable on the accommodation they are assigned to. 

We rolled out new core email templates options, including pre-arrival (x days before arrival), pre-departure (x days before departure), and post-departure (x days after departure), and upgraded the booking confirmation – so custom created fields in elina can be included in all of them. This enables you to communicate what you want automatically around these guest events. 

Customers who manage hundreds (or thousands) of units in the reservations calendar, saw large improvements in reservations calendar loading times, saving time in opening, refreshing the reservations calendar. 

The booking rates tab was improved to make it faster and easier to override daily and monthly pricing on reservations, including a date applicator, to help with overriding rates when extending reservations. 

Multiple guest profiles can now be merged at the same time, and we also introduced the ability to merge guest profiles based on a unique custom field, such as an identity number. 

We made tweaks and improvements to several reports including the reservation detail report and the account balance report. 

 

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Rates

Closed to arrival and closed to departure restrictions were introduced, as was block sale. The user interface for managing rates in the calendar and rates list was improved. We rebuilt the handling or R&A – creating background speed improvements which had positive speed improvements across elina. 

 

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2023: snapshot of upcoming releases 

We like to communicate our roadmap and pipeline of further improvements, or new features. Here’s a snapshot of what can be expected in H1 2023. Note, this does not mention integrations improvements. This will be detailed in a separate article, or articles. 

First up, we will introduce credit card refunds directly controlled from elina for payments. This is underway currently, so you will see an update on it early Q1. 

Channel management & distribution

We are excited to share, that we will be offering new and improved channel management, where channel syncing is managed in elina directly, making it fast to map a channel, with some channels supporting set up directly from the PMS, and tools such as the OTA inbox for key channels; Booking.com and AirBnB, means replying to messages is fast and easy. 

Guest engagement and pre-arrivals

We will roll out frictionless access to guest services, which includes online check-in, or payment links, and the account login for guests, company travel managers and owners. This will see 6-digit codes introduced and handling of email addresses, or lack of correct email at the start of any engagement with the guest via online tools. 

A new security deposit account will be introduced, separating the tracking and handling of security deposits and deposits collected to use in directly paying for the booking. 

Reporting

A new daily revenue report including accommodation, add on and fees revenue, with cost of sale commissions will be rolled out. This will have the property categorisation filters in it too, and be in the new reporting engine. 

Tasks

We will have a focus on task management and tracking in elina, including improving notes and add ons, and the addition of new interactive mobile friendly lists. 

Into 2023 we go! 

We revisited our purpose in 2022, and realised that we exist to "to enable and inspire hospitality providers through ideas and innovation” and that is what we will keep doing and communicating into 2023. 

Thank you for making time to read this article, and for your ongoing support. We are energised by 2022, and excited about the upcoming New Year.