1 Welcome

You are now in charge of a hotel.

Not a fictional one — for the next several weeks, this is your hotel. You'll set its room prices every day. You'll decide which guest amenities to install. You'll pick which booking channels to sell on, which marketing campaigns to run, and whether to bid on corporate contracts that show up. At the end of every period, you'll see exactly how many rooms you sold, how much money you made, and how you stack up against your competitors.

This manual is your operating guide.

What you're playing

The simulator is a hotel revenue strategy game. You and your classmates each run a hotel in the same city, all chasing the same pool of guests. Every period (typically one month of in-game time) you submit a set of decisions. Once everyone has submitted, your professor runs the period. Demand gets allocated across hotels based on what each of you decided. You get results. You learn. You adjust. You go again.

There is no single "winning strategy." A luxury hotel in a downtown business district plays a completely different game from a budget property near the highway. What matters is:

• Understanding what kind of hotel you have
• Reading what the market is doing right now
• Making decisions that line up with both

What you control

You have decisions in five areas:

1. Pricing — what you charge per room, per day
2. Inventory — how many rooms you make available (you can hold some back)
3. Your hotel itself — what amenities you offer, which loyalty program (or brand) you affiliate with
4. Distribution — which third-party channels (OTAs, your own website, GDS) you sell through
5. Marketing — campaigns that lift awareness, boost direct bookings, or build long-term brand

You also respond to RFPs — Request-for-Proposals from corporate clients and tour operators asking for blocks of rooms at a discounted rate.

What you do NOT control

You do not set the size of your hotel. You do not pick your hotel type (luxury, midscale, budget). You do not control the city's overall demand, the events happening in town, or what your competitors are doing.

You also can't undo past decisions. Once a period is published, it's history. That's the point — revenue strategy is about making good decisions under uncertainty, and then living with them.

How a period works

Each period follows the same rhythm:

1. Period opens. You can edit your decisions for the upcoming month.
2. You make decisions. You set prices, adjust inventory, activate marketing, bid on RFPs, configure your hotel.
3. You submit. Pressing "Submit Final" tells the engine your decisions are locked in.
4. The professor runs the period. Demand is allocated, bookings are made, money changes hands.
5. Results publish. You see your KPIs, your competitors' indices, your updated cash position.
6. Next period opens. Repeat.

Some simulations use pace mode, where the period is run in several smaller passes through the month instead of one big run. In pace mode you'll see partial results mid-month, and you may get the chance to adjust your prices for the remaining days. We cover this in Chapter 7.

How long this manual is

About 13 chapters. The fastest way to use it:

• Read Chapters 1–3 before your first decision period. They cover the basics.
• Read Chapters 4–6 before you start setting prices.
• Read Chapter 7 only if your simulation uses pace mode (your professor will tell you).
• Read Chapter 8 the first time an RFP appears.
• Read Chapters 9–11 after your first published results, when the numbers will mean more to you.
• Use Chapter 13 (FAQ) as a reference whenever something is confusing.

💡 You're going to make mistakes in the first period. Everyone does. The simulator is designed to let you learn from them — your professor isn't grading the first period as harshly as the fifth.

Next

→ Chapter 2: Getting Started

2 Getting Started

This chapter gets you from "I have a login link" to "I can read every part of the screen."

Logging in

Your professor will give you three things:

Open the simulator URL, click Hotel Team on the landing page, and enter those three values.

The hotel-team login. Three fields — that's it.

If your hotel name or password is wrong, the form will tell you. If the simulation ID is wrong, you'll be sent back to the landing page.

Where you land

After login you arrive at your Results Dashboard. The first time you log in there won't be much here yet — no periods have run. That's normal.

The top bar — your hotel's vital signs at a glance.

The top bar is the most important strip of pixels in the simulator. From left to right:

If you've made decisions that haven't been run yet but will change your reputation or service score, the pill will show a small projection arrow (e.g. Rep 64 → 78). That's the engine telling you "after this period runs, expect this." It's a preview, not a guarantee.

The five tabs

Below the top bar are five horizontal tabs:

The five tabs you'll live in.

You will spend the most time in My Hotel (especially in early periods) and Decisions (every period).

The two-stage workflow every period

This is the single most important habit:

First set up your hotel in My Hotel. Then set prices and submit in Decisions.

Here's why: things you change in My Hotel — like installing a spa, joining a loyalty program, or activating a marketing campaign — affect how guests perceive your hotel, which affects who books with you and at what price. If you set prices before deciding to install a spa, your pricing strategy may be off.

The Decisions tab has a reminder banner about this:

The "Did you set up My Hotel?" banner appears in Review & Submit. It's there for a reason.

When you can't edit

Your professor controls when you can make changes. Two things can lock you out:

1. The period is closed. No editing once the professor has run and published the period.
2. The professor locks editing. Even with the period open, the professor can lock editing — usually right before they run the period so nobody changes anything mid-run.

When either is true, you'll see a 🔒 banner at the top of any editable page, and the inputs go gray:

Locked state. You can still read everything; you just can't change anything.

Logging out

Top-right corner. There's no "auto-save" warning — anything you typed but didn't save is gone, so always click Save on each tab before logging out.

Next

→ Chapter 3: Setting Up Your Hotel (My Hotel tab)

3 Setting Up Your Hotel

The My Hotel tab is where your hotel becomes yours. You'll spend significant time here in the first 2–3 periods, then return only occasionally once your hotel is dialed in.

There are five sub-tabs across the top: Info, Amenities, Loyalty, Channels, Marketing.

Concept primer: why this tab matters

Two hotels can charge the same price per night and get very different demand. Why? Because guests don't just compare prices — they compare the whole package:

• Does this hotel have a pool? A spa? A fitness center? → Amenities
• Will I earn points I can use later? → Loyalty
• Can I even find this hotel on Booking.com / Expedia / through my company travel agent? → Channels
• Have I heard of this hotel? Is it trending right now? → Marketing
• Does the place feel well-run? → Service score (driven by your amenity mix and your brand affiliation)

Each lever you pull in My Hotel shapes the "package" guests are comparing. Stronger package = more demand at any given price. The exact magnitude of the effect is hidden from you on purpose — figuring it out through experimentation is part of the simulation.

3.1 Info — your hotel's identity at a glance

The Info sub-tab is your hotel's profile page. It's mostly read-only — a place to confirm who you are and how much you have to spend.

The Info tab. Identity on top, financial summary below.

What's shown:

No decisions are made here. The Info tab is a dashboard, not a control panel. The "decisions" that shape your hotel happen on the other four sub-tabs (Amenities, Loyalty, Channels, Marketing).

💡 Service score and reputation aren't directly editable from any tab. They're outcomes of decisions you make elsewhere — primarily through Amenities and Loyalty. See Chapter 10 for how they're built.

3.2 Amenities — the physical product

Amenities are the things your guests can use: a pool, a spa, a restaurant, a fitness center, a business center, a kids' club, etc. Each amenity is grouped into a category, and each category has a ladder of tiers:

F&B:    None → Café → Restaurant → Restaurant + Bar → Fine Dining
Spa:    None → Basic Spa → Full Wellness Center
Pool:   None → Outdoor Pool → Rooftop Pool with Bar

Amenities categories with current tier highlighted.

Investing vs operating

Amenities come with two kinds of cost:

The Amenities tab shows you both before you commit.

⚠️ Money you spend here comes out of your investment cash pool, not your operating cash. Marketing and channel costs come from operating cash. Don't confuse the two.

Upgrading is cleaner than installing

The simulator handles upgrades for you: when you upgrade a Basic Spa to a Full Wellness Center, the Basic Spa keeps producing revenue right up until the Wellness Center comes online next period. There's no "gap month" where you lose spa revenue.

When you should invest

Amenities are most useful when they match what your guest mix wants. A business hotel doesn't need a kids' club. A resort needs a pool. Check the Demand Factors panel (you'll learn about it from your results) for clues about what your current guests value.

3.3 Loyalty — joining a brand or staying independent

Loyalty has three columns:

Three loyalty paths: independent, your own program, or a major brand.

Brand changes are not free — there's a switching cost both into a brand (joining fee) and out of one (penalty). Pick carefully.

💡 Loyalty pays off over time, not instantly. Don't expect your first month with a new brand to be transformative. The advantage compounds over several periods.

3.4 Channels — where you sell

Your rooms have to be visible somewhere for guests to book them. The Channels tab shows you all the distribution channels available in your simulation, split into:

• Active — channels you're selling on right now
• Available — channels you could activate

Active list on top, available list below. Direct is always on.

Direct is free and always on

Your own website ("Direct" channel) is always active and never costs commission. Treat it as your home base.

Adding OTAs gets you visibility, but...

Activating Booking.com or Expedia puts you in front of millions of guests — but every booking through that channel takes a commission cut. You're trading margin for volume.

There's another subtlety: each additional channel you activate gives you less extra visibility than the last one. The second OTA helps a lot. The fourth one barely moves the needle. The first OTA, on the other hand, often pays for itself.

This is a "diminishing returns" curve. You can see it on the channel cards — each one has a "visibility lift" badge that shows how much it would add to your visibility if activated, given everything else you have on.

Commission tiers

Channels often have commission rates that depend on volume. The "Standard" tier is what you pay until your monthly booking volume on that channel crosses a threshold; after that you pay the "Premium" (lower) rate. The tab shows you both rates and the threshold.

3.5 Marketing — buzz and baseline

The Marketing tab is the most underused part of My Hotel for first-time players. It shouldn't be.

Campaigns with their categories: Buzz vs Baseline, ongoing vs one-shot.

Concept: Buzz vs Baseline

Marketing campaigns fall into two big buckets:

A healthy marketing plan mixes both. Buzz handles immediate booking gaps; Baseline grows the floor under your hotel's demand permanently.

There's also a distinction between ongoing campaigns (paid for monthly while active) and one-shot campaigns (single payment, single boost).

The expandable explainer at the top of the Marketing tab walks through the buckets in more detail.

Activating a campaign

Click Activate. You'll get a confirmation modal that summarizes:

• Total cost (one-time + recurring)
• Which bucket it belongs to
• When the effect kicks in

Every campaign activation goes through a confirmation step. Read it before clicking Yes.

⚠️ Campaign costs come from your operating cash, not investment cash. They reduce your operating profit each period.

When you're done

When you've adjusted everything you want on the My Hotel tab, click Save on each sub-tab you changed. Then go to the Decisions tab — you're ready to start thinking about prices.

Next

→ Chapter 4: Reading the Market (Decisions tab — Position, Forecast, Market Intel)

4 Reading the Market

Pricing without first reading the market is gambling. The first three sub-tabs of the Decisions page exist to make sure you don't gamble.

Open these in order. Don't skip to Pricing without looking.

4.1 Position — what just happened

The Position tab is your debriefing room.

Position shows you the last published period through several lenses:

• Your KPIs — occupancy, ADR (average daily rate), RevPAR (revenue per available room), total revenue
• Leaderboard snippet — where you ranked vs competitors on the headline KPIs
• Competitive intel notes — who pushed prices up, who discounted, who hit/missed occupancy

Reading this sub-tab is not optional. The strongest pricing decisions are reactions to recent market behavior, not abstract theory.

Questions to ask while reading Position

• Did I sell out any nights? If yes, I priced too low on those nights.
• Did I have ≥20% rooms empty? If yes, I priced too high — or my product (amenities/marketing) is too weak for that price.
• Did competitors at my type get higher occupancy than me? What were they charging?
• Did the leader at my type clearly win on a specific strategy (high price + high occupancy = strong brand; low price + max occupancy = aggressive discounter)?

4.2 Forecast — what YOU think will happen

The Forecast tab. Day-by-day cells where you commit to how many transient rooms you expect to sell, at what rate.

The Forecast tab is not a place where the simulator tells you the future. It's the opposite — it's where you predict your own performance, day by day, for the upcoming month.

For each day you enter two numbers:

The tab also shows you context you can use while forecasting:

• Transient OTB — bookings already on the books from past advance-purchase guests
• Group OTB — confirmed group blocks already on those days
• Contract OTB — confirmed corporate contract room-nights already committed
• Special events — any events your professor flagged for that period

You don't have to forecast groups and contracts — they're already confirmed. You only forecast the transient piece, because that's the part you control with pricing and distribution.

Why this matters

Three reasons forecasting is a real skill (and why your professor makes you do it):

1. It forces you to commit a view. Setting prices without first writing down "I expect to sell X rooms at $Y" is gambling. Forecasting makes you think.
2. It unlocks Market Intelligence. Once you save your forecast, the Market Intel tab opens up so you can see what competitors are charging. This is intentional: you commit your view first, then test it against the market.
3. Your accuracy is measured. After the period publishes, the simulator computes how close your forecast was to reality (a MAPE — Mean Absolute Percentage Error). Forecast accuracy is a real KPI in revenue strategy.

How to forecast well

Use the OTB and event context plus what you learned in Position (4.1) to anchor your numbers. Useful questions:

• What did this hotel do on a similar day last month? (Position tab)
• Is this day a weekend, weekday, holiday? Weekend rates and demand typically run higher.
• Is there a special event flagged? If so, expect a demand bump (size depends on the event).
• How much transient demand do I have OTB already? That's your floor — the rest is what you expect to layer on at pricing.
• What rate did I average for the same day pattern previously? Use it as a starting anchor.

Peak vs trough days — read them from your OWN forecast

After you've filled in the grid, scan it. The days where your forecasted transient is highest are your expected peaks; the days where it's lowest are your expected troughs.

• Your expected peaks → consider raising prices, holding back premium inventory, not discount-marketing
• Your expected troughs → consider lowering prices, fully releasing inventory, leaning into Buzz marketing

💡 If your forecast says "I'll sell 80 rooms at $200 on Saturday" but your pricing says $150 — something's off. Either you under-priced (and should raise) or you over-forecasted (and should re-think). The two views need to agree.

4.3 Market Intel — what competitors are charging

Market Intel shows competitor prices day-by-day. This tab may be locked in some simulations.

Market Intel shows you a daily price grid: for each day of the upcoming month, what each competitor is charging.

Heads up: This tab is gated by your forecast. You must save the Forecast tab first to unlock it. Your professor may also disable the tab entirely — especially in early periods or in advanced scenarios. If you see a 🔒 banner, you'll still have last period's leaderboard, but not competitors' forward-looking prices.

What you do with it

Market Intel turns pricing from a guess into a positioning question:

• Am I more expensive than the median competitor? If yes, my product needs to justify the premium (better amenities, stronger brand, higher service score).
• Am I cheaper than the median? If yes, I should be confident that I'll fill — and ask whether I'm leaving money on the table.
• Is there a price war on weekends? Maybe I should price between the bottom two and the top two, not at one extreme.

Don't blindly match

A common rookie mistake: see a competitor charging $200 and immediately match them. That's not a strategy — that's an echo.

The right move is to ask why they're charging that:

• Are they a similar hotel type to you? If they're luxury and you're midscale, their $200 means something different than your $200 would.
• Are they known for high occupancy or low occupancy at that price? (Position tab tells you.)
• Are they trying to win volume, or are they confidently riding their brand?

Putting the three sub-tabs together

A useful exercise every period:

1. Open Position. Write down one sentence: "Last period I ___."
2. Open Forecast. Commit your view, day by day. Then write down one sentence: "Next month I expect to ___." Save (this also unlocks Market Intel).
3. Open Market Intel. Write down one sentence: "My competitors look like they're going to ___."
4. Now open Pricing with those three sentences in mind.

The order matters: commit your forecast before you peek at competitor prices. Otherwise you'll just unconsciously match them and learn nothing.

Next

→ Chapter 5: Setting Prices and Inventory (Decisions — Pricing tab)

5 Setting Prices and Inventory

This is the chapter you'll come back to most often. The Pricing sub-tab on the Decisions page is where you make the call that drives every other number — what to charge.

The pricing grid

The pricing table. Inventory decisions on the left, pricing decisions on the right, separated by a vertical spine.

The table has one row per day of the upcoming month. The columns split into two clear domains, separated by a 4-pixel vertical divider:

This split is important. Inventory and pricing are two different decisions:

• Pricing: what you charge
• Inventory: how many rooms you make available at that price

You can do clever things by treating them separately — for example, holding back a few premium rooms even on a strong day so that when corporate guests walk up at the last minute you have somewhere to put them.

Pre-populate from last month

You don't have to type 30 numbers every period. The Pricing tab has a Pre-populate action that copies prices from a previous month into the current month.

Two modes:

• By Date — Oct 5 → Nov 5 (same calendar day)
• By Day-of-Week — first Monday of Oct → first Monday of Nov

Day-of-week is usually better. Hotels behave on a weekly cycle (weekends ≠ weekdays), and matching weekdays to weekdays preserves that rhythm.

After pre-populating, you tweak.

How to think about price

The simulator's demand model isn't going to be revealed to you in detail — figuring out the right price is part of the learning. But here are the directional truths every successful hotel-team uses:

1. Demand responds to price

Lower price → more demand. Higher price → less demand. This is true at every hotel type, every season, every day. What changes is how strongly demand responds — and that's something you learn by experimenting.

2. Demand also responds to your product

Price is only half the equation. Two hotels charging the same $180 won't get the same demand if one has a spa and the other doesn't. Your amenities, your reputation, your service score, the channels you sell on — all of these are part of what guests are evaluating.

💡 Implication: You can charge more if your product is better. Don't price like a budget hotel if you've built a luxury one.

3. The market matters

How you price relative to your competitors matters more than your absolute number. If everyone else charges $200 and you charge $180, you look like a deal. If everyone else charges $160 and you charge $180, you look expensive.

The Market Intel tab is exactly where you check this.

4. There's a diminishing return on quality

If your service score, reputation, amenities, and channel mix are already excellent, paying for more of each only helps a little. Save the money. If those are weak, fixing them is one of the highest-return moves you can make.

Standard vs Premium rooms

Most hotels have two room types: Standard and Premium. They're priced separately and have separate inventory.

Pricing them

• Standard rate = your floor offering
• Premium rate = should clearly be higher (otherwise nobody books standard)

A common heuristic: premium is 20–40% above standard. Higher in luxury hotels, narrower in budget. Tune to taste.

Inventory: when to hold back

By default, all your rooms are available every day. You can hold some back by lowering the "available" number.

When does that make sense?

• Peak days where you expect to sell out anyway — hold a few premium rooms for last-minute walk-ups who pay top dollar
• High-value bookings expected — if you know a corporate group is bidding, leave room for them
• Maintenance / blocked rooms — if rooms are physically unusable

Most of the time, you should release everything. Holding back inventory you didn't need to costs you bookings.

Per-segment pricing (if your sim has this)

Some simulations turn on per-segment pricing — you can charge different rates to different guest segments (retail, advance purchase, corporate, etc.).

When this is on, you'll see extra columns in the pricing grid. The most common pattern:

Advance Purchase can be entered either as a fixed price or as a "% off Retail". Either way, when you submit, the engine stores a fixed price.

Locked cells in pace mode

If your simulation uses pace mode, days that have already been "processed" in earlier passes will be grayed out — you can no longer change them.

Past pace chunk days are locked. Hover for a tooltip explaining why.

This is intentional. Once bookings have been allocated for a day, the price for that day is set in stone. You can only change pricing for upcoming days.

Saving and submitting

There are two distinct actions:

Save often. Submit when you're sure.

Review & Submit. The 🏨 banner reminds you to also configure My Hotel before submitting.

Two important warnings on Submit Final

1. Unbid open RFPs — if there's an open RFP you haven't placed a bid on, the simulator will warn you with a modal. You can dismiss and submit anyway, but it's the engine asking "are you sure you want to skip this?"

   The unbid-RFP nag modal. Read it before clicking through.

2. My Hotel not configured — there's a banner asking whether you also reviewed your My Hotel decisions for the period.

Iterating

Pricing is an iterative skill, not a one-shot decision. The strongest students:

1. Read Position, Forecast, Market Intel (Chapter 4)
2. Make a first pass at prices
3. Sleep on it — literally, come back the next day
4. Adjust based on second look
5. Submit

You'll get faster at it with each period.

Next

→ Chapter 6: Reading Your Results

6 Reading Your Results

After your professor runs and publishes a period, you have access to a full breakdown of what actually happened. This is where learning compounds.

Results live in two places:

6.1 The P&L Summary

Your headline page is the P&L Summary — a full profit & loss for the published period.

The P&L summary. Read top-to-bottom — revenue, then costs, then profit.

The structure

What to look for, in order

1. Total revenue — did you hit your forecast? If under, was it occupancy (volume) or ADR (price)?
2. Channel costs — what % of revenue went to commissions? If it's climbing, your OTA mix is heavy.
3. Marketing — did the campaigns pay for themselves? You won't always know immediately — Baseline campaigns build over time.
4. Operating profit — your headline number. This is what counts toward your competitive ranking.
5. Pre-tax profit — after financial items (interest, reserve). The number that drives your cash position.

6.2 Daily Breakdown — the granular view

The Closed Month tab on Daily Results shows every day of the period, side by side.

Every day, every column. The detail view.

Columns (left to right):

The four diagnostic questions

For each day where something looked off, ask:

1. Did I sell out? (occupancy = 100%) → I underpriced. Estimate how much I left on the table.
2. Did I overbook? → I priced much too low, or I held back too little inventory. Walk-cost penalties show up on the P&L.
3. Did I sit half-empty? (occupancy < 50%) → I overpriced or my product is too weak for the market that day.
4. Did my ADR collapse? → Too many low-segment bookings (AP / corporate) vs higher-paying retail. Maybe I should have priced retail higher to push the mix up.

💡 The diagnostic happens at the day level, not the month level. A month with 75% occupancy could be 30 days of 75% or 15 days at 100% and 15 days at 50% — wildly different stories. Always drill in.

6.3 OTB — forward visibility

The OTB (On-The-Books) tab shows you bookings already on the books for future months — meaning corporate contracts, group blocks, and advance-purchase bookings that have been confirmed but not yet "stayed."

OTB for upcoming months. Useful for forward planning.

This matters for two reasons:

1. Capacity planning — if you already have 200 OTB rooms for a Friday in 3 months, you can't sell those rooms again on the open market. The Forecast tab on Decisions surfaces these OTB numbers next to your forecast cells; seeing the same numbers here helps you sanity-check your forecasts.
2. Strategy validation — large OTB means your corporate / group strategy is working. Empty OTB means you should consider bidding more aggressively on RFPs.

6.4 Month in Progress (pace mode only)

If your simulation uses pace mode, there's a third tab: Month in Progress.

Month in Progress shows partially-run periods with the days that have closed so far.

This tab is identical to the Month in Progress view on the Decisions page (covered in Chapter 7) — same view, surfaced in both places for convenience.

6.5 Cross-period analysis

The most powerful learning comes from looking at multiple periods side by side. The simulator doesn't have an automatic multi-period comparison tool for students, but you can:

• Take screenshots of each period's P&L summary
• Track your operating profit, occupancy, and ADR in a spreadsheet you maintain yourself
• Watch the trends — operating profit climbing? Occupancy slipping? ADR stalling?

Trends matter more than any single period.

What to do with what you learn

Reading results without acting on them is wasted time. Before you close the Results tab, write yourself one note: "Next period I will ___."

Examples:

• "Next period I will price weekends 10% higher — I sold out every Friday."
• "Next period I will activate one OTA — my channel mix is too narrow."
• "Next period I will upgrade my F&B amenity — service score is dragging."
• "Next period I will not run that one-shot promo — payback was negative."

Pin that note somewhere. Read it when the next period opens.

Next

→ Chapter 7: Month in Progress (pace mode) — skip if your sim doesn't use pace mode

7 Month in Progress (Pace Mode)

Skip this chapter if your professor isn't using pace mode. Most simulations don't.

Pace mode changes how a period is run. Instead of one big run that processes the entire month at once, the month is broken into chunks (usually 4–7 days each) and the engine processes one chunk at a time. Between chunks, you get a chance to look at what happened and adjust your prices for upcoming days.

It's closer to how revenue strategists actually work in the real world.

What you'll see when pace mode is on

Two new things appear on your screens:

1. A "Month in Progress" tab on the Decisions page
2. A "Month in Progress" tab on the Results page (identical content, surfaced in both places)
3. Past-chunk days on the Pricing tab become locked (grayed out)

The Month in Progress view. Days already processed on the left, days still ahead on the right.

What the view shows

The single most important rule

You can only change prices for days that have NOT been processed yet.

Past days are sealed — their bookings are done. The Pricing tab grays out past-chunk days. The Pricing tab for future days remains fully editable until those days, too, get processed.

A past-chunk day, locked. Hover for the tooltip.

How to play pace mode well

Between every pass, ask three questions

1. Did I sell out a past day? → I underpriced for that pattern. Raise prices on similar upcoming days.
2. Did I sit half-empty? → I overpriced for that pattern. Lower prices on similar upcoming days.
3. What did competitors just do? → If they raised, I have cover to raise too. If they discounted, I may need to defend share.

Don't panic-adjust

A common mistake: a hotel under-fills on a Tuesday, the student slashes Wednesday prices in a panic, then sells out on Wednesday at 30% below where they should have been. One bad day is not a trend. Wait for 2–3 data points before swinging hard.

Watch your transient OTB

The Decisions → Position / Market Intel sidebars show Transient OTB — bookings already on the books for upcoming days from advance-purchase guests. If those numbers are high for a future day, you have less elasticity (rooms are already partly committed). If they're low, you have full flexibility.

What "transient" means

A booking is called transient if it's not part of a corporate contract or group block — i.e., a regular guest who booked themselves. In pace mode, you'll see transient OTB columns alongside total OTB so you can separate "guests already coming" from "corporate room blocks already committed."

Pace mode and the Forecast tab

Forecast inputs for past-pace-chunk days are locked. You can read what you previously forecasted, but you can't change it — those days have already been processed against your committed forecast.

You can still edit the forecast cells for days that haven't been processed yet. As you learn from past chunks (e.g., "I systematically under-forecasted Saturdays"), use the upcoming-day forecast cells to course-correct.

When the final chunk runs

The last pace pass behaves like a normal "run period". After it, you see the full closed-month results just like a non-pace-mode simulation.

A worked example

Imagine a 30-day month split into 5 pace chunks of 6 days each:

Days 1–6   → ran in pass 1 → locked
Days 7–12  → ran in pass 2 → locked
Days 13–18 → ran in pass 3 → locked
Days 19–24 → still editable, will run in pass 4
Days 25–30 → still editable, will run in pass 5 (final)

After pass 3 publishes, you can see:

• Actual results for days 1–18 (the locked half)
• Current OTB and forecast for days 19–30 (the editable half)

You now adjust prices for days 19–30 based on what you learned in days 1–18.

Why pace mode is harder

Three reasons:

1. You make more decisions — instead of one pricing pass per month, you make 3–5
2. You react to partial information — you don't know how the month will end
3. You can't undo a bad chunk — once a chunk is processed, those bookings are real

But pace mode is also closer to how real revenue strategy works, so the skills you build here transfer directly.

Next

→ Chapter 8: Responding to RFPs

8 Responding to RFPs

An RFP — Request for Proposal — is a corporate or group client asking the hotels in your city for a price quote on a block of rooms. RFPs are one of the highest-leverage decisions in the simulator, and learning to bid well separates the top hotels from the middle.

Two types

Both work the same way in the bidding UI; the differences are in the RFP's parameters.

Where to find them

Click the RFPs tab in the top navigation.

Open RFPs visible to you. Closed (already-decided) ones show separately.

Each RFP card shows you:

• Who is asking
• What they want (number of room-nights, type preference, window)
• The bid deadline (after which no more bids are accepted)
• Whether they've told you their budget cap or not
• Your bid status: ⏳ Not yet bid, ✅ Bid placed, 🏆 Won, ❌ Lost

How to place a bid

Click Place Bid on the RFP card to expand the form.

The bid form. Your price is the headline; the displacement panel (when shown) is the brain.

Fill in:

Click Submit Bid. Your bid is now visible to your professor, who will award the contract after the deadline.

The displacement panel (when shown)

If your professor has enabled displacement analysis for this RFP, a panel appears showing whether the bid would be good for your hotel:

The displacement panel. Three verdicts: ACCRETIVE, MARGINAL, DILUTIVE.

The panel takes:

• The number of rooms the contract wants
• The price you've entered
• Your current forecast for that window (from the Forecast tab)

…and tells you:

When the panel is hidden

Your professor may have turned off displacement analysis for this RFP. In that case you don't see the panel — you have to do the math in your head, or just decide based on your gut and your forecast. That's part of the lesson.

Bidding strategy in plain English

Three rules of thumb:

1. Bid when you have empty rooms to fill

If your forecast for the contract window shows lots of unsold capacity, an RFP is essentially "found money" — you'd rather have a guaranteed booking at $120 than nothing at $200.

2. Don't bid when you're already busy

If the window is your peak season and you expect to sell out at $300, accepting a contract at $180 displaces those higher-rate bookings. The math has to clear that bar.

3. Pricing matters more than you think

The professor (or the automated awarder, depending on simulation) usually picks the best bid, where "best" usually means "lowest price that still meets the requirements." But sometimes other factors are weighed — your hotel's star rating, fit with the corporate type, etc. Don't assume lowest always wins.

How long the contract lasts

Corporate contracts often run multiple periods — you commit to a price for, say, 6 months. That means:

• ✅ Predictable revenue for those periods
• ❌ Locked-in price even if market rates rise

This is real revenue strategy: you're trading optionality for certainty.

After you win

If you win an RFP, you'll see it in My Awards:

Your won contracts appear here with their terms.

Things that change automatically:

• A fixed price for that segment is locked into your pricing table for the contract window
• The contract's room-nights show up as OTB for the relevant months
• Channel costs do NOT apply (these are direct contracts, not OTA bookings)

You don't have to do anything else. The contract guests just show up in your future periods.

After you lose

You're back to your regular pricing strategy. No penalty for losing — the only cost was the time you spent thinking about it.

What if you don't bid at all?

If there's an open RFP and you don't bid, you'll get a warning when you submit your decisions:

The unbid-RFP warning. Lets you submit anyway after acknowledging.

You're allowed to skip an RFP intentionally — but the warning exists so you don't skip one by accident. Click through and submit if skipping is what you meant.

Next

→ Chapter 9: The Leaderboard

9 The Leaderboard

After each published period, the leaderboard updates. This is the page you'll either celebrate on or learn from.

The student leaderboard. STR-style: you see your own numbers and competitor indices, not their dollar values.

What's actually shown

The leaderboard is built to mimic real-world hospitality industry reports (STR / Smith Travel Research). It deliberately:

This is deliberate. In the real world, hotels don't know exactly what their competitors are selling or how much they're spending. They know aggregate market data.

How to read the three indices

Each index compares you to the average of your competitive set (typically hotels of your type).

✅ RGI > 100 is the headline number. It means you're winning more revenue per available room than the average hotel in your set. That's the simplest definition of "doing well."

The three patterns

Hotels with MPI ≠ ARI usually fall into one of three patterns. Recognizing them helps you decide what to do next.

Common mistakes

Chasing the leader's price

The leader's pricing is their answer to their product. If they have stronger amenities, brand, and reputation, their $220 isn't your $220. Match strategy, not number.

Optimizing the wrong index

Going hard on MPI (raising occupancy) by dropping price is easy but often nukes RGI. Going hard on ARI by raising price drops MPI fast and can torpedo RGI too. Optimize RGI. That's the integrated outcome.

Reading one period as a trend

One period of low RGI may just be bad luck (a competitor got an RFP, an event went the other way). Two periods is interesting. Three periods is a pattern. Don't change your whole strategy on a single data point.

What's NOT on the leaderboard

Things that matter for your hotel that the leaderboard doesn't show:

• Your operating profit (revenue minus all costs). RGI optimizes revenue, not profit. A high-RGI hotel that's burning cash on channel commissions and a money-losing brand isn't really winning.
• Your cash position — easily checked on the top bar pill.
• Your reputation and service score — long-term assets that compound.

Always read leaderboard alongside your full results, not in isolation.

Next

→ Chapter 10: Reputation & Service Score

10 Reputation & Service Score

These are the two slowest-moving and most powerful variables in the simulator. Both compound over many periods. Both are easy to ignore early. Both are very hard to recover once damaged.

The pills

You'll see both on the top bar.

From left to right: hotel name, type, stars, service score, reputation, period, cash.

Both run on a 0–100 scale. Both are color-coded (red = poor, amber = average, green = strong).

Service score

Service score reflects the current period's operational quality — what you've built into the hotel.

What drives it

• Active amenities — each amenity you've installed contributes points to your service score. Higher tiers contribute more.
• Brand affiliation — joining a strong brand adds a service-score boost on top of your amenity base. Stronger brands give a bigger boost.
• Independent / own program — no brand boost. You're on your own amenity stack.

Where to tune it

My Hotel → Amenities (install or upgrade amenities) and My Hotel → Loyalty (affiliate with a brand) are the two levers.

How fast it moves

The new score takes effect once your new amenity comes online or your brand affiliation activates — typically the next period after you commit. There's no slow ramp-up for service score itself (reputation, however, takes longer to react — see below).

What it impacts

• Guest satisfaction in the current period
• The trajectory of your reputation over time
• Your perceived quality vs competitors (the "package" guests are choosing among)

Reputation

Reputation moves slowly because it's an accumulation. Every period, the engine looks at how well your hotel performed (service score, guest experience, amenity quality, brand affiliation) and nudges your reputation up or down.

What drives it

How fast it moves

Slowly. A single period's good performance nudges reputation by a small amount. It takes 4–6 periods of consistent strong performance to meaningfully move from "okay" to "strong."

This is by design. In the real world, hotel reputation builds over years, not weeks. The simulator compresses the timeline but preserves the dynamic.

What it impacts

• Guest choice — higher-reputation hotels capture a larger share of demand at any given price
• Pricing power — you can charge more without losing demand
• Resilience — strong-reputation hotels weather bad periods better

The pending-change preview

When you make a decision that will change service score or reputation but hasn't been run yet, the pill shows you a pending preview — an arrow indicating where the score is going.

For example, if you activate an Influencer campaign that will nudge reputation up by a few points:

⭐ Rep 64 → 68

This preview:

• Refreshes immediately when you commit a change (no page reload needed)
• Is a projection based on what the engine thinks will happen
• May differ slightly from the final actual value (other things move in parallel)

A reputation pill showing a pending change (left: plain, right: projection arrow visible).

Why these matter for revenue

Two hotels with identical pricing strategies but different reputation and service scores will get very different results. The higher-rep, higher-service hotel:

• Gets more demand at the same price (more guests choose it)
• Can raise prices without losing as much demand
• Recovers faster from bad periods

The lower-rep, lower-service hotel:

• Must lean on lower prices to stay full
• Loses customers to higher-perceived competitors at the same price
• Compounds downward — fewer bookings → less revenue → less to invest in fixes

The strategic implication

In the first 2–3 periods, invest in reputation and service. By period 5+, you'll be playing a different game than the hotels that didn't.

This is the simulator's biggest hidden lever. Hotels that obsessively price-tune in period 1 but ignore amenities and brand-building usually peak in period 3, then fade. Hotels that build the underlying engine first start slower but dominate by period 6.

Practical playbook

Next

→ Chapter 11: Strategy Tips (meta-advice for sustained competitive play)

11 Strategy Tips

This chapter is meta-advice. It doesn't reveal anything about the engine — instead it captures patterns observed across many cohorts of students playing this simulator. Use it as a checklist before each period.

The five most common mistakes

1. Pricing in a vacuum

The mistake: You decide "fair" prices for your hotel without checking what competitors are doing or what your forecast looks like.

Fix: Position → Forecast → Market Intel → then Pricing. In that order, every period.

2. Ignoring My Hotel after period 1

The mistake: You set up amenities and channels in period 1, then never revisit them. By period 5 your product is stale and your competitors have lapped you.

Fix: Block 5 minutes every period to review the My Hotel sub-tabs. Even if you don't change anything, you've made a conscious decision.

3. Reacting to one bad period

The mistake: You have a weak period 2 (low occupancy) and panic-discount in period 3. You sell out in period 3 but at a terrible ADR, and now your "discounted" reputation pulls you down for periods 4–5.

Fix: Two-period rule. Don't make a strategy change based on a single period. Wait until you see the pattern twice.

4. Skipping marketing

The mistake: Marketing feels expensive, so you skip it. Meanwhile a competitor runs a Baseline campaign for three periods and pulls ahead permanently.

Fix: Allocate a marketing budget every period, even a small one. Buzz for short-term gaps, Baseline for the long game.

5. Forgetting RFPs

The mistake: You don't bid on RFPs because they "feel separate" from your main strategy.

Fix: Treat RFPs as part of your pricing strategy. They fill rooms you wouldn't have filled, on dates you wouldn't have filled, with cash that doesn't pay channel commissions.

The strategic identity question

Before period 1, decide: what kind of hotel are you?

Pick one of these (or define your own — but commit):

Hotels that commit to one identity outperform hotels that try to do all four. The simulator rewards focus.

A useful weekly routine

Build this habit:

1. Open Position → write one sentence about last period
2. Open Forecast → write one sentence about next month
3. Open Market Intel → write one sentence about competitors
4. Open Pricing → make decisions consistent with those three sentences
5. Open My Hotel → quick scan, only change if there's a clear reason
6. Open RFPs → bid or consciously skip every open one
7. Submit

Total: 15-20 minutes per period once you're in rhythm.

Reading the Demand Factors panel

After each period your professor can show you a Demand Factors view that explains why your hotel got the result it got. Different professors expose this differently — some show it openly, some make you ask. If you can see it, study it. It's the single most learning-dense screen in the simulator.

Common scenarios

"I'm in last place after period 1"

Period 1 results are noisy. You may have over-priced for the actual demand, or your product (amenities, brand) needs work. Read your daily breakdown — was it under-occupancy or under-ADR? — and adjust ONE thing for period 2.

"I had a great period 1, but something went wrong in period 2"

Two common culprits:

• A competitor improved their product (added a spa, joined a strong brand) — check the leaderboard for changes
• You got complacent — same prices in a season where demand shifted

"I keep winning RFPs but my P&L is shrinking"

You're bidding too low. RFPs displace retail bookings that would have paid more. Use the displacement panel (if shown) and bid less aggressively.

"My cash is dropping but my revenue is fine"

Check your operating costs:

• Are you running too many ongoing marketing campaigns?
• Is your channel mix heavy on commission-charging OTAs?
• Did you over-invest in amenities and now carry too much ongoing OpEx?
• Are you paying a high franchise fee for a brand that's not lifting demand enough to justify it?

"My reputation is dropping and I don't know why"

Likely causes (in order of frequency):

• Weak amenity stack → low service score → drags reputation
• Overbooked rooms (walks) → reputation hits
• Independent and not running any Baseline marketing → no positive pressure to offset natural decay
• Brand mismatch — joined a luxury brand but you're a budget hotel

The 80/20 rule

If you do nothing else, do these three things every period:

1. Read Position and write one sentence about the previous period
2. Look at competitor pricing in Market Intel (if unlocked) before pricing yourself
3. Bid on, or consciously skip, every open RFP

That alone will put you in the upper half of your class.

Next

→ Chapter 12: Financial Instruments (only if your sim has them enabled)

12 Financial Instruments

Skip this chapter if your professor hasn't enabled financial features. You can check by looking at the navigation: if you see a Financials tab in the top nav, this chapter applies. Otherwise, ignore.

When enabled, financial instruments turn the simulator into a more realistic cash-management game. You're not just running a hotel — you're running a business, with all the cash-flow stress that comes with it.

Three instruments

The Financials page

The Financials page — operating cash, reserve balance, revolver position, debt covenants.

Operating cash vs investment cash vs reserve

Three different "buckets":

Keep these straight. Mixing them up is the #1 financial mistake students make.

Replacement Reserve — the automatic one

Every period, a small percentage of your revenue is automatically moved into a Replacement Reserve account. This isn't a choice — it's a covenant.

The reserve sits there earning a small return until you need to use it. You'd use it when an existing amenity reaches the end of its "useful life" and needs to be replaced.

You don't actively manage this. Just know it's there, slowly accumulating, and don't be alarmed when you see it on your P&L as a deduction from operating profit.

Revolver — the safety net

If your operating cash goes negative at the end of a period, the revolver automatically draws to bring you back to zero (or to your minimum cash floor, if you've set one).

You'll see this on your P&L as:

• Revolver draw: amount drawn
• Revolver interest: cost of the draw next period

Why it's a safety net (not a strategy)

Auto-drawing keeps you operational. But:

• The interest rate on revolver debt is higher than your operating margins
• A growing revolver balance signals to your covenants you're in trouble
• If you stay in revolver debt for many periods, your credit standards may downgrade — making future borrowing harder

💡 The revolver is fine for a one-period cash crunch. It's a red flag if you're still on it three periods later.

Capital Injection — the long-term option

If you need permanent capital — say, to fund a major amenity investment that the revolver can't cover — you can request a Capital Injection from your "owner" (your simulated equity backer).

You'll get a form to fill out:

• How much you want
• What you'll use it for
• Why it's worth the equity dilution

Approvals are not guaranteed. Your professor (acting as the owner) may say no, especially if your operating performance is weak or if you've already injected capital recently.

Credit standards — what they mean

The Financials page also shows your credit standards — DSCR (Debt Service Coverage Ratio) and LTV (Loan-to-Value).

You don't need to memorize these. The page tells you whether you're inside acceptable bands or in danger of a covenant breach. If you're in danger, fix it — by raising operating profit, paying down revolver, or both.

Ambient alerts

If your cash position becomes critical, you'll see:

• A pulse pill on your hotel layout (replaces or augments the normal cash pill)
• A banner at the top of decision pages

These are warnings, not blockers. You can still play normally — but you should treat them as urgent.

The strategic implication

Financial instruments add a layer of consequence to your operational decisions:

• Aggressive marketing spend → operating cash drops → revolver draw → interest expense → less margin
• Over-investing in amenities → investment cash depleted → can't buy the brand upgrade you needed → opportunity cost
• Under-investing → no growth → falling behind → tough cycle to break

The game becomes: make decisions that grow operating profit faster than your obligations grow.

Next

→ Chapter 13: FAQ & Troubleshooting

13 FAQ & Troubleshooting

A grab-bag of "things students actually ask." Skim once. Come back as a reference when stuck.

Login & access

I forgot my hotel password

You can request a reset directly from the login page:

1. Click Hotel Team on the landing page
2. Click the small Forgot password? link below the "Enter Hotel Dashboard" button
3. Enter your simulation ID and hotel name. You can optionally add a short message (e.g. "we've been locked out since yesterday")
4. Submit. Your professor receives an email notifying them of the request.
5. Your professor will set a new password and share it with you (usually within a few hours, depending on their schedule)

You don't see the new password until your professor sends it to you — the simulator never emails passwords directly to students. That's by design: your professor is the security checkpoint for your team's credentials.

My simulation ID isn't working

Triple-check the spelling — they're often long alphanumeric codes. Copy-paste from the email your professor sent if you can.

Wrong hotel name error

The hotel name is case-sensitive. "Grand Plaza" ≠ "grand plaza" ≠ "Grand-Plaza". Match exactly.

Editing decisions

Why are my inputs grayed out?

One of two reasons:

1. The current period is closed (your professor has run it).
2. Your professor has locked editing — even though the period is technically open.

Look for the 🔒 banner at the top of the page; it'll tell you which.

My professor unlocked editing but I still can't edit

Hard-refresh the page (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R). The lock state is cached and sometimes stale.

I made a change, navigated away, came back, and it's gone

You forgot to click Save on the tab. Each tab saves independently. There is no auto-save.

Can I copy-paste prices across days?

The Pricing tab has a Pre-populate action that copies from a previous month, either by date or by day-of-week. Use day-of-week when possible — it preserves the weekly rhythm of your pricing.

Why won't a past pace-mode day let me edit?

Because it's already been processed. Pace mode locks past chunks. You can only edit days that haven't been run yet.

Pricing

What's the "right" price?

There is no single right price. The right price is the one that lines up with:

• Your forecast for that day
• What competitors are charging (Market Intel)
• Your hotel's product strength (amenities, brand, reputation, channels)
• Your strategic identity (premium / volume / corporate / direct)

Read Chapter 5 carefully and run your first period as an experiment.

My ADR went down even though I raised prices. What?

Check your segment mix. If you got a lot of advance-purchase bookings (which pay a discount off retail), your blended ADR drops even though your retail rate went up. This is normal.

Why did I get walked (overbooked)?

You sold more rooms than you had available. This happens when:

• You priced very aggressively and demand exceeded your inventory cap
• You didn't reduce your "available inventory" on a peak day
• Your forecast was off and the actual demand was much higher

Walks are penalized (walk-cost in your P&L) and hurt reputation slowly. Avoid by holding inventory back on expected peak days.

RFPs

I bid but didn't win. Why?

The professor (or auto-awarder) chose another bid. Usually that means another hotel bid lower or had a better fit. You can ask your professor for feedback; sometimes they'll share why.

I won but my P&L looks worse than expected

You may have bid too low and displaced higher-revenue retail bookings. Use the displacement panel (if your professor enables it) on your next bid.

Can I withdraw a bid?

Before the deadline, yes — just edit and resubmit (or delete). After the deadline, no.

The displacement panel doesn't appear for this RFP

Your professor disabled it for this specific RFP. You'll have to estimate displacement yourself based on your forecast.

Results

My results don't match my decisions

A few common causes:

• You didn't click Submit Final. Your decisions were saved but never "committed" — the engine used your previous period's prices as a fallback.
• Your professor unpublished and re-ran the period with different inputs. Ask them.
• You misread a number — re-check the daily breakdown.

Why is my occupancy capped at 100%?

The simulator caps displayed occupancy at 100% even when you were overbooked, because >100% looks weird in a chart. The "Overbooked" column shows the excess.

Forecast variance — what is the percentage?

Some simulations show a forecast-vs-actual accuracy score. It's an MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error) — lower is better, meaning your forecasts were close to reality.

Marketing & Channels

My marketing campaign is active but I don't see a difference

Marketing has different timing:

• Buzz campaigns show effects within 1 period.
• Baseline campaigns build slowly over 3+ periods.
• One-shot campaigns are a single boost — if you don't see it the same period, something's off.

Also: campaigns add to your "package" but don't override pricing. A weak product with a strong campaign still has a weak product.

Should I activate every available channel?

No. Each additional channel has diminishing returns and comes with commission costs. 2–4 channels is usually optimal. Read Chapter 3.4.

Direct says "always on" — can I turn it off?

No. Your own website is always available, free of commission. There's no reason to want to turn it off.

Reputation & Service Score

Why is my reputation dropping?

Common reasons (in order):

1. Weak amenity stack → low service score → drags reputation
2. Overbookings → walk penalties
3. Independent + no marketing → no positive pressure
4. Brand mismatch — joined a brand that doesn't fit your hotel type

How do I raise reputation fast?

You can't, by design. Reputation builds slowly. Be patient. Run Baseline marketing, strengthen your amenity stack, consider joining a stronger brand. Wait 3+ periods.

The pending arrow on my reputation pill — is that locked in?

It's a projection of what the engine thinks will happen based on your committed decisions. The actual published value may differ slightly because other moving parts (other hotels, events) influence the final number.

My Hotel

I upgraded my amenity but lost revenue that period

Check whether you upgraded mid-period. Recent versions of the simulator handle this cleanly (old amenity stays active until new one comes online), but if you saw a revenue drop, double-check by asking your professor to look at your hotel-view.

Switching brands — is there a penalty?

Yes. There's a joining fee for the new brand and often an exit penalty from the old one. The Loyalty tab shows you both before you commit.

Can I be "independent" then later join a brand?

Yes. You can change brand path each period if you can afford the switching cost.

Pace mode

Why are some of my Forecast cells grayed out?

They're for days in past pace chunks. Once a day has been processed, your forecast for that day is sealed against actuals — you can read what you forecasted, but you can't change it. Use it as a learning signal for the days you can still edit.

How do I know which chunk we're in?

Open Decisions → Month in Progress. The pace timeline shows you visually which chunks are done and which are still ahead.

Technical

The page is acting weird / something looks broken

1. Hard-refresh (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R)
2. Log out and back in
3. Try a different browser
4. If still broken, message your professor with a screenshot

Can I use this on mobile?

The simulator is built for desktop. It will load on mobile but the pricing grids and tables don't fit well. Use a laptop or tablet in landscape.

Does my data save if I close the tab?

Only if you clicked Save first. Always Save before closing.

Where to learn more

• Chapter 4 — Reading the market
• Chapter 5 — Setting prices
• Chapter 9 — The leaderboard
• Chapter 10 — Reputation & service score
• Chapter 11 — Strategy tips

Ask your professor too — they have access to the full picture of your hotel and can answer "why" questions the simulator can't.

Good luck. Have fun. And remember: the goal isn't to win the simulation — it's to learn how to think like a revenue strategist.