Create a promotion code for your booking engine to offer guests exclusive, limited-time discounts. A promo code field is always visible on your booking engine, where guests enter the code to receive the discount.
💡 Use promotion codes for exclusive offers. For public-facing deals on your booking engine, set up dynamic discounts to reduce your direct booking rates, or set a rate multiplier for Direct Booking instead.
How promotion codes work
Promotion codes set up in Direct booking > Promotion codes work only on your direct booking engine. They do not work on external channels (OTAs). Channels such as Booking.com or Expedia have their own requirements for setting up promotions and promo codes - contact channels (OTAs) directly to manage external discounts.
Promotion codes are only available with a Direct Booking subscription. If you use Demand Plus without Direct Booking, promotion codes are not available.
Create a promotion code
To create a promotion code for your booking engine, follow these steps:
Go to Direct booking > Promotion codes.
Click on the Add promotion code button.
Follow the steps to create your promo code, then click Save.
When creating your promo code, fill in the following details:
Promotion code details | Description |
The promotion code that your guests will use | The code that must be entered on your booking engine to get the deal. For example, ‘winterspecial’. Each promo code created must be unique. |
Promotion code description | Add a description that will show when the promo code is entered on your booking engine. |
Default discount | Set a percentage or amount discount. When assigning this promotion code to your direct booking rates, if needed you can also override this default discount and set a custom discount for a specific rate. |
Show discount amount to guests | Tick this option if you want the discounted price to be shown on your booking engine under the booking summary’s Room charges > Promotional discount. |
Stay dates | The stay dates the promo code will apply to. |
Sell dates | When the promo code will be valid/can be booked. |
Assign to room rates | Assign the promo code to all or specific room rates. If you want to override the discount for a specific room rate, click the lock icon, then enter the new discount for the room rate. Note that you need to add the room rate to Direct booking before you can link it to the promo code. |
Restrict a rate to a promo code
If you only want a rate to show when a customer enters an assigned promotion code, enable the Restrict rate toggle when editing a direct booking rate. Go to Direct booking > Direct booking rates > click on a rate plan to edit it > turn on the Restrict rate toggle.
Manage, edit, or delete a promo code
To manage, edit or delete a promo code:
Go to Direct booking > Promotion codes.
Find the promotion code and click on the ellipsis button (three dots button) next to the code.
Select either: Edit, Delete, Assign (to assign or remove assigned room rates), or Duplicate (to duplicate the existing settings to create a new promo code).
Run a report to see how many times a promo code has been used
To see how many times your promo codes have been used to book reservations, you can download a reservation summary report from your Reservations page.
Go to Reservations.
Set your filters, then click Search.
Click the Download CSV button.
Select Reservation summary to download a file.
Check the “Promo code” column to see any applied promo codes.
This report will allow you to see how many bookings you’ve received with a promo code. There is no limit to how many times the same customer can use the one promo code. We recommend changing your codes regularly.