Pricing a hotel room sounds simple until you're managing corporate contracts, a long weekend, a peak summer season, and a walk-in guest — all at the same time. Zitlin's pricing system is built around three independent modifiers that stack logically, plus a Folio-level discount that applies cleanly before tax. Here's exactly how it all fits together.
How Zitlin Calculates a Nightly Room Rate
Every reservation's nightly price is the result of up to three modifiers applied to the room type's base price:
- Rate Plan — absolute or relative, set at the Folio level
- Seasonal Modifier — relative, applies automatically based on date ranges
- Weekday Modifier — relative, applies automatically based on the day of the week
These three work together on accommodation pricing. Folio discounts and taxes are applied separately, later in the billing cycle.
Rate Plans: Absolute vs Relative
A Rate Plan is assigned to a Folio, not to an individual reservation. Every reservation inside that Folio inherits the same Rate Plan. This is intentional — a corporate deal or a group booking should have consistent pricing across all rooms and nights.
Relative Rate Plans apply a price multiplier to the base room rate:
- A multiplier of
1.0= standard rate (no change) - A multiplier of
0.90= 10% discount off base rate - A multiplier of
1.15= 15% premium over base rate
Absolute Rate Plans set a fixed add-on price on top of the base rate. When an absolute value is configured, it overrides the relative multiplier entirely.
When to use which: Relative plans work well for promotional discounts, loyalty tiers, and packages where the rate should flex with your base pricing. Absolute plans are best when you want to charge a fixed tariff per room per night.
Weekday Modifiers
Weekday Modifiers apply a relative multiplier on top of the base rate for specific days of the week. These are set once in your organisation settings and apply automatically across all reservations — no manual adjustment per booking needed.
A typical configuration might look like:
| Day | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Monday – Thursday | 1.0 (standard) |
| Friday | 1.10 |
| Saturday | 1.20 |
| Sunday | 1.10 |
Weekday modifiers compound with the active Rate Plan. If your base rate is ₹4,000 and a Saturday modifier is 1.20, the rate before seasonal adjustment is ₹4,800.
Seasonal Modifiers
Seasonal Modifiers apply relative multipliers over a date range you define — recurring annually (e.g. every December 20 – January 5) or as a one-off window. Like weekday modifiers, they apply automatically once configured; you don't need to remember to turn them on each year.
Multiple modifiers can overlap a single date, and they stack multiplicatively with weekday modifiers. A peak-season modifier of 1.30 on a Saturday with a 1.20 weekend modifier results in a combined rate of 1.30 × 1.20 = 1.56× the base rate.
Folio Discounts
A Folio discount is a percentage applied during invoice generation — after all nightly rates have been calculated but before taxes are added. It applies to both accommodation charges and F&B (food and beverage) items on the same Folio.
This is an important distinction from Rate Plans: a Rate Plan only affects accommodation nightly rates. A Folio discount affects everything billed through that Folio.
Taxes: Inclusive vs Exclusive
Zitlin supports both tax models:
- Tax exclusive — tax is added on top of the displayed rate at billing
- Tax inclusive — tax is already embedded in the displayed rate
The default is set in Settings → Admin. However, this can be changed per Folio, so you can handle walk-ins, corporate accounts, and international guests differently under the same property — without changing your global default.
Real Scenarios
The best way to understand how these layers interact is through examples.
Scenario 1: Weekend Leisure Guests (No Special Rate)
A couple books a standard double room for Friday and Saturday nights. Base rate: ₹5,000/night. Weekend modifier: Friday 1.10, Saturday 1.20.
The Folio uses the Default Rate Plan (multiplier: 1.0). No seasonal modifier is active.
| Night | Base | Weekday Modifier | Final Nightly Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | ₹5,000 | ×1.10 | ₹5,500 |
| Saturday | ₹5,000 | ×1.20 | ₹6,000 |
Total accommodation: ₹11,500. No Folio discount. Tax applied on top (or inclusive, per setting).
Scenario 2: Corporate Guest — Accommodation Discount Only
A corporate client has a negotiated 10% discount on room rate. They order dinner (₹1,200). The hotel wants the discount to apply to accommodation only, not food.
Create a Rate Plan with a relative multiplier of 0.90. Assign it to the Folio. The F&B charge is billed at full price through the same Folio.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| 2 nights × ₹5,000 × 0.90 | ₹9,000 |
| Dinner | ₹1,200 |
| Total before tax | ₹10,200 |
The food bill is unaffected by the Rate Plan.
Scenario 3: Corporate Guest — Discount on Accommodation and Food
Same corporate client, but the agreement covers 10% off the entire bill — rooms and meals.
Use the Default Rate Plan (no accommodation adjustment). Apply a 10% Folio discount instead.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| 2 nights × ₹5,000 | ₹10,000 |
| Dinner | ₹1,200 |
| Subtotal | ₹11,200 |
| Folio discount (10%) | −₹1,120 |
| Total before tax | ₹10,080 |
The discount applies uniformly to everything on the Folio.
Scenario 4: Peak Season with a Weekend Premium
A hotel in a hill station has a December peak modifier of 1.40. A guest books Friday–Sunday. Weekend multipliers: Friday 1.10, Saturday 1.20, Sunday 1.10. Base rate: ₹4,000.
| Night | Base | Seasonal | Weekday | Final Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | ₹4,000 | ×1.40 | ×1.10 | ₹6,160 |
| Saturday | ₹4,000 | ×1.40 | ×1.20 | ₹6,720 |
| Sunday | ₹4,000 | ×1.40 | ×1.10 | ₹6,160 |
Total: ₹19,040 — automatically calculated, no manual input required.
Scenario 5: Long-Stay Guest, Tax-Inclusive Billing
A consultant books a room for 10 weeknights. The property's default is tax-exclusive, but this guest is on a company card and has requested tax-inclusive rates for simpler reimbursement.
Change the tax setting on this specific Folio to inclusive. The displayed nightly rate already includes tax — no surprise additions at checkout. All other Folios on the property continue using the default exclusive setting.
Quick Reference: Which Tool to Use
| Goal | Use |
|---|---|
| Accommodation-only discount (corporate) | Relative Rate Plan (e.g. 0.90 multiplier) |
| Discount on rooms + food together | Default Rate Plan + Folio discount |
| Automatic peak/low season pricing | Seasonal Modifier |
| Higher weekend rates | Weekday Modifier |
| Tax-inclusive billing for one guest | Per-Folio tax setting override |
Contracted Nightly Rate
The front-desk can always unlock and modify the nightly prices for each accommodation unit for every booking in a folio from the Rates section.
Setting It Up in Zitlin
- Rate Plans: Settings → Property → Rate Plans → New Plan → choose Relative (enter multiplier) or Absolute (enter fixed price)
- Seasonal Modifiers: Settings → Property → Seasonal Modifiers → define date range and multiplier
- Weekday Modifiers: Settings → Property → Weekday Pricing
- Folio Discount: Open any Folio → Discount field (applied at invoice generation)
- Tax Mode: Settings → Property Admin for the default; override per Folio from the Folio detail screen
Zitlin's pricing system is designed to handle the real complexity of hotel operations — contracted rates, seasonal demand, weekend premiums, mixed F&B billing — without requiring a revenue manager or expensive add-ons. Every modifier works automatically once configured.