Housing

Overview

The Housing Management page lets you configure hotels, set room rates, control chapter access to hotels, and assign attendees to rooms. Access it by clicking the Housing card from a conference's detail page.

The page is organized into tabs that vary by your role:

• Hotels — add and configure hotels with room rates
• Housing Settings — configure housing policies for the conference
• Chapter Access — control which chapters can book which hotels
• Room Assignments — assign attendees to hotel rooms

Hotels

The Hotels tab is where you add and manage the hotels available for your conference.

Adding a Hotel

1. Click the Add Hotel button at the top of the Hotels tab.
2. In the popup window, you can configure the following hotel details:
   • Hotel Name — the name of the hotel
   • Address/City/State/Zip Code — street, city, state, and zip code
   • Contact Name/Phone/Email — hotel point-of-contact name, phone number, and email address
   • Website — the hotel's website
   • Minimum Nights Stay — the minimum number of nights a guest must stay
   • Total Rooms Available — the total number of rooms the hotel can accommodate under your room block.
   • Sort Order — controls the display order of hotels when displayed in the list.
   • Visible to Chapters — whether chapters can see this hotel when making assignments.
   • Notes — any additional information about the hotel.
   • Payment/Remittance Instructions - If chapters will need to pay the hotel directly, you can enter detailed remittance instructions here.
3. Click Create Hotel.

Editing a Hotel

To edit a hotel, click the button next to the hotel in the list. This will open the same popup window as the Add Hotel popup, allowing you to make changes to the hotel's details.

Deleting a Hotel

To delete a hotel, click the button next to the hotel in the list.

Managing Room Rates

Each hotel can have multiple room rate configurations. Room rates are used to determine the individual cost of a room, how many of each room type are available, and whether the room type is available to same-gender versus mixed-gender guests. To view and manage room rates, click the arrow on a hotel card.

To add a new room rate, click the Add Rate button at the top of the room rates list. In the popup window, you can configure the following room rate details:

• Rate Code — a short identifier for this rate (e.g., "DBL", "QUAD")
• Description — a description of the room type
• Occupancy Min / Max — the minimum and maximum number of guests per room
• Rate Per Night — the nightly cost per night
• Rooms Available — how many rooms are available at this rate
• Same Gender Required — whether all occupants must be the same gender

Click Create Rate to save the new rate.

You can edit a room rate by clicking the button next to the rate in the list. This will open the same popup window as the Add Rate popup, allowing you to make changes to the rate's details. If you need to delete a rate, click the button next to the rate in the list.

Housing Settings

The Housing Settings tab lets you configure conference-wide housing policies. These settings allow you to configure whether chapters can book rooms, the status of housing registration, how advisors can select hotels, and other settings. To access the Housing Settings, click the Housing Settings tab at the top of the Housing Management page.

Once you've made changes to the Housing Settings, click the Save Settings button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

General Settings

The General Settings section allows you to configure the following:

• Show Housing Option to Chapters — Configure whether you want chapters to be able to select and manage housing. If you're managing room reservations outside of CTSO Central (for example, directly with the hotel or via a third-party service like PassKey), you may want to disable this option.
• Housing Management - Configure whether you want to manage housing within CTSO Central or if you want to utilize an external housing system or other instructions. If you select "Externally Managed", this will disable the ability to create hotels and room assignments within CTSO Central, and instead will allow you to configure custom instructions and booking links for chapters to follow.
• Housing Registration Status — Configure whether you want to allow chapters to register for housing. This setting is independent of the Conference Registration status, so you can keep housing registration open even if the conference registration is closed. By default, this is synced with the Conference Registration status, but you can manually override and open it up/close it as needed.
• Hotel Selection Method — You can configure how advisors are allowed to select hotels for their chapter. By default, advisors can select any hotel that has been made available and has available rooms. However, if you are operating a housing lottery or have a specific hotel selection process, you can configure one of two additional options:
  • Specific Assignment by Chapter — Chapters can only select hotels that have been specifically assigned to them. You can select the hotels each chapter is allowed to book into on the Chapter Access tab.
  • Cascade (Fill First Available) - Advisors will be assigned to hotels in the order that you've set hotels to be visible. For example, if you have hotels A, B, and C, and you set hotel A to be visible first, then hotel B, then hotel C, advisors will be assigned to hotels in that order. Once a hotel is full, the next available hotel will be assigned.
• Allow Waitlist for Fully Booked Hotels — If a chapter requests a room at a hotel that is fully booked, you can configure whether you want to allow them to be added to a waitlist. If you do, chapters will be added to the waitlist and contacted once a room becomes available.

  Because of the potential impact to invoices that have already been paid, CTSO Central won't automatically cancel room assignments and rebook into a different hotel once the waitlist has opened up. You'll need to manually cancel their room assignment and rebook them into a different hotel.

• Allow Shared Rooms - If you select this option, chapters will be able to share and book rooms with other chapters. For example, to fill a quad room, you could allow a chapter to book two members from one chapter and two members from another chapter.

  When you allow shared rooms, chapters will need to provide the Member ID of the other chapter members they would like to share a room with. To protect privacy, chapters are not able to search for other chapter members by name. When requesting a shared room, the other chapter will receive an email notification with a request to confirm & approve the shared room assignment.

External Housing Instructions

If you have selected "Externally Managed" for the Housing Management setting, chapters will not be able to directly book rooms within CTSO Central in the Registration Wizard or Housing Management page. Instead, they will be prompted to follow the custom instructions you specify. You can configure the following:

• Booking Website - This is the link that chapters will be directed to when they click the "Book Housing" button in the Registration Wizard or Housing Management page.
• Button Label - This is the label that will be displayed on the "Book Housing" button in the Registration Wizard or Housing Management page.
• Booking Deadline - This is the date and time by which chapters must book their rooms. This is advisory-only and CTSO Central will not prevent chapters from booking after this deadline, but will display a warning to them.
• Deadline Note - If you have special instructions that apply to chapters after the deadline, such as "Rooms may not be guaranteed after this date", you can enter them here.
• Instructions - If you have any additional instructions that you want to display to chapters, you can enter them here. This will be displayed to chapters in the Registration Wizard and Housing Management page.

Date Settings

The Date Settings section allows you to configure the following:

• First Check-in Date — The first date you would like to allow chapters to check in for a room.
• Last Check-out Date — The late date you would like to allow chapters to check out of a room.
• Hide Arrival/Departure Date Selection - If you select this option, every chapter will be assigned the same arrival and departure dates based on your first and last check-in/out dates.

Early Access Settings

If you would like to allow certain chapters to book rooms before the general public, you can configure Early Access Settings. You can specify the date and time you wish for early access to start and end. You can then select whether you want to allow chapters to book using Early Access using a password, or you can manually select which chapters are allowed to book using Early Access via the Chapter Access tab.

Cost & Invoice Settings

This section allows you to configure the following:

• Rate Calculation Method - You can configure whether to calculate pricing based on a "Per Room Rate" or a "Per Person Rate".
  Tip

  This only affects the way that the total cost is calculated for a room assignment and displayed to the chapter. If you are selecting "Per Person Rate", make sure that the cost per night rate is set to the correct amount divided by the max number of people allowed in the room.

• Shared Room Cost Method - You can configure how to bill the cost of the room in the event multiple members are assigned to a single room, but from different chapters. You can choose to bill to the member's chapter (default setting), bill to the hosting chapter, or split between both chapters. This option is disabled if you don't allow shared rooms.
• Payment Remitted To - This controls whether you wish for the payment for rooms to be paid directly to your organization or to the hotel. If you select "Hotel", invoices will still be generated, however, you cannot submit payments to the hotel via CTSO Central or record payment history.
• Separate Housing Invoice from Registration - If you select this option, a separate invoice will be generated for housing costs. This is useful if you want to bill the hotel directly for housing costs, but still want to invoice the chapter for the registration fees.
• Hide Dollar Values from Chapters - If you select this option, the dollar values for room rates and costs will not be displayed to the chapter. This is useful if you want to keep the cost of the rooms a secret from the chapters, or if you bundle the housing and registration fees together into the participant rate.

Advisor Permissions

You can configure several options that control what advisors are able to do when managing room assignments for their chapter.

• Allow Advisors to Edit Reservations - Once a reservation has been created, this checkbox controls whether advisors are able to edit their own reservations.
• Allow Advisors to Delete Reservations - Once a reservation has been created, this checkbox controls whether advisors are able to delete their own reservations.
  Tip

  These permissions are controlled by whether housing registration is open to advisors or not - if it is not open to advisors, advisors can't edit or delete their own reservations. Conference administrators will always be able to edit or delete any reservation.

• Require Housing Selection Before Registration Submit - This controls whether advisors need to select a hotel and assign rooms before they can submit their registration.

Chapter Access

Chapter Access controls which chapters are permitted to book rooms at which hotels. This is useful when you have a large conference and want to distribute chapters across multiple hotels.

1. Click the Chapter Access tab.
2. You will see a list of chapters within the conference's association.
3. For each chapter, toggle access to specific hotels.
4. Chapters will only be able to see and book rooms at hotels they have been granted access to.

Room Assignments

The Room Assignments tab is where you assign individual attendees to specific hotel rooms.

1. Click the Room Assignments tab.
2. You will see the available chapters and their members.
3. Assign members to rooms by selecting a hotel, room rate, and room number.
4. View the current assignment status for all attendees.