Special offers (SPO) for tour operators: rules, combinations and loading

An SPO (special offer) is a dated, conditional price offer a hotel gives a tour operator on top of the contracted rate: early booking, stay/pay, long stay or free child. It carries its own booking and stay windows, a defined base and written combination rules. Unclear combination rules and loading errors cause most disputes.

For example: a reservation arrives from a tour operator under a seven-nights-for-six offer, and the price in the operator's confirmation is not the price the hotel's own system produces. Nobody is lying. The offer was written in an email, read as a percentage by one system and as a free night by the other. After reading this article you will be able to write a hotel special offer for a tour operator that both systems read the same way, load it, and prove what was sent.

What is an SPO, and how is it different from a contract rate change?#

An SPO is a temporary, conditional price offer laid over the contracted rate for a defined booking window and stay window. A contract rate change edits the baseline itself.

The contracted rate is the season-long baseline agreed in the contract; it applies to every booking inside the contract's dates unless something else is written down. An SPO adds two windows on top: when the booking may be made, and when the stay may take place. When the stay window closes, the base rate applies again with no action from anyone.

A rate change moves the baseline, so it re-prices everything quoted from that baseline, including bookings already confirmed at the old figure unless the contract says otherwise. The practical test: if the offer should stop applying on a date without anyone touching the system, it is an SPO. If it should apply to everything until the season ends, it is a rate change.

Ownership differs too. Contracting owns the contract and the baseline; sales and reservations own the SPO. Both need the same approval for the floor price the offer may not go below. Both need a written record, but the record does different work: a rate change replaces a clause, an SPO sits beside it and must be traceable to the clause it modifies. For the wider picture, see the clauses beyond the allotment in a tour operator contract.

Which SPO types do resorts actually send?#

Most resort SPOs fall into six families: early booking, stay/pay, long stay, child and occupancy offers, occasion offers, and last-minute. Each reduces a different base, and each has one field that is most often written badly.

Early booking reduces the price for bookings made before a cutoff, for stays in a later period. The booking window and the stay window are different dates and both must be stated, including the cutoff time and time zone. Stay/pay, the seven-nights-for-six family, is expressed in nights, not in a percentage. The offer must say which night is not charged, the cheapest night, the last night, or a pro-rata reduction across the stay, and what happens on a ten-night stay.

Long stay sets a minimum-nights threshold that triggers a reduction. State whether the threshold counts nights per booking or per room, and whether a booking that drops below the threshold after a partial cancellation keeps the reduction. Free child offers depend on three things at once: the age band, the child sharing the parents' room, and the room's legal capacity. The age is measured on the arrival date, not the booking date, and that must be written.

Occasion offers, such as honeymoon or anniversary, usually need a document, a minimum stay and a room type, and they usually exclude the cheapest categories. Say which document and who checks it at check-in. Occupancy offers, such as third adult free or single supplement waived, must say whether the waived amount is the supplement only or the whole person price. Last-minute offers have a short booking window close to arrival, and are usually mutually exclusive with early booking; the SPO should say so rather than leave it to the reservation agent.

Which fields must every SPO state?#

Every SPO must state eight fields, and an offer missing any of them will be interpreted differently by the hotel, the operator and the operator's system.

The booking window needs the first and last date a booking may be made, plus the cutoff time and the time zone. "Until 31 March" is ambiguous on the last day. The stay window needs the arrival dates the offer covers, and whether a departure may fall outside the window. Room types and board types must be listed; a board upgrade is a separate offer, not a footnote. Markets must state nationality or source market, and whether the rule reads the guest's nationality or the country the booking was made in.

The base must be named precisely: per room per night, per person per night, or per booking; a percentage or a fixed amount; before or after tax; before or after the contract's own discounts. Combinability needs an explicit list of which other SPOs it stacks with, in what order, and an explicit list of what it never stacks with. Blackout dates, minimum stay, and the interaction with the contract's cancellation terms and deposit schedule complete the substance, and administration closes it: code, version, approver, date sent, and the partner's acceptance reference. The same discipline applies to the rate sheet itself; see how to write a net rate quote a travel agent can read.

Which offers can be combined, and in what order?#

Combination is a decision the hotel makes before the season and writes into the SPO. The order of application changes the final price, so the order belongs in the offer, not in the reservation agent's judgment.

Distinguish additive from multiplicative. Two fixed amounts add. Two percentages do not: a reduction applied to an already reduced price produces less than the sum of the two percentages. Name the base each rule applies to: the net room rate, the already-discounted room rate, or the whole booking including extras. A percentage on the booking is a different offer from a percentage on the room.

Write one order and keep it: room-level reductions first, then board, then per-booking reductions, then child and occupancy adjustments. Any order works if it is written and both sides apply it. Set a floor price, a minimum per room per night below which no combination may fall. Without it, three stackable offers can pass the hotel's cost and nobody notices until the month closes. Declare the exclusions, state the rounding step and the currency, and give the combination rule to the operator in writing with the offer, not on request.

How do you load an SPO so the hotel and the operator agree?#

Define the offer once in the hotel's own system, load the operator's system from that definition, and then prove the two agree with three test bookings before the offer goes live.

Write the offer in the hotel's system first. The email thread, the extranet entry and the contract annex are copies of one definition, not three independent documents. Ask the operator how their system reads the offer: percentage or fixed amount, per room or per person, before or after their own markup, and which date it reads for the booking window.

Then run the three test bookings. Compare the price the operator's system returns with the price the hotel's system produces for the same booking, down to the currency and the rounding. Check that the offer appears only for the room types, board types and markets it names, and that it disappears on the blackout dates. Keep the dated confirmation from the operator and a screenshot of the loaded offer: this is the evidence that settles a price query in ten minutes instead of ten emails. Repeat the three test bookings after any rate change, stop sale or new version of the offer. This sits inside the wider workflow described in how hotels in Türkiye sell through tour operators.

For each test, record the date, the operator's reference, the price returned, the price in the hotel system, and who checked.

How do you keep an SPO log that survives a dispute?#

Number every SPO, version it, and log what was sent, to whom, when, and what it replaced. Supersede rather than edit, so the history stays readable.

Use one numbering scheme across the property: property code, year, offer type, sequence, version. Anyone reading a confirmation can trace it back to one line in the log. Log the substance, not just the file name: type, base, booking window, stay window, markets, combinability, floor price, approver and date sent. Record the partner's written acceptance, not only the email the hotel sent; an offer the operator never confirmed is an offer in dispute.

Reconcile monthly: pull the bookings that used the code and check the price applied against the log. Errors are cheap in month one and expensive in month nine. Close the offer on the last day of its stay window and confirm it stopped in the operator's system too. At the end of the season, review which offers were booked, which were never used, and which produced the most queries; that review is the input for next season's offers, alongside when early booking and non-refundable rates pay off.

Where does AI Otel stand on special offers?#

The distribution hub is built, with seed data; no agency is connected yet. Its design point is exactly the problem above: every quote shows its working.

The hub lets hotels publish contracted rates to travel agencies on their own terms, rather than handing over a rate sheet and hoping the terms travel with it. Every quote shows its working: the hotel's net, each pricing rule that fired, and the final price. A combination order that is written down is a combination order that can be checked line by line. The rates the hub would publish come from the hotel operating system, which is built and working, ahead of launch.

What to do next#

Before the next season, write a one-page SPO standard: the eight fields, the combination order, the floor price and the numbering scheme. Then apply it to the first offer you send, and run the three test bookings before it goes live. The parts fit together in that order: the SPO is an overlay on the contract, the fields make it readable, the combination order makes it calculable, the loading check proves both systems agree, and the log keeps the proof. If you want to discuss how published rates with visible working could fit your distribution, request a briefing at https://ai-otel.com/contact.