What Kai can do
4 things we hold to
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How you start stays yours too
Up to 10 rooms the price does not rise, whether you add rooms or buildings. Three months free, no minimum contract. You do not have to build a booking screen, and everything but the booking screen stays your own site. What you do enter is your rooms and your prices.
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How you sell, and how you look, stay yours
Where, at what price and from when you sell — the terms are yours to set. kai provides the booking screen, so you do not have to build one, and if you would rather draw it in your own site’s look, there is an API that returns availability, prices and bookings. Your guests choose between Japanese, English and Simplified Chinese, and you decide which of them to offer.
“Choose the typeface and background color” is still to come
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How you leave stays yours too
Bookings, guest register, customers, prices, cancellation rules and closures — six kinds of data, exportable as CSV. There is no minimum contract, and you do not need our permission.
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Running it day to day takes few hands too
There are no complicated features. No automatic pricing, no app, nothing for driving demand. Kai holds only what a property of up to 25 rooms needs, so there is less to learn. Open the admin screen and only what needs acting on is listed.
“MCP support” is still to come
The full list (26)
05 What Japanese law requires
Both the Guest register and the Disclosure of terms are in the screen from the start.
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Guest register
It holds the items required by Article 6 of the Ryokan Business Act, including nationality and passport number, and prints as the document you hand to the public health centre.
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Disclosure of terms
The total to be paid and the cancellation rules appear on the booking screen itself. The guest is not sent off to terms on another page (Article 12-6 of the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions).
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Guests from overseas
Nationality and passport number appear only for guests with no address in Japan. Foreign nationals living in Japan are not asked for them. Payment goes through with cards issued overseas.
The guest screens are available in Japanese, English and Simplified Chinese; the admin screens in Japanese and English. Text set by law stays in Japanese. We are widening both screen by screen; some refusal messages and the confirmation emails are still in Japanese.
06 Cancellation charges
Because the Wording is built from the numbers, the rest is left to Automatic capture, as your rules say.
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Automatic capture, as your rules say
Only the amount your rules specify is captured from the card you are holding.
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The figures before you press
How much will be captured, and how much released. Both figures are on screen before you press cancel.
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Wording is built from the numbers
The rules are held as numbers — “same day to 3 days before 100% / 4 to 7 days 50% / 8 to 14 days 20%” — and the wording of the terms is built from them. The setting and the wording cannot drift apart.
07 Prices and availability
Just layer Price plans on top of each other. Availability shows as Six states.
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Price plans
Put weekends on top of your base price, and holiday runs on top of that. You do not have to fill in 365 days one at a time.
There is nothing that changes prices automatically with demand.
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Additional charges
Bathing tax and the like are held separately from the room rate. For each charge you choose whether it counts towards cancellation fees.
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Six states
Available / full / no price / overlapping prices / closed / double booking. “Not available” is never flattened into one, so a day you forgot to price never looks to a guest like a full house.
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A check before you close
Try to close a day that already has bookings and one confirmation screen comes in between. You cannot close it without noticing.
08 How bookings come in
We provide the booking page. You can start without building one, and if you would rather draw it in your own site’s look, there is an API.
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We provide the booking page
We provide the vacancy calendar and the booking screen. You can start without building them. They can sit on your own domain, at no extra cost.
There is one look for now. Choosing the typeface and background color is planned.
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Build it into your own site
Availability, prices and bookings come back over an API. The calendar and the form are drawn in your own site’s design, so the guest never leaves it until the moment they enter their card.
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Bookings taken by phone
Enter what you took by phone, and availability and the guest register are both in one ledger.
No card is held, so these are outside the cancellation-charge mechanism.
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Take bookings before you open
Set your price plan to start on your opening date and bookings are accepted only from that day on. Earlier dates cannot be booked. We do not ask you to submit your licence.
Plan so that the stay falls after your licence is granted. Whether you may take bookings before it is granted is a question for your local public health centre.
09 The daily check
Open it, and what needs fixing is listed. Deadlines and retention periods are counted by the screen.
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Open it, and what needs fixing is listed
Open the admin screen and it counts out the bookings with no register entry, the days with no price, and the rooms with no cancellation rules. Press one and you are taken straight there.
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It counts the holding deadline
A card can be held for up to 30 days. Where that runs out before check-in, you are told before it does.
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It counts the three-year retention too
The guest register is kept for three years from the day it is created. Anything past that is counted and listed. Whether to keep or delete it is the property’s decision.
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A way to ask without opening the admin screen
From the chat tool you already use, you will be able to ask “what is free this week” or “which days have no price” directly (over a connection called MCP).
Not available yet. How the guest register is handled here is also undecided.
10 Leaving and moving on
You can move at any time. All six kinds of data — You can take everything with you.
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You can move at any time
There is no minimum contract. On monthly billing we accept cancellation at the end of the current month. There is no retention process.
What happens if you cancel mid-term after paying annually in advance is not decided yet.
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You can take everything with you
Bookings, guest register, customers, prices, cancellation rules and closures — six kinds of data, exportable as CSV at any time. You do not have to ask us.
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Exports shaped for where you are going
You can export bookings in a form Beds24 imports directly. It is for a one-time handover, not a daily sync. Up to 100 at a time, so split by date range when there are more.
A CHILLNN form is available too, but CHILLNN has no screen for importing bookings, so it is for copying across by hand — one at a time, through the guest booking page or by typing them in.
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If we stop, your money does not
Money arrives directly in the property’s own payment account. It does not pass through us, so it keeps arriving even if we stop.
11 Money in, and billing
No invoices to chase, No refunds to process — and Money arrives directly.
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No invoices to chase
Even on a last-minute cancellation, the amount your rules specify is captured from the card you are holding. You never send an invoice and wait to be paid.
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No refunds to process
Only what is needed is captured from the amount held. The rest is released automatically, so there is never a transfer for you to make.
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Money arrives directly
It goes straight into the property’s own payment account. It does not pass through us, so there is no payout to wait for.
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Nothing to settle up
The booking fee is zero. There is no per-booking settlement between you and us.
11 Work that leaves your hands (4)
These four end inside Kai’s screens.
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No chasing cancellation charges by invoice
The card is held at booking, and when a cancellation comes in only the amount your rules specify is captured. No invoice, no refund.
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No refund process
Only what is needed is captured; the rest is released automatically. There is never a transfer for you to make.
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The guest register comes with the booking
No separate notebook or paper to keep.
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Forgotten prices are counted and flagged
You do not lose a sale without noticing.
12 Things you do not want happening (10)
10 things no property wants happening, each with what Kai does about it.
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Double booking, and having to apologise
Bookings beyond your room count for a given day do not go through.
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A last-minute cancellation you cannot charge for
The card is held from the time of booking, so the amount your rules specify is captured from it.
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Charging more than you held
The amount held is the ceiling. Nothing above it can be captured.
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Closing a day for a breakdown and losing the bookings that were on it
Try to close a day that has bookings and one confirmation screen comes in between.
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A forgotten price showing to guests as “fully booked”
“No price” and “full” show in different colours. They are not flattened together.
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A public health centre inspection you cannot produce the register for
The guest register prints as a document on the spot.
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Seeing another property’s data
Each property is separate. Another property’s data does not appear.
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Not knowing who looked at the register
Who looked and when is recorded — for the property’s people and for ours.
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Us going under, and the money stopping
Money goes straight into the property’s own payment account. It does not pass through us.
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Wanting to move, and not being able to get your data out
Bookings, register, customers, prices, rules and closures — six kinds of data, exportable as CSV at any time.