Shops Overview
LIKE MAGIC lets a property sell to guests directly inside the guest journey through a family of self-service shops. A guest browses a product list on their own device, adds items to a cart, and pays. No front-desk interaction required. This is ancillary retail: drinks and snacks from the minibar, things to buy or borrow such as a toothbrush or an umbrella, or minibar consumption declared at checkout.
This article explains the shop family as a whole, where a shop's products come from, which rules a shop can carry, and what has to be in place for a shop to appear for a property. It is written for the operator/administrator who sets up shops, not for guests.
ℹ️ Note: "Shop & Commerce" is ancillary retail and is separate from upsell. An upsell is a room-category upgrade offered during check-in and on the reservation, and it stays with the booking and reservation flows. If you are looking to configure room upgrades, that is not a shop.
1. Who Can Use This
Shops are a guest-facing part of the guest journey. Behind each shop, three places decide what a guest sees:
- Your PMS holds the products and their prices.
- The shop configuration (on Apaleo, the group of each product) decides which of those products belong to a shop and how they behave. LIKE MAGIC sets it up, so request changes via a Support Ticket.
- Prismic holds the titles, images and categories the guest sees. Editing them requires access to your property's Prismic repository.
2. The Shop Family
All shops share the same shape (a product list, a cart, a payment step, and a confirmation). Which shops a property can offer depends on its PMS:
| Shop | What the guest does | Where it appears | Available on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minibar | Orders drinks and snacks from the room's minibar during the stay. | A tile in My Stay. | Properties running on Mews or Oracle Opera Cloud |
| Amenities | Buys or borrows items such as a toothbrush, an umbrella or a phone charger. | A tile in My Stay. | Properties running on Mews or Oracle Opera Cloud |
| Checkout minibar | Declares what they took from the minibar, as part of checking out. | A step in the checkout flow, before the bill. | Properties running on Mews or Oracle Opera Cloud |
| Honesty shop | Browses products in the groups Food, Beverage and Other, adds them to a cart, and pays. | A tile in My Stay, with its own shop page and cart. | Properties running on Apaleo |
The tile titles in My Stay are your own Prismic content (see Prismic (Navigation Items)), so a tile can carry a different name than the one in this table.
ℹ️ Note: The checkout minibar is not a shop the guest opens on its own. It is a step inside the checkout flow. The guest first says whether they took anything from the minibar, and only then sees the products. It has its own cart and its own product list, separate from the in-stay Minibar shop, and its charges go onto the checkout bill. It appears only when the checkout flow is available for the property.
Two further device-bound siblings exist in the same family: a box rental / box shop on a physical box or locker device, and a self-pouring beverage station. Each is enabled separately per property. They follow the same product-and-cart pattern but are tied to a physical device.
3. Where a Shop's Products Come From
A shop never holds its own products. The products and their prices come from the property's PMS, and the shop decides which of them to show and how they look. Prices are never set in LIKE MAGIC or in Prismic.
On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud
- The PMS holds every product of the property with its price.
- The shop configuration picks the products that belong to a shop. It selects them as a group, by their PMS category (for example everything in "Drinks") or by a pattern in their PMS id. A product you add to the PMS later is picked up as soon as it matches, without anyone touching the shop. The same configuration holds the shop's rules (section 4).
- The shop's Prismic document decides which of those products the guest actually sees. It lists each product to show, with its title, image and category, and it holds the categories themselves. A product the configuration picks but that is missing from the Prismic document does not appear. Give every listed product a title, because a product without one shows without a name.
- My Stay shows the result as the Minibar or Amenities shop, or as the checkout minibar step.
On Apaleo
- Apaleo holds every service of the property with its price including VAT. LIKE MAGIC reads them from Apaleo.
- A group per product. LIKE MAGIC assigns each product to exactly one group. The honesty shop shows the groups Food, Beverage and Other, and the group is also the filter the guest browses by. A product without one of these groups does not appear in the honesty shop. Request a group change via a Support Ticket.
- Prismic holds the title, image and icon of each product, and the name shown for each group. A product without a title in Prismic shows its raw product id to the guest, so give every product a title.
- My Stay shows the result as the honesty shop.
What This Means for Changes
- A price changes in the PMS. There is no price field in Prismic or in the shop configuration.
- Titles, images and categories change in Prismic, without a release. Titles are translated there, per language the property serves.
- A new product needs both sides. On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud it has to match the shop configuration and be added to the shop's Prismic document. On Apaleo it needs a group and a title in Prismic.
For how Prismic content is structured and published, see the Content Management with Prismic documentation.
4. Shop Rules (Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud)
On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud, the products of a shop can carry rules. Like the selection in section 3, a rule applies to a group of products (a PMS category or a pattern in the PMS id), not to one product at a time. One rule therefore also covers a product the property adds to the PMS later.
| Rule | What it means for the guest |
|---|---|
| Opening hours | The product can be ordered only in set time windows per weekday, for example no alcohol after 22:00. |
| Quantity and frequency | A maximum quantity, whether the product can be ordered more than once, and on which days of the stay it can be ordered. |
| Pay at checkout | Nothing is paid when ordering, and the price goes on the bill. The shop marks the item as a rental that is charged if damaged. This is how borrowing works, for example for an umbrella. |
| Approval | Your team approves the order before it is booked. The guest pays nothing for it when ordering. |
| Guest segments | Only guests in certain guest segments, or only guests outside them, are offered the product or the whole shop. |
Example: all products in the PMS category "Wine and Beer" can be ordered Monday to Sunday from 07:00 to 22:00, with a maximum quantity of 6. Every bottle the property adds to that category later follows the same rule.
There is no security deposit. A borrowed item is either paid when ordered or put on the bill with pay at checkout. Nothing is blocked on the guest's card.
On properties that use the Tasks board, an order from the Minibar or Amenities shop can also arrive as a Shop order task. See Task Types.
The rules are part of the shop configuration that LIKE MAGIC sets up. To add or change one, request it via a Support Ticket, naming the property, the shop, and the products or PMS category it applies to.
ℹ️ The honesty shop on Apaleo has none of these rules. See Honesty Shop for what it offers instead.
5. How a Guest Uses a Shop
From the guest's side the flow is consistent across the family, and knowing it helps you support guests:
- The guest opens the shop from My Stay (or reaches the minibar step during checkout).
- They browse the products and add items to a cart.
- They review the charges and the total to be paid.
- They pay using the property's configured payment provider. An item paid at checkout, or an order waiting for approval, costs nothing at this point.
- They receive a confirmation.
Payments run through the property's payment configuration, so shop charges use the same provider and VAT presentation as the rest of the guest journey. See Payment Configuration.
6. Making a Shop Appear
A shop appears in My Stay only when these things are in place. When a shop is missing for a property, check them in this order:
- The property's PMS serves the shop. Minibar, Amenities and the checkout minibar are available on properties running on Mews or Oracle Opera Cloud. The honesty shop is available on properties running on Apaleo. No activation changes this, so check the PMS first (section 2).
- The shop is set up for the property. On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud, the Minibar and Amenities shops need a tile in your My Stay navigation in Prismic, a Prismic shop document, and a shop configuration from LIKE MAGIC. The honesty shop on Apaleo is switched on per property by LIKE MAGIC. Each shop is set up separately; setting up one does not set up another. If a shop you expect is missing, request it via a Support Ticket.
- The shop has products. On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud a product appears only when the shop configuration picks it and the shop's Prismic document lists it. On Apaleo it needs a group and a title in Prismic. A shop with no matching products shows guests an empty page. See section 3.
- The guest is not outside the shop's guest segments. On Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud a shop can be limited to, or excluded for, guest segments. Where that is set, a guest outside the segments is offered nothing from the shop, so the shop is missing for that guest while another guest of the same property sees it. The segment lists of a shop are set by LIKE MAGIC, so request a change via a Support Ticket. Any shop's tile can also carry its own segment limit in Prismic (the Only displayed for segment field).
ℹ️ A shop missing for one guest and present for the next points at the segments (point 4). A shop missing for every guest of the property points at the PMS, the setup or the products (points 1 to 3).
7. Conclusion
The LIKE MAGIC shops turn the guest journey into a sales channel: Minibar, Amenities and the checkout minibar on Mews and Oracle Opera Cloud, and the honesty shop on Apaleo. In every shop the PMS supplies the products and prices, LIKE MAGIC decides which belong to the shop (the shop configuration, or the group on Apaleo), and Prismic gives them their titles and images. To offer a shop, have LIKE MAGIC set it up for the property and list its products in Prismic. To enable and configure the honesty shop specifically, see Honesty Shop.