This article provides a comprehensive overview of the available features for controlling overbookings in Cloudbeds PMS. Learn how enabling or disabling these features can impact the system's behavior.
Overview
In most cases a property would want to stop selling rooms if they are at 100% occupancy, but there are some cases where a property would like to allow additional bookings.
This is applicable when the property is at least at 100% occupancy, where one of the room types is already overbooked, but another still has availability. Currently, there are two overbooking options in Cloudbeds PMS:
- Allow additional bookings option in the General System Settings
- Allow Overbookings on the Availability Matrix
Access the feature
- Go to the System page in the Account menu
- In the Preferences tab, go to the Allow additional bookings when property is at full occupancy feature. Click to enable or disable
Remember to save your settings once the overbooking toggle has been enabled/disabled.
This is applicable when the property is at no less than 100% occupancy, where one of the room types is already overbooked, but another still has availability.
For example:
If there is over 100% occupancy (overbooking in a particular room type, for example, the African Beauty Room below) but there is still availability in other rooms, like the Standard Double Room (2), the following will happen:
- The calendar will show real numbers (remaining inventory and overbookings)
- Cloudbeds will send 0 for all room types to the Cloudbeds Channel Manager and all connected channels.
- It will be impossible to make a booking via the Cloudbeds Booking Engine or on the Calendar (even though the other room types will show availability)
The described behavior above is true for all Reservation Sources apart from Third Party Sources (this option always allows overbookings to be created)
- The rooms that still have availability (the Standard Double Room in our previous example) will still be sold on the connected channels and in the Booking Engine.
- It will be possible to create new reservations via Create new neservation on the Calendar
- This option is not recommended for most properties. If you turn on this option and increase the number of rooms which can be sold and if it is more than your actual availability, this can cause overbookings.
- To prevent such overbookings, keep this feature turned off.
Overbookings can only happen if the number of Amount Allotted For Sale is increased to a higher number than Remaining Inventory on the Availability Matrix page. If this feature is ON, the system allows you to create new reservations via the Create new reservation function in the system.
- If the overbooking feature is ON, the system will allow you to create new reservations in the Calendar for the number of units allotted for sale in the Availability Matrix, sending the same number of units to your Booking Engine and all connected channels.
- On the Cloudbeds PMS calendar, you will still see the real (remaining) availability.
How to turn the overbookings feature in the Availability Matrix
- Go to the Main menu and click on Rates and Availability
- Click on the Availability Matrix
- On the right side of the screen, click on Settings
- Select Overbooking Settings
- Choose to Enable or Disable this feature
- Click to Save
- Read the warning message carefully and if you are sure that you want to enable this option, click on Continue:
When you add more rooms than you actually have, the Amount Alloted for Sale will be marked light red, which indicates potential overbooking days. If it has 2 colors, it means that the indicated dates are being modified (blue) and allowing potential overbooking (light red):
If you select to disable overbooking, it will update the Can Be Sold value to the quantity available only on the dates where Can Be Sold was previously set to be higher than availability. Dates on which the quantity that can be sold is less than or equal to the availability will be left untouched.
It will be impossible to change the Amount Allotted For Sale to a higher number than Remaining Inventory. You won't be able to increase the number of rooms and the warning message will appear:
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