What is shared inventory?

Shared inventory is the practice of selling the same physical room under multiple layouts.

Are there things I need to be careful about with Shared Inventory?

Yes. Shared inventory is a very powerful tool for maximizing revenue and occupancy. However, if Shared Inventory is not setup correctly, it can quickly cause overbookings. Follow the steps in the guides linked to below.

What are some examples for how this can be used?

Here are links to guides of four common use cases:

• 1. Listing the same private room as two different room types.

• 2. Selling the same room as both a dorm and a private room

• 3. Selling a whole house or the individual rooms within that property

• 4. Selling all units of an accommodation type on a calendar channel

Is it possible for someone to book multiple layouts of the same physical room? 

While there's always a risk of overbookings if you're selling the same room multiple times, our shared inventory helps to greatly reduce that possibility by automatically adjusting the availability for linked rooms.

However, if two linked rooms are booked at the same time, we're unable to adjust availability to prevent a guest from booking them both in the same reservation.

Can I use shared inventory to split a larger room type apart into separate smaller rooms of a different room type?

Yes, but only if is is split into units of the same accommodation type. For instance, you could split a house into two identical duplex units, but you cannot split a house into a king room and a studio. We're planning to expand this functionality in the future, however.

For more info about how to configure this, you can read through an article on the topic here.

How do I enable shared inventory for my account?

Shared inventory is a paid add-on feature currently offered to certain property types. If you're interested in Shared Inventory, please contact our support team to inquire about whether this feature is a good fit for you.

Does Myfrontdesk normally support shared inventory?

By default, myfrontdesk does not normally support this. The system will send the availability of each room separately.

If you create different accommodation types for the same physical room on your myfrontdesk and/or OTA accounts, the possibility of an overbooking is very high. Without Shared Inventory, you will need to be very careful and manually adjust the availability in your calendar.

Okay, well how should I normally map my rooms then?

Great question! Take a look a look at our Distribution Channel Mapping Guidelines!