What is overbooking and how does it occur?
When your availabilities aren’t being updated automatically, there’s always a risk of overbooking. This means that more reservations have been received than there are rooms available for that date. It can occur when two clients book the same room type for the same date, typically using different booking platforms.
What are the consequences of overbooking?
Overbookings aren’t just inconvenient, they can really hurt your accommodation in multiple ways. Some of the negative consequences of overbooking are:
- Disappointed or angry clients (that won’t come back)
- A poor guest experience
- Financial costs related to compensation, relocation or room upgrade
- Bad reviews that deter other travellers from booking
- A damaged reputation
- Time wasted for you and/or your employees
- Dissatisfied staff, since they have to deliver the bad news
How to respond to a double booking?
It's possible that you’ll notice the double booking before your guests arrive. In that case, consider which client should retain the room (e.g. depending on revenue and loyalty) and negotiate an adequate solution with the other client. You may need to relocate them to a similar accommodation nearby or upgrade them.
How to prevent overbooking altogether?
As you can tell, every overbooking will end up costing you money and denting customer satisfaction, so prevention is better than cure!
A Channel Manager is the easiest and most effective solution to prevent overbooking. It keeps your room availabilities synchronised across all connected channels: OTAs, metasearch platforms, your Property Management System (PMS) and the Booking Engine on your own website. When a new reservation comes in from any of these sources, your inventory is automatically adjusted everywhere else, saving you lots of stress and time!
The central dashboard (calendar) of our Channel Manager gives you a handy overview of your availability for the selected period. Here, you can easily make quick changes if needed. Is one of your rooms out of service because of maintenance or an unexpected issue with any of the facilities? Then instantly close this room for booking on all channels in the Bookingplanner PMS.
Say goodbye to overbooking with Bookingplanner All-in-one
Bookingplanner offers a complete software package for your hotel, B&B or holiday home with a reliable Channel Manager, a commission-free Booking Engine and a user-friendly Property Management System. Would you like to try it out for free? Fill out the form below!
