Double booking vs overbooking
| Double booking | Overbooking | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The same room sold twice for the same night, by mistake | More rooms sold than exist, sometimes on purpose to cover expected no-shows |
| Usual cause | Two calendars, slow channel updates, manual copying | A deliberate policy, or channel bookings arriving after the last room sold |
| Who decides | Nobody — it is an error | Management, if it is a policy |
| Fix | Remove the cause | Set a clear policy and a plan to move the guest |
The five usual causes
- More than one calendar. A paper book at reception, a spreadsheet for the owner and an extranet for each booking site: each one is “the truth” for somebody.
- Slow or manual channel updates. If availability is updated by hand, there is always a window where a channel still shows a room you have just sold.
- Two clerks, one room. Two people look at the same grid, both see the room free, and both confirm.
- Holds that never expire. Tentative and unpaid web bookings keep rooms off sale, or are forgotten and overwritten.
- Wrong channel mapping. A channel's room code points at the wrong room type, so a booking lands where there is no space.
How to prevent each one
| Cause | Prevention |
|---|---|
| More than one calendar | One PMS holds inventory; the front desk, the booking engine and every channel read and write the same calendar. |
| Slow channel updates | Push rates and availability automatically on every change, and check what each channel confirmed back. |
| Two clerks, one room | Use a system that rejects overlapping bookings for the same room outright, rather than just showing a warning. |
| Holds that never expire | Give tentative and unconfirmed bookings a lapse time so the room returns to sale on its own. |
| Wrong channel mapping | Validate room-type and rate-plan codes for each channel before a connection goes live, and test it in the channel's sandbox first. |
Use stop-sell and closeouts on purpose
When you take a group, block rooms for repairs or expect a sold-out event, close the room type or date range for sale in one action instead of hoping each channel catches up. Mark rooms out of order on the housekeeping board so they cannot be sold, and release them as soon as they are ready.
What to do when it still happens
- Find out early: compare tomorrow's arrivals with available rooms every evening.
- Decide which booking stays. Many hotels keep the longer stay or the earlier confirmation; write your rule down.
- Call the guest you are moving before they travel, explain plainly and apologise.
- Book a comparable or better room nearby and cover the first night and the transfer.
- Record what happened and fix the cause, not just the booking.
How bedsKey handles it
In bedsKey, overlap protection is enforced by the database with date-range exclusion constraints, so two staff members or two channels can never sell the same room for the same night. The channel manager pushes every changed night to connected channels through certified OTA connections, and a channel booking that does not fit waits in an overbooking queue on screen instead of being lost. Unconfirmed web bookings lapse and the room returns to sale automatically.