Hotel overbookings have been quite a repetitive term in the hospitality industry. Ever wondered what that is? Hotel overbookings are the condition a hotel faces when a single hotel room has been booked by more than one guest for the same time. It is quite a common situation in the hospitality industry especially, during the peak season.
See, there are several reasons for hotel overbookings but they usually happen when you have displayed the same rooms on several OTAs and other online booking platforms, which actually gives you a very wide exposure across the world. As your hotel and its facilities are learned about by a large number of travelers, it often happens that more than one looker happen to book the same room from any of these platforms.
Many a time, the reason of hotel overbookings can also be the manual changes of your inventory to your connected platforms. Such an action makes you prone to overbookings. That can be one of the major mistakes you’re making in your hotel distribution strategy currently. The manual handling can be more dangerous when you have the disparity of rates over different OTAs.
Why? Because you can’t be as fast as flash but, the bookings can be. Hotel overbookings can bring a dent to the hotel reputation but if handled well, they can add stars to your hotel practices.
Now let’s see how can hotel overbookings be toxic for your business…
Imagine, one of your rooms was mistakenly overbooked on one certain day and your guest is at the front office asking to check in and you have to inform them that they can not have their room. Why? Because it was overbooked. This may enrage your guest and he may go berserk about it, and you may end up with negative remarks about your services on the internet which would travel at the speed of light. (Believe me, it happens!)
