Overbooking Management
Reaching 100% occupancy can be challenging, as cancellations and no-shows often leave rooms unsold. To minimise this impact, Apaleo’s Managed Overbooking feature helps you maintain full occupancy by allowing you to sell slightly more rooms than are physically available.
You can configure and monitor overbookings directly in the Availability view.
For each day, you can specify the number of allowed overbookings.
You can set this either for a single day or for a range of dates, depending on your needs.
To set an overbooking for a single day, simply select the date you want to adjust, then enter the number of overbookings in the pop-up window that appears.
To set overbooking for a date range, click the three dots and define the desired overbooking period.
Another useful scenario for this feature is when you want to adjust availability without modifying your physical inventory. For example, if all your single rooms are sold out or blocked but double rooms still have low demand, you can set a positive overbooking for the single unit group and a negative overbooking for the double unit group.
This way, you can later assign a double room to new reservations originally booked as singles.
Removing Planned Overbooking
If you’ve added an overbooking of 10 to a category, you can remove it by simply setting the value back to 0.
For example, my Deluxe category already had three reservations, and by adding an overbooking of +1, I was able to accept one additional booking, bringing the total to four rooms.
Now, when I try to reduce the overbooking, you’ll notice a –1 appears in the availability.
This means one reservation would need to be moved to a different category by changing the booked rate or travel dates.
FAQ
What’s the difference between “Allowed Overbooking” and “Possible Overbooking”?
Allowed Overbooking is a manual setting, you intentionally add or remove available units without changing your physical inventory.
Possible Overbooking is a calculated warning, it appears, when tentatively blocked reservations might push your property beyond its sellable capacity.
Can I remove or reduce an overbooking at any time?
Yes, as long as your property is not already overbooked. If all overbooked units have been assigned to reservations, you must move or reassign one of those bookings to another category before reducing the overbooking count.
How do I set overbooking for multiple dates?
Click the three dots next to the unit group in the Availability view, then define the date range and the number of overbooked units you want to apply.
When should I use positive or negative overbooking?
Use positive overbooking to increase availability when you expect cancellations or no-shows.
Use negative overbooking to reduce availability in one category, for example, to shift demand from a low-performing room type to another.