An overbooking in Mews Operations means that you have more reservations than available spaces in a space category for the same dates. Mews Operations places the extra reservations in overbooking slots, which are displayed as a red line on the Timeline, the screen where reservations are placed on spaces by date. In Mews Operations, there could be a few reasons for an overbooking: space allocation, Booking.com auto-replenishment, the availability calculation strategy, the last room available on all channels, and reservation category modification. Once you know the reason, you can fix the cause and move the overbooked reservation to a free space. To find and fix an existing overbooking on the Timeline, go to How to find and solve overbookings in Mews Operations. If you use Atomize RMS by Mews, go to How to work with overbookings for hotel and room type level in Atomize RMS by Mews to learn how Atomize RMS reacts to the overbookings you manage in Mews Operations.

 

In this article, you can learn about:

• What causes an overbooking in Mews Operations

  • Space allocation: why a red line on the Timeline in Mews Operations is not always an overbooking

  • Booking.com auto-replenishment: why canceled rooms go back on sale on Booking.com

  • Availability calculation strategy: how Diffusive and Discrete affect overbookings in Mews Operations

  • Last room available on all channels: why the last room in Mews Operations gets booked twice

  • Reservation category modification: why changing the space category of a reservation in Mews Operations releases availability

 

What causes an overbooking in Mews Operations

In Mews Operations, there could be a few reasons for an overbooking. Each section explains one reason and what you can do about that reason.

Space allocation: why a red line on the Timeline in Mews Operations is not always an overbooking

If you see a red line on your Timeline in Mews Operations, the red line is not always an overbooking. The Timeline looks overbooked, but after you optimize the space allocation the red line disappears. To learn how to optimize the space allocation, go to Optimizing the space allocation.

Booking.com auto-replenishment: why canceled rooms go back on sale on Booking.com

Booking.com's auto-replenishment feature puts canceled spaces back up for sale on Booking.com immediately, without waiting for an inventory update from Mews Operations. Booking.com made auto-replenishment a default function to increase the number of bookings and revenue, as you pay commission for each of their reservations.

There are two types of auto-replenishment:

• General auto-replenishment: this feature is integrated by default to all properties on Booking.com and cannot be deactivated. Whenever a cancellation comes through Booking.com, the room is put back on sale automatically to give the property another chance at reselling the room.

• Auto-replenishment on closed rooms: this feature can be deactivated at the property level, however, the general auto-replenishment for Booking.com cancellations remains active. Deactivating this feature means that if the room or date is closed in red, or stop sell, the room is not auto-replenished even if there are cancellations.

You can find more information on auto-replenishment on Booking.com's official help center. To learn how to search for the inventory that Mews Operations sends to your channel manager, go to Inventory Updates. A channel manager is the integration that distributes your availability and rates from Mews Operations to booking channels such as Booking.com.

Availability calculation strategy: how Diffusive and Discrete affect overbookings in Mews Operations

The availability calculation strategy is a setting of your bookable service in Mews Operations that decides how an overbooking in one space category affects the availability of your other space categories. You can choose one of two options:

• Diffusive: select this option if you want overbookings in lower space categories to take availability from higher space categories. This option helps prevent overbooking your whole property and allows Mews Operations to reduce the next highest category's inventory by one until the overbooking is fixed, to avoid overselling.

• Discrete: select this option if you want overbookings to affect only the availability of the overbooked space category. This option increases the risk of overbooking your whole property and only allows for manual resolution of the overbooking by the property.

Note:

• For both options, you resolve an overbooking manually: on the Timeline, click the reservation, then drag and drop the reservation into the free space. 

• You can only change a reservation's dates if there is availability in the selected space category.

To learn more about the bookable service settings, go to Set up and overview of bookable service settings.

Last room available on all channels: why the last room in Mews Operations gets booked twice

If you are going through high season, having your property constantly booked at 99% occupancy puts you at risk of overbooking.

If one room is available in multiple channels, there is a chance of multiple reservations being accepted simultaneously. Mews Operations accepts a reservation that the online travel agency, or OTA, has confirmed to the guest, that is then delivered to your channel manager, and then delivered to Mews Operations.

To prevent this scenario, select the Diffusive availability calculation strategy. You can learn more about the availability calculation strategy in Set up and overview of bookable service settings.

Reservation category modification: why changing the space category of a reservation in Mews Operations releases availability

If you manually change the space category of a reservation in Mews Operations, the original space category is released to the channel manager and can be booked.

 

Once you know which of these reasons causes an overbooking in Mews Operations, you can fix the cause, for example by optimizing the space allocation, by choosing the Diffusive availability calculation strategy, or by checking the inventory that Mews Operations sends to your channel manager, and then move the overbooked reservation from the red line on the Timeline to a free space.