There could be a few reasons for an overbooking:

 

Space allocation.

Booking.com auto-replenishment.

Availability calculation strategy.

Last room available on all channels.

Space category modification.

 

Space allocation

 

If you see a red line on your Timeline, it may not be an overbooking at all. It seems like an overbooking but after Optimizing the space allocation the red line disappears.

 

 

Booking.com auto-replenishment

 

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. Booking.com made this 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:

 

• The general auto-replenishment 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 it.

 

• The auto-replenishment on closed rooms is a feature that can be deactivated at the property level, however, the general auto-replenishment for Booking.com cancellations will remain active. Deactivating this feature means that if the room/date is closed in red (stop sell), it will not be auto-replenished even if there are cancellations.

 

Find more information on this functionality on Booking.com's official help center here .

See Mews' guide on Inventory Updates which explains how to search for the inventory that is sent to Channel Manager.

 

 

Availability calculation strategy

• Select Diffusive 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 to reduce the next highest category’s inventory by one until the overbooking is fixed to avoid overselling.

 

• Select Discrete 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, overbookings are manually resolved by clicking on the booking, dragging, and dropping it into the free space.
• A reservation's dates can only be changed if there is availability in the selected space category.

 

Set up and overview of bookable service settings.

 

Last room available on all channels

 

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 accepts reservations that have been confirmed to the guest by the Online Travel Agency, delivered to your Channel Manager, and then delivered to Mews.

 

This scenario can be prevented by selecting Diffusive availability calculation strategy. You can find more information about it here.

 

Reservation category modification

 

If you manually change the category of a reservation, the original category gets released to the channel manager and can be booked.