Six Rooms Short on Ram Navami Eve
Hotel Awadh Residency is a 48-room mid-market property in Ayodhya. On the eve of Ram Navami it shows 100% occupancy for the next three nights. At 6:40 p.m. the front-office executive discovers that the channel manager failed to close inventory after a manual block was applied, and two OTAs have between them sold 6 rooms that the hotel does not have. Three of the six bookings are prepaid and non-refundable at ₹4,200 per night, two are pay-at-hotel at the same rate, and one is a repeat corporate guest on his fourth stay. The 9:15 p.m. train from Lucknow is carrying four of these arrivals. Two in-house guests have also asked to extend by one night; neither holds a confirmed booking for it. The nearest comparable hotel is 3.5 km away with 8 rooms at ₹5,500, held only until 8 p.m. The walk policy authorises one night's accommodation, transport and one phone call. The duty manager is a six-month trainee and the general manager's phone is switched off.
1. None of the six overbooked bookings can be given a room tonight. Decide the order in which guests are relocated, which alternative each receives, and how you would answer the two extension requests. Justify the order on contractual, revenue and reputational grounds.
Read the worked answer
Start from the fact that all six must move; the decision is therefore about sequence, quality of alternative and compensation, not about who stays.
Relocate in this order:
- The two pay-at-hotel guests first. No money has changed hands, so there is no refund, no chargeback risk and the least paperwork. Give them the alternate hotel, transport and a complimentary breakfast on return.
- The repeat corporate guest next. He has no prepayment but has high lifetime value; walking him silently destroys a repeat account. Telephone him personally before he boards, offer the alternate hotel plus a guaranteed upgrade and a free night on his next stay, and log the promise in the profile.
- The three prepaid guests were informed last only because their contract is the firmest. Walking a prepaid guest without a full refund, paid alternate accommodation and written apology is a consumer-protection exposure. Refund ₹4,200 each, pay for the alternate night, and offer a voucher. If one volunteer accepts a later date instead, that is the cheapest solution of all.
Extensions: decline both politely. An extension is a request, not a reservation; confirmed arrivals outrank it. Offer them the alternate hotel at the hotel's cost if they must stay.
Reasoning check: the total cash cost (about ₹33,000 in alternate rooms, ₹1,500 transport and up to ₹12,600 refunds) is lower than the cost of a chargeback plus a public review from a prepaid guest.
2. Set out the sequence of actions from 6:40 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., stating what is said to each party and what is written down.
Read the worked answer
6:40–6:50 - Freeze and secure. Close inventory on both OTAs and the channel manager, then telephone the alternate hotel and block all 8 rooms on the hotel's account, confirming in writing on WhatsApp or email before 7 p.m. The 8 p.m. hold is the binding constraint; everything else can wait.
6:50–7:05 - Escalate. Call the GM on the alternate number; if unreachable, the trainee duty manager acts under the walk policy and records the decision, the time and the reason in the duty log. Take a screenshot of the channel manager block and the OTA bookings - evidence disappears when inventory is edited.
7:05–7:30 - Communicate. Telephone in the order decided above. Script for each: acknowledge the booking, apologise once and clearly, state the alternate hotel by name and distance, confirm the hotel pays the room, the taxi and one phone call, give the name of the person meeting them, and send the same in writing. Never say 'overbooked' in a group setting; say 'we are unable to honour the room tonight and here is what we have arranged'.
7:30–7:50 - Prepare the alternate. Send a voucher, prepay the rooms, book two taxis, brief the alternate hotel on arrival times and breakfast.
7:50–8:00 - Record. Enter all six in the overbooking register with amounts, and email the GM a one-page summary before the shift ends.
3. Identify the control failure, propose two process fixes, and decide who bears the cost of the relocations.
Read the worked answer
Control failure: inventory was blocked manually in the property management system but not pushed to the channel manager, and nobody verified the OTA extranet after the block. This is a hotel-side system failure, not an OTA error, so the hotel bears the walk cost - roughly ₹33,000 for six alternate rooms, ₹1,500 transport and any refunds. Recovery from an OTA is possible only if the OTA sold beyond the allotted inventory, which is not the case here.
Fix 1 - close-loop verification. Any manual block must be followed by a two-person check: the person who blocks, and a second person who confirms on each OTA extranet that the inventory has dropped, with the initials and time written in the shift handover.
Fix 2 - daily oversell watch. A 5 p.m. daily check comparing PMS occupancy plus same-night arrivals against OTA confirmed bookings, with a hard rule that the last 4 rooms are never released to OTA inventory during festival dates.
Also: train the duty manager to act, not to wait; write an overbooking SOP with pre-agreed alternate hotels and rates; and add a walk register to the morning briefing so the GM sees the pattern. Prepaid bookings should be flagged in the PMS so front office knows which walks carry refund liability before it picks up the phone.