Three Overbookings on a December Saturday at Digha
Sagarika is a 32-room hotel on the Digha sea front. On a December Saturday it is full, but an availability push made earlier in the week left 35 confirmed reservations against 32 sellable rooms; one room is out of order for a plumbing repair. At 22:40 the Das family - two adults, three children, the youngest a nine-year-old with asthma - arrives with a prepaid, non-refundable family-room booking of ₹4,600. Ten minutes later a walk-in party of four offers ₹7,200 for two deluxe rooms against a rack rate of ₹4,200, payable immediately by card. The only overflow option is a partner hotel 9 km away with two double rooms at ₹3,900 each. The duty manager is a front-office assistant six months into the job and the general manager's phone is switched off until morning. His senior colleague tells him to "take the walk-in, it's double the money" and shift the family.
1. Decide who is accommodated, who is walked and whether the walk-in is accepted. Justify the decision on contractual, safety and revenue grounds.
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Accommodate the Das family. They hold a prepaid, guaranteed booking, and the youngest child has asthma - walking a family with a sick child at 22:40 is the highest-risk option available: refund, relocation cost, a consumer complaint and a public review.
Reject the walk-in in the room they would occupy. The tempting gain is ₹7,200 − ₹4,600 = ₹2,600. The cost of using that room for the walk-in is: partner hotel ₹3,900 + round-trip transfer (about ₹600) + full refund ₹4,600 + OTA penalty and review damage. That is well above ₹2,600, so the trade loses money even before reputation.
Who is walked, then? Three rooms must still be freed. Walk the reservations made last at the lowest rate - typically the same-day OTA bookings - never the prepaid, never a repeat guest, never a guest with a medical or mobility need. If the walk-in can be placed at the partner hotel with a complimentary transfer at the same ₹3,900 rate, offer it; if not, decline politely and hold the rooms for confirmed guests.
Rule: seniority of booking and vulnerability of guest beat marginal revenue.
2. Set out the walk procedure and the records the duty manager must complete before midnight.
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Before the guest is told: confirm the partner hotel has the room for the whole night, the rate is agreed in writing (WhatsApp is acceptable), and transport is arranged. Never walk a guest to an unconfirmed room.
At the desk, in this order:
- Apologise once, clearly, and explain without blaming the OTA.
- State that the hotel pays for the night at the partner property and the transfer, and that the guest pays nothing extra.
- Guarantee the first available room the next morning, with a time, and offer late check-out or breakfast as goodwill.
- Give the guest the manager's number and a written note with the hotel's name, address and the duty manager's signature.
- Arrange a free call to the guest's home if needed.
Records before midnight: overbooking/relocation log entry with time, guest name, booking source, rate, reason, partner hotel, cost borne; a copy of the note given to the guest; OTA notification so the reservation is not marked as a no-show; cash/transport voucher; and a handover note for the GM naming the three walked bookings and who authorised each. Without this log, the hotel cannot claim the OTA error or prevent a repeat.
3. Identify the root cause of the overbooking and two controls that would have prevented it.
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Root cause: two inventories. The property-management system held 32 rooms (31 sellable), while the channel manager pushed availability to the OTA on a separate update and was not re-synced after the plumbing room was blocked. The out-of-order room was blocked in the PMS but stayed open on the channel - three rooms confirmed from a stale figure.
Controls:
One source of truth. Allotment is edited only in the PMS and pushed out; nobody edits availability directly on an OTA extranet. Add a fixed daily reconciliation at 18:00 - count physical sellable rooms, compare with PMS and each channel, and sign off. Any out-of-order room must trigger an immediate stop-sell on every channel.
A buffer and an authorisation rule. Hold 1–2 rooms as unsold until 18:00 on peak dates, and require the GM's written approval to release them or to override a confirmed reservation. The duty manager should never be able to create a 35-against-32 situation alone.
Supporting measures: a pre-arrival check at 16:00 listing overbookings by rate and arrival time so the walk decision is made in daylight, not at 22:40; OTA penalty clauses reviewed; and refresher training so a six-month assistant knows the walk hierarchy before the night it is needed.