Overbooked by a channel booking when RMS had no availability

RMS does not reject a reservation that Booking.com, Expedia or another connected channel sends, so when a booking arrives for a Category with no availability the fix is to establish which system had the wrong availability, and when, before contacting the channel.

Overview

A channel booking that arrives for a Category with no availability is delivered as a Quote Reservation and raises a critical alert in the Message Centre. RMS keeps channel log entries for about two weeks, and the Log tab shows the most recent 100 entries, so check the channel's Log as soon as you notice the overbooking. The log is the evidence that shows what availability RMS sent to the channel and when.

Applies to: any channel connected through Channel Management.

For overbookings that did not come from a channel, see Troubleshooting Overbookings.

Please Note! RMS is highly configurable. Some Terminology, User Access & Permissions, Images, Labels, and Functions used in these articles may differ from your setup. CLICK HERE to find out more.

Quick Checks

Run through these first. They cover the causes you can fix yourself.

Open the Message Centre and select Online. A booking that arrived with no availability appears as a Quote Reservation alert. Select the Online Confirmation Number to open it, assign an Area or move other reservations to make room, then set the status to Confirmed. See Online Critical Alerts in the Message Centre.
Open the Availability Chart for the Category and dates. A negative figure means RMS itself allowed more reservations than the Category has Areas. Continue with the Allow Overbooking cause below.
Open the channel connection and check the Area/Rate Mapping for the room and rate that was booked. A row with No Update ticked sends the channel no availability at all. On Expedia, Expedia Collect and Package rows are meant to carry No Update, so do not untick those. See Expedia Collect / Hotel Collect: Channel mapping must be unique.
If the channel is Booking.com or Expedia and a guest cancelled shortly before the booking arrived, see Booking.com or Expedia reopened availability after a cancellation.

Possible Causes

The channel overbooked the room when RMS had already sent zero availability

In most channel overbookings RMS Support investigates, RMS had already sent zero availability for the room type and dates before the booking was made. The channel's Log shows exactly what RMS sent and when, so it settles whether the fault sits with RMS or the channel.

Fix: find the last availability update RMS sent before the booking.

In the side menu of RMS, go to Setup > Online Bookings > Channel Management, select the channel and select Edit.
Select Log. Each row shows the Time, the Status, the Request RMS sent and the channel's Response. The Log holds about two weeks of entries and shows the most recent 100.
Find the most recent availability update for the room type and stay dates that was sent before the time the channel confirmed the booking. The Request shows the room type and rate plan codes and the availability figure sent.
Compare the Time of that update with the booking time shown by the channel, converting both to the same time zone.
If RMS sent zero availability before the booking was made, the discrepancy occurred on the channel's side. Send the channel the evidence listed under What to send the channel below.
If RMS sent availability greater than zero, or no update at all, continue with the causes below.

For example, if the Log shows RMS sent 0 for the room type on 14 September at 10:02 and the channel confirmed the booking at 15:40 the same day, the channel sold a room it had been told was not available.

The Time column shows the clock of the RMS data centre that hosts your property, not your property's local time and not UTC.

Properties hosted in RMS's Australian data centre see Australian Eastern time; properties hosted elsewhere see the local time of their data centre.

To confirm the offset for your property, run a Manual OTA Resync, note the time on your own clock, and compare it with the Time of the entry the resync adds to the Log. Times are shown to the minute.

Booking.com or Expedia reopened availability after a cancellation

Booking.com and Expedia both use Auto Replenishment. After processing a cancellation, the channel reopens inventory for that room type using its own calculation, outside the availability RMS sent. RMS cannot switch this off. If the overbooking followed a cancellation on the same room type, see Booking.com or Expedia reopened availability after a cancellation for the checks and the fix.

RMS was not sending availability for that room and rate

If the mapping row for the room type and rate plan has No Update ticked, if the row is missing, or if the channel is not connected, RMS sends no availability for that combination and the channel sells whatever it last held. RMS also ticks No Update itself when Booking.com, Expedia or Agoda rejects an update, and raises a Critical Configuration Issues alert in the Message Centre when it does.

Fix:

In the side menu of RMS, go to Setup > Online Bookings > Channel Management, select the channel and select Edit.
In the Area/Rate Mapping section, check the row for the room type and rate plan exists and is mapped to the right Category and Rate Type.
If No Update is ticked on a row that should send updates, untick it and select Save. Leave it ticked on Expedia Collect and Package rows.
Run a Manual OTA Resync for the Category and dates.
If No Update becomes ticked again, the channel is still rejecting the update. Check the Message Centre for a Critical Configuration Issues alert and the Log for the channel's Response, and correct the cause on the channel side first.

For the full mapping and update checks, see Troubleshooting: Rates or Availability Not Updating on a Channel.

RMS allowed the overbooking itself through Allow Overbooking or an Oversell Allotment

If the Category has Allow Overbooking ticked, or an Oversell Allotment restriction is set for the dates, RMS sends the channel availability above the physical Area count on purpose. With Allow Overbooking ticked, a limit of 0 means unlimited overbooking, not none.

Fix:

In the side menu of RMS, go to Setup > Category/Area, select the Category and select Edit.
If overbooking is not intended, untick the Allow Overbooking option rather than setting its limit to 0, then select Save/Exit.
Go to Charts > Rate Manager, select the Control Panel icon, filter by the Oversell Allotment Restriction Type and remove any allotment that is not intended.
Run a Manual OTA Resync for the Category and dates.

See Troubleshooting Overbookings and Oversell allotments on the Availability Chart.

Two channels sold the last room at the same moment

Connected channels sell from the same availability. When two guests book the last Area at the same time on different channels, both bookings can be confirmed before either channel receives the update. The Do Not Overbook Property option cannot prevent simultaneous online reservations made on shared availability.

Fix: there is no setting to change in RMS. To reduce the chance of it happening again, hold back one Area in the Category from online sale.

The Hold Back Areas value on the Category's Online Options reduces the availability sent to the RMS Booking Engine and to connected channels using Full Availability, and the held Area can still be sold in-house.

The setting is ignored when the Category has only one Area. See Category Online Options.

Prevention

Check the channel's Log within two weeks of any overbooking so the evidence is still available. Hold back one Area on Categories with more than one Area if the last room is regularly sold twice. Untick Allow Overbooking on any Category where overbooking is not intended, and run a Manual OTA Resync after bulk changes to rates, availability or mapping so the channel holds RMS's current figures.

What to send the channel

When RMS sent zero availability before the booking, send the channel the following and ask for their record of the availability they held at the time:

The channel's booking reference and the RMS reservation number.
The room type and rate plan codes, and the stay dates.
The availability figure RMS sent and the Time of that update, copied from the Request in the Log.
The channel's Response to that update, copied from the Log.
The time the channel confirmed the booking.

RMS Support can confirm what RMS sent and received for the dates, and check the mapping and connection. RMS Support cannot cancel the channel's booking or make the channel accept responsibility for it.

Still Not Working?

If the Log does not show an update for the dates, or the cause is still unclear after the checks above, submit a ticket to RMS Support within two weeks of the booking and include:

The property name and the channel.
The RMS reservation number, the channel's booking reference and the time the booking arrived.
The Category, the channel room type and rate plan, and the stay dates.
What the Availability Chart showed for those dates when the booking arrived.

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