Room Type Configuration

Use the Room Type Configuration page for settings at the Room Type level, like Overbooking or Special Use Room Types.

What Help Do You Need With Room Type Configuration? 

• I want a short overview of the setup for overbooking and Special-Use Room Types.

• I need the steps to set up my Room Type Configuration.

• I want to understand the benefits of allowing overbooking and how to ensure it supports the Upgrade Path.

• I need to understand how to decide if I need to set up Special Use Room Types.

• I want to see examples of how G3 RMS handles the expected wash if some room types in a Room Class allow overbooking and others don't.

Allow Overbooking by Room Type: 

The setup steps allow you to vary the overbooking by room type, based on features, upgrade options, and number of rooms. For example, allow overbooking for your common Standard King room type, but not for the Standard Accessible King with just two rooms and no upgrade option. For details, see why you should allow overbooking and how G3 RMS calculates overbooking.

Note: Some properties with less complex characteristics enable Run-of-House overbooking. With this option G3 RMS assigns all overbooking to the one or two Run-of-House room types that you select. All other room types are not overbooked. Before setting up this option, understand how Run-of-House overbooking works. For some subscriptions Run-of-House is the only overbooking option.

Special-Use Room Types

Consider this option for room types that you don't have on selling systems Any distribution system, like a PMS, CRS or a Channel Manager, that is used to sell your transient guest room inventory. Ideally, G3 RMS sends all controls to your selling systems, but this may vary based on their capabilities. For some integrations, the selling systems may not include the reservation system that provides with data. (like connector rooms for suites) or room type that don't sell easily due to their specific features, like accessible rooms. G3 RMS can improve overbooking by distributing their unsold capacity, see decide if you need to set up Special-Use Room Types for more.

Setup Steps

Accessing Room Type Configuration

1. Click , then Inventory, and then Rooms Configuration.
2. Click Next, then click Next again in the Room Class and the Cost of Walk tabs. The Room Type tab opens.

Setting Up Overbooking by Room Type

Most clients use this option. If you use Run-of-House overbooking, see the steps to enable it.

1. Select Special-Use Room Type if that applies to any of your room types. See How do I decide? for questions. G3 RMS adds two columns, Special-Use Room Types and Distribute Unsold Capacity.
2. If you selected Special-Use Room Type, also select Distribute Unsold Capacity.
3. Click the icon for every Special-Use Room Type. The icon changes to .
4. In the Allow Overbooking column, clear the checkbox for any room type that you don't want G3 RMS to overbook. Special-Use Room Types are cleared automatically.

Allow overbooking for at least one room type in each Room Class. See this Best Practice for more details.

5. To control overbooking by day of week or with seasonal exceptions, select the Advanced Settings - Overbooking checkbox. For the detailed steps, see Setting Up by Day of Week and Season below.
6. If you have very few competitors to walk to, consider selecting the Reduce Overbooking for when more than % of competitors are sold out and entering a percentage value. Review the best practices before selecting this option.
7. Click Next. Continue to complete all the steps in Rooms Setup.

Setting Up by Day of Week and Season

Note: Seasonal overbooking setup overrides any Ceiling Default values. If you use both for a room type, G3 RMS honors the seasonal overbooking setting rather than the Ceiling Default.

1. Select the Advanced Settings - Overbooking checkbox. Columns for each day of the week display.
2. Clear the checkbox for the days when you don't want to allow overbooking for a room type.
3. Click the add icon following a room type if you need to add a season. The Add Season window opens.
4. Click the Start Date and End Date calendars to select the seasonal date range.
5. In the Overbooking row, select the checkbox for the days of the week for which you want to allow overbooking for the season.
6. Click Apply.
7. Continue to add seasons following the steps above until you set up all your required seasons.
8. Click Next. Continue to complete all the steps in Rooms Setup.

Setting Up Run-of-House Overbooking

If G3 RMS configured Overbooking for you, it selects the room type with the largest capacity in the Master Class The Room Class for which a value displays if there is only space to show one. For example, the price on the Summary tab of the Business Analysis Dashboard..

1. Click the Enable Run of House link.
2. For the Add Run-of-House Room Type option, select the Room Class that contains the room type to receive all overbooking. The room type that you select for run-of-house overbooking should belong to the lowest-priced Room Class to support upgrades.
3. Select the Room Type. This room type receives all the overbooking, up to the system’s calculated total property overbooking level.
4. If necessary, select the Add second Run-of-House Room Type checkbox to add a secondary room type. Select the secondary Room Class and Room Type.
5. Click Next. Continue to complete all the steps in Rooms Setup.

Best Practices

Allow Overbooking

Overbooking past your property's capacity ensures that your property can sell out and maximize revenue. G3 RMS calculates overbooking to make up for Wash The drop in occupancy due to cancellations, no-shows, group cut-offs, etc. For future dates, the percentage is the expected drop for the Peak Demand. For past dates, it is the expected wash as of the last optimization. and to maximize revenue through upgrades, while considering the risks (walking guests).

View this video to understand why you should allow overbooking.

Be Careful with Restricting Overbooking

You can restrict overbooking through setup or overrides. But that can have unintended, negative consequences.

First, the total property overbooking can never be more than the sum of the overbooking of all room types. Thus, when you limit room type overbooking, you might also limit the overall property overbooking, which has a big impact on the system’s forecasts and other decisions like pricing, since G3 RMS optimizes all decisions together.

Restricting overbooking means keeping G3 RMS from offsetting the forecasted wash. If the system can't overbook enough to offset wash, it might forecast occupancy to be below capacity, despite demand well above capacity. And it might increase pricing and LRV, because the optimal revenue for the lower occupancy might consist of accepting more higher-priced demand.

Watch this video to understand what happens when you limit overbooking at a property.

Consider Wash

Do you want to limit the overbooking because you see days with overbooking decisions that seem too high? The high overbooking is likely due to an equally high wash forecast. That wash forecast is based on actual past wash patterns. Review your group business processes to ensure that they are consistent. For example, loading groups at the contracted amount versus at the amount that you expect them to pick up, or deciding how and when group blocks are cut off. Whatever processes you establish, follow them consistently to keep the uncertainty low for the system and help it forecast accurately.

G3 RMS only forecasts wash if it observed actual wash in the past. For example, you might feel uneasy about overbooking your Suites because there is no higher ranked room type to which you could upgrade. However, Suites might have a higher wash than standard rooms if guests book them because no lower priced rooms are available, then cancel them when cheaper alternatives become available. In this case, allowing to overbook the Suites might be the best option. However, not allowing overbooking might be the right option for the highest priced, accessible room.

Consider Cost of Walk

Before you limit overbooking, review the configured Cost of Walk. Cost of Walk Cost of Walk happens if your property is unable to provide the confirmed room to a guest and has to relocate, or walk, the guest to another hotel. In that situation, costs might include the hotel room at the other hotel, a taxi, etc. Cost of Walk influences the overbooking level: G3 RMS weighs the risks of overbooking, represented by Cost of Walk, against its benefits, which are the additional revenues from selling another room. The higher the Cost of Walk, the lower G3 RMS tends to overbook. influences the overbooking level.

Note:

• Cost of Walk impacts overbooking much less than Wash.
• Changing Cost of Walk to a very low value likely increases the overbooking significantly, because it means a very low risk when overbooking.
• Changing Cost of Walk to a high value likely doesn't result in zero overbooking because of the expected wash. As an extreme example, if the system expects 100 cancellations, then overbooking by 10 is still a low-risk approach, since it only offsets 10% of expected wash.

Best Practices for Overbooking by Room Type

Ensure Overbooking Supports Your Upgrade Path

Your overbooking setup must support your Upgrade Path. The Upgrade Path is meant to handle scenarios when the demand for your Room Classes does not align with the available capacity. For example, in your Upgrade Path configuration, you allowed Standard rooms to borrow unsold inventory from Deluxe rooms if there is no demand for Deluxe but more demand than capacity for Standard. For that upgrade to occur, G3 RMS needs to overbook Standard rooms. If you do not allow overbooking for some Standard room types, you might block the Upgrade Path configuration, which leads to unsold rooms despite demand. For more details and examples, review How Overbooking Configuration Supports Upgrade Paths.

Allow Overbooking for At Least One Room Type in each Room Class

This enables G3 RMS to share the wash of restricted room types with other room types in the Room Class. Why is this sharing important?

G3 RMS calculates overbooking for a room type based on its expected wash. That wash doesn't change when you restrict the room type's overbooking through configuration, ceiling default, or a ceiling override. And when the system calculates property overbooking, it must consider the wash of all room types.

Thus, G3 RMS shares the wash of a room type with restricted overbooking, adding it to the overbooking of other room types in the same Room Class. This sharing only works if the receiving room type allows overbooking without any ceiling. See scenarios for Overbooking for examples.

Use Wash or Cost of Walk Overrides Before Restricting by Season

Before restricting overbooking for a season, review and, if necessary, override the wash for that period first. Also, if you think the overbooking should be different during this season due to a higher cost of relocating guests, use a Multiday Cost of Walk Override instead. For a single event or a short period of time, it is easier to use the override functionality for Cost of Walk and overbooking in Overbooking Management.

Decide If You Need to Set Up Special-Use Room Types

Special-Use Room Types are room types that you don't sell publicly or that don't sell easily due to their features, like accessible rooms (for other examples, see Room Class). By allowing to distribute their unsold capacity as overbooking to the other room types in the same Room Class, you help G3 RMS optimize overbooking. Select Special-Use Room Type and Distribute Unsold Capacity if you can move guests into Special-Use Room Types, if needed.

Decide If G3 RMS Should Reduce Overbooking Based on Closed Competitors

Some properties are in a market where, during high-demand periods, they have few or no appropriate options to walk (or relocate) guests to, should they need to. Meaning, if their shopped competitors are sold out, they might not be able to walk guests. Such properties can reduce the risk of walking by having G3 RMS automatically reduce overbooking based on a certain % of competitors being unavailable.

If you select that option, you define the % of closed competitors. When that threshold is reached, G3 RMS reduces overbooking and displays in Overbooking and in the Summary tab. If no competitor has a price available for a one-night length of stay, the system reduces property overbooking to zero. If competitors open up again, G3 RMS increases overbooking too.

Note: Learn about the possible unintended consequences of this option which, like overrides, restricts overbooking.

When G3 RMS applies the % threshold, it considers:

• All your shopped competitors, even those not checked to Use Rate Shopping Data or Use in Competitive Market Position Constraints.

• A competitor with no price for a one-night stay for any room type or any channel. For example, if there is a price for only 1 room type and 1 Channel, but not others, G3 RMS considers the competitor open.

Best Practices for the Run-of-House Overbooking Option

Understand How Run-of-House Works

Run-of-house overbooking assigns all overbooking to the selected room type. If you choose a second run-of-house room type, all overbooking is split between the two selected room types relative to their capacity. G3 RMS considers wash and your Upgrade Path to determine the room type overbooking values. See a simplified scenario.

Run-of-house overbooking can limit your revenue potential, because all higher priced room types are never overbooked. It can be the right option for some limited-service clients because it is simpler to set up and manage:

• Only select the Run-of-House room type. All other overbooking setup is fixed, for example, no option to vary by season.
• Your Upgrade Path is fixed and all higher-priced Room Classes accept upgrades from lower-priced ones.
• You apply overbooking overrides only at the property, not the room type level.

Note that if you have more than one Room Class, the selected run-of-house room type (or types) should be in the lowest Room Class. If you have more than two Room Classes, the room type should be in the Room Class that typically has excess demand.

Use Upgrades to Balance Your Inventory

Using run-of-house overbooking, one or two room types can potentially get overbooked up to a high level. You need to balance your inventory through upgrades or upsells, either at or shortly before check-in. Therefore, select a room type from which you can easily upgrade without causing operational challenges.

While a large number of upgrades or upsells might be an operational issue, it is not an issue for the system's unconstrained forecasts. The system can track the demand both at the booked and the stayed room type level. For example, when a guest books a Standard room and, at check-in, gets upgraded for free to a Suite because it is the last room, then G3 RMS understands that this demand represents Standard and not Suite demand. See Complimentary Upgrades for more information about business practices for upgrading guests and for more details about booked versus stayed data.

Scenarios

Scenarios for Overbooking by Room Type

When you select to not allow overbooking for a room type, G3 RMS proportionately allocates the room type's expected wash to other room types in the same Room Class, based on their capacity, as long as the receiving room types allow overbooking. The receiving room type depends on the Upgrade Path configuration in Price Ranking and Upgrade Path.

The examples below illustrate how G3 RMS handles the expected wash in the Room Class while balancing the expected wash at the room type level. These examples only apply to hotels that have a mixture of room types in a Room Class, some that allow overbooking and others that do not.

Example 1

In this example, one Room Class in the hotel has 100 Rooms. The majority of them are Twins. This Room Class is the lowest valued in the hotel.

G3 RMS allocates additional overbooking based on the expected wash from the Accessible room type. Its allocation is proportionate to the percentage capacity represented by the room type.

Room Class	Room Type	Capacity	Overbooking Allowed?	On Books	Wash Expected	Overbooking Control
Standard	Double	35 (35%)	Yes	10	2	3 (+1 from Accessible)
Standard	Twin	60 (60%)	Yes	30	10	12 (+2 from Accessible)
Standard	Accessible	5 (5%)	No	5	3	0
Standard	Total	100		45	15	15

Example 2

In this example, one Room Class in the hotel has 100 Rooms. The majority of them are Twins. This Room Class is the lowest valued in the hotel. Only the Twin room type is set up without any limit and can receive any shared wash. The Double room type has overbooking allowed but has a ceiling. Therefore, its wash is not shared. G3 RMS allocates only the additional overbooking from the Accessible room type to the Twin room type. The property overbooking decision is constrained, because two rooms of wash from the Double are not considered.

Room Class	Room Type	Capacity	Overbooking Allowed?	On Books	Wash Expected	Overbooking Control
Standard	Double	35 (35%)	Yes, Ceiling = 10	30	12	10
Standard	Twin	60 (60%)	Yes	30	10	13 (+3 from Accessible)
Standard	Accessible	5 (5%)	No	5	3	0
Standard	Total	100		65	25	23

Example 3

In this example, one Room Class in the hotel has 60 rooms. The majority of them are Twins. This Room Class is the lowest valued in the hotel. In this case, both room types have an overbooking ceiling applied in Overbooking Management.

G3 RMS considers the wash for each room type separately (because both room types have a limit), meaning that the system can't consider the wash in the Accessible room. In this scenario, limiting the room type overbooking directly impacts the total property level overbooking, since total property overbooking decision is never higher than the sum of the overbooking of all room types.

Room Class	Room Type	Capacity	Overbooking Allowed?	On Books	Wash Expected	Overbooking Control
Standard	Twin	45 (75%)	Yes, Ceiling = 5	10	3	3
Standard	Accessible	15 (25%)	No	7	3	0
Standard	Total	60	Yes, Ceiling = 5	17	6	3

Run-of-House Scenario

You have two Room Classes, Standard and Suite. Standard includes your Run-of-House room type, STKG. For all room types combined, G3 RMS expects 10 rooms of wash, so property overbooking is 10 rooms.

STKG receives the overbooking of all room types. Additionally, overbooking considers the Upgrade Path. That means that if the system expects 5 Suites to remain unsold for a date, the STKG overbooking is 15, 10 to offset the wash plus 5 rooms that G3 RMS expects you to upgrade to fill the Suites.