Complimentary Upgrades
Complimentary upgrades are free upgrades to a higher room type that you provide to some guests due to overbooking or as a business practice. For example, a frequent guest that books a Standard room type gets a free upgrade to a higher-priced Suite. G3 RMS considers this by using booked versus stayed data.
Booked versus Stayed Data
G3 RMS uses reservation history to understand upgrades and any other change in room type. For transient business, the system tracks the original room type from the history at the time the reservation was made. The room type that the guest initially booked is defined as the booked room type. The stayed room type is the room type where the guest actually stayed. You can see this information in the Booked Room Type column of the Business Insights dashboard.
Knowing the difference between the Booked and the Stayed room types helps the system understand demand by Room Class. In the above example of the frequent guest, G3 RMS understands that the guest represents Standard demand, not Suite demand. With that information, the system can improve its unconstrained forecast for Standard and Suite, especially in the case of a large number of upgrades or upsells.
G3 RMS can provide benefits to your property without Booked versus Stayed data. But whenever available, the system uses Booked versus Stayed room type data:
- If historical data includes Booked versus Stayed data, G3 RMS is built based on historical demand of the booked room type. This availability depends on the reservation system that provides data to G3 RMS.
- If the reservation system doesn't include Booked versus Stayed, G3 RMS starts collecting the data, for example, when a new or existing reservation is upgraded at check-in. After 365 days of Booked Room Type data is available, you get a Sufficient Booked Data Available Alert which tells you that you can switch to using Booked instead of Stayed data.
To find out which room type data G3 RMS uses for your property, click Important Information 
above the System Date and look under Data Used for Forecasting and Optimization.
Even if the historical data contains Booked versus Stayed information, G3 RMS does not use the data if it is not clean or meaningful enough. For example, G3 RMS captured 365 days of history with Booked versus Stayed data for a property. For the first 65 days of that history, less than 2% of reservation records show any difference between Booked and Stayed room type.
At that low level of differentiation, G3 RMS considers those first 65 days of Booked versus Stayed history as insufficient and counts only the remaining 300 days (when the difference sometimes exceeds 2%). The 300 days count towards the minimum of 365 days that the system requires to switch to using Booked data. After the initial data capture, the system collects new Booked versus Stayed data from reservation activity during each day of the implementation and adds those days to the 300 days from history.
After 30 days, the property creates and commits Forecast Groups, with forecasts based only on Stayed data. But after another 35 days, the property now has 365 days of Booked versus Stayed data and gets a Sufficient Booked Data Available Alert in Information Manager.
Best Practices
Book the Reservation in the Booked Room Type, Then Move It
If a guest books a Standard room type and receives a complimentary upgrade to a Suite, you should book the reservation in the Standard room and save it. Only then move the reservation to the Suite, even if you offered the upgrade automatically at the point of reservation. This way you ensure that the reservation system that provides data to G3 RMS
Balance Your Inventory at the Right Time
If you don't override overbooking, balance your room types as close to the day of arrival as possible. This way, additional demand for higher Room Classes can book when the forecasted demand by Room Class is not 100% accurate.
There are two scenarios when you want to balance your room types early:
- If you overbooked your property beyond the system's overbooking decision. This can happen when you accept a group or override overbooking. Earlier balancing of your room types avoids further overbooking.
- If your channel manager or distribution system sees only room type, but not house level availability. Without balancing and when there are rooms left to sell in some room types, overbooking can increase.
