Channel with Custom Availability

This page explains how to use virtual rooms to send different inventory to different booking channels and/or your own web site

You can create a virtual room to send custom availability to one or more channels.

Limit Inventory sent to a channel

For example you may not want to sell via a particular channel at certain times of the year. The virtual room will be linked to one of your real rooms. Bookings for the virtual room will be assigned to and block the real room. The virtual room will not be available if the real room is not available.

Create a virtual room

• Create the virtual room by making a copy of the real room at the SETTINGS -> PROPERTIES -> ROOMS menu.
• Set "Sell Priority" to "Hide Room" if you do not want to display the virtual room on your booking page. If you are hiding rooms you will need to adjust your overbooking protection in SETTINGS->PROPERTIES->ROOMS ->SETUP. For instructions please see the context help next to the setting.

Go to PROPERTIES -> ROOMS -> DEPENDENCIES and set:

• in Dependency "Requires Availability" = real room
• in Assign Bookings = real room

Custom Availability

• The virtual room needs it's own rates, which should have been copied from the real room as part of the copy room function. You can also link the rate in the "Rooms" tab of the rate.
• The virtual room can be made unavailable by removing rates for the unavailable dates. Any date with no price is treated as unavailable.
• You can also use the Blackout and Inventory functions on the Calendar to set availability.

Channel Setup

• In the Channel manager settings disable the real room for the desired channel and enable the virtual room.

Allotments

Example 1: You have 5 double rooms and guaranteed channel A 2 rooms

Room for booking page: In SETTINGS-> PROPERTIES->ROOMS->SET UP set Quantity=3 In SETTINGS-> PROPERTIES->ROOMS->DEPENDENCIES set "Requires Availability" = Room for channel

Leave all other settings set to the defaults.

Room for channel: In SETTINGS-> PROPERTIES->ROOMS->SET UP set Quantity=5 In SETTINGS-> PROPERTIES->ROOMS->SET UP set Sell Priority = hide (to hide from booking page) In SETTINGS-> PROPERTIES->ROOMS->DEPENDENCIES set "Include Bookings" = Room for booking page

Leave all other settings set to the defaults and map this room to the channel.

Note: The virtual room feature works only for online bookings. If you add bookings manually place them in your "real rooms" not into virtual rooms.