Overbooking is always a problem, even if it rarely happens. However, there is a risk if you use your unique schedule on several channels at the same time.
Sometimes, overbookings are linked to technical bugs - in other words, random bugs - which may have their source either in your elloha platform (we're sorry about that!) or in your distribution partner channel (in which case, it's not our fault and it's not yours either...).
But overbookings can also be caused by incorrect settings on your account, which is why we'd like to share these best practices with you to help you considerably reduce these inconveniences for both you and your customers:
Overbooking can be caused by your original synchronisation
Thank you for choosing elloha as your sole planning and channel manager. It is likely that you already have one or more accounts with OTAs (or another channel manager). And so you would like to retrieve your old booking files* from your elloha account when you synchronise with your partner channel(s).
This retrieval allows you to reassign future bookings already recorded in your elloha schedule and adjust your availability accordingly. These bookings will also be displayed in your arrivals schedule.
Before importing any of your previous reservation files, you must therefore ensure that your elloha schedule is open and that the dates concerned (by your future reservations) are credited with the corresponding availabilities.
For example: you know that you need to collect a reservation for 1 room from 8 to 10 June, so you must (before any import) credit your elloha schedule with at least 1 availability for the room given on these dates.
If you do not make these adjustments and your availabilities are therefore at 0, after importing your old bookings, your availability will be at "-1", i.e. overbooked.
Note that this phenomenon can occur for all booking volumes. For example, if you know that on a given date you need to have 10 offers available and your stock is 0, when you import your past bookings, your overbooking will be "-10".
* Note: recovering old bookings depends on whether or not your partner channel, and not elloha, allows this. Furthermore, the only bookings recovered by import are those with arrival dates in the future. For example, you synchronise your elloha account on 1 June. In this case, you can only retrieve a booking made on the previous 1 January if the arrival date of your customers is after 1 June.
elloha declines all responsibility in these cases of overbooking as the import of previous files is not controllable and is imposed by your partner channel. It is therefore imperative that you check your future availability before importing any past booking files for future dates.
overbooking can occur due to a lack of responsiveness on the part of your connector
As we will see later, there are two types of connectivity between a channel manager like elloha and an OTA: the XML connection (real time) and the iCal connection (updated every hour at best, but with longer delays as soon as the update reaches the OTA).
For example, even if elloha communicates your availabilities to AirBnB every hour, AirBnB may in turn only update them in its own schedules every 4 hours (at elloha, we never know this timeframe, which can vary from one day or one month to the next at AirBnB).
These very unpredictable timescales, which are inevitably too long in some cases, can lead to overbookings beyond our control, as reported in the exchanges on this AirBnB community forum:
overbooking can be caused by conflicts between channels
You distribute the offers in your unique elloha schedule on several channels and that's fine! However, not all channels work or synchronise in the same way with channel managers like elloha.
There are 2 types of connection:
the XML Two Ways connection: this is the "Rolls Royce" of connectivity, since elloha and the channel concerned (Booking, Expedia, Viator, TripAdvisor) communicate in both directions in (almost) real time, i.e. every minute. The risk of overbooking with these channels is therefore fairly low, but the risk does exist.
iCal connection: this is the simplest and most modest connection (AirBnB, HomeAway, etc.), since it is only updated at least every hour. Furthermore, it does not guarantee that the distribution channel will make its own updates at the same rate. The distribution channel can only reprocess the elloha information a few hours later. If a booking is made in the meantime on another channel, this creates an overbooking.
So when you work with several channels that operate differently, the risk of overbooking is real, even if it remains contained. This is what we have called the chronicle of an ordinary overbooking (read from bottom to top):
The iCal connections work well, but they do not allow availability to be updated in real time in the way that Booking or Expedia XML connections can guarantee: elloha therefore declines all responsibility in cases of overbooking originating from these types of connectors.
overbooking can occur even with an XML connection
Even if the XML connection is the best connection because it guarantees almost real-time reactivity (generally 1 minute between your update on elloha and the update on Booking and Expedia, and vice versa), malfunctions can occur and cause you to overbook.
elloha is in fact alerted by the OTAs when they encounter or have encountered problems on their platform which may have delayed the updating of bookings and availability.
For example: Booking encountered a problem with its servers and was unable to transmit its reservation to elloha. Your room therefore remains free on the elloha schedule. In the meantime, a customer books it for you via your website or via Expedia. Your room is therefore no longer available. Except that, a few minutes later, Booking unblocks its servers and sends the previously blocked reservation to elloha. That's how it ends up being overbooked in elloha!
Server breakdowns or slowdowns of this kind are not uncommon, as OTAs also experience high levels of activity and booking peaks. Even if their platforms are always perfectly sized, OTAs are not immune to these breakdowns, which they notify us of during or after their occurrence.
Below is an example of the notifications sent by Booking to its channel management partners such as elloha:
"Performance degraded in the retrieval of bookings between 02-06 at 16:55 and 19:52"
This means that if one of your bookings has been made during this period, and at the same time other bookings have been made on other channels for the same service, you risk being overbooked due to a technical malfunction on the part of the OTA.
elloha therefore declines all responsibility for overbookings that occur as a result of a technical incident identified at one of your partners' OTAs.
overbooking may be linked to actions on your part
This can happen: a lack of attention in the management of your availabilities (you indicate 10 free offers instead of just 1), you disconnect one of your offers from your channel manager and forget to reconnect it in the meantime, etc ...
All these actions, recorded in your action log (logs), may be the cause of overbooking in your elloha account. In this case, you should contact your customer as soon as possible to agree a change or postponement (or even a cancellation or refund) of their booking.
overbooking can be caused by a bug at elloha
Our team systematically analyses the possible causes of any overbooking. They may in fact be multiple in nature and origin and are not necessarily our responsibility. As we saw above, it is often the case that your partner channel has encountered technical difficulties of its own and may have notified this booking too late, without taking account of the latest updates to your schedule.
However, there may be technical causes for which we are responsible, such as a technical bug (this does happen) or temporary unavailability of our servers. As our servers are hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud , we systematically identify any overbooking that may occur at such times.
As you can see, there are many reasons for overbooking, and it's often difficult to know why at any given time. That's why we give priority to alerting you first of all when an overbooking occurs, so that you can take charge of your customer and work out with him how to manage the situation (postpone, cancel, move to another offer, refund, etc.).
Our teams will then analyse the possible causes and inform you of our conclusions in the event of a bug for which we are responsible.