Allotment

    Some OTAs may ask hoteliers that want to sell their rooms on their portals to reserve a certain number of rooms exclusively for them, in exchange for greater online visibility.

    The allotment is the quantity of rooms (a lot, hence the word "allotment") that the property should reserve for exclusive sale on that portal.

    Generally, the allotment agreements also have a Release: it's an agreed date or a period of time near today's date (the next X days from today) in which the allotment lapses. So the exclusivity agreement ceases and if the OTA was not able to sell the rooms within that period (established in the contract) will have to give the lot of unsold rooms to the property, so that it can try to sell them directly or through other channels.

    The opening and closing of allotment availability is managed directly by the portals and cannot be changed by the channel manager. This means that even if the WooDoo Channel Manager sends availability=0 or closure=True, the channel continues to sell the availability in allotment (unless it has been previously sold by the portal itself).

    Generally, allotment availability is the first to be used up following a reservation. If, for example, you have 3 double rooms, one of which is an allotment on portal X, and a reservation is made on this portal, the availability becomes 2 and the allotment is used up. In this example, when availability runs out for that period, the room is also closed on portal X. If, on the other hand, direct reservations or reservations from other portals (but not from portal X) come in and occupy all 3 available double rooms, the allotment on this portal remains. Although the availability is closed by the channel manager, portal X continues to sell the room in allotment!



    N.B. The allotment is an agreement that the hotelier makes with the OTA portal. Not knowing the conditions can cause overbooking! Careful information should be obtained from the OTA support.


    Managing Allotments

    If you use portals (such as Expedia, Agoda, WHL...) that provide rooms in allotment, the only way to be sure that you will not be overbooked because of the allotment is to respect it: that is to reduce the availability in WooDoo excluding the availability that you have given in allotment to the portal.

    To do this you can decrease the availability of all rooms that you sell on the portal (and decrease it by the same value for all types) by acting in the following section:




    For example, if you have 10 Doubles and 5 Superiors on Expedia and you have agreed with the portal an allotment on each of the two types, you can set a decrease of 1 for the Expedia channel in the "Channel settings" box in this section: this decrease will be applied to both room types.


    If, on the other hand, the allotment is on only one of the two types, you can set the decrease using a virtual room created specifically for the connection to that channel (it must therefore be set as "WooDoo only", i.e. usable only on the channel manager and not visible on your site):

        ☞ Docs: WooDoo - Virtual Rooms


    NOTE: remember to set these rooms as 'WooDoo Only': WooDoo only rooms are marked with a red eagle icon!

    Smart tip: if the room dedicated to a channel must have the same price and restrictions as the parent room with full availability, you can create anchors:


        ☞ Docs: WooDoo - Anchorage: derived room prices






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