Hotel overbooking means a hotel has accepted more reservations for a night than it has rooms to give. Some large hotels overbook on purpose, expecting a few cancellations and no-shows. Most small properties overbook by accident.
Why it happens
- The same room is sold on two sites before either one is updated.
- A phone booking is written in a diary that nobody checks against the OTAs.
- A room goes out of order, and the stays booked into it have nowhere to go.
- A planned overbooking counts on no-shows that do not happen.
Worked example
A 10-room hotel has 10 reservations for Friday and takes 1 more on an OTA that was not updated. On Friday all 11 guests arrive. One guest must be "walked": moved to another hotel. The usual practice is that the overbooked hotel pays for the other hotel's room and the transport, so a booking worth 100 can cost 150 or more, plus a review.
Why it matters to a small property
With 10 rooms there is no spare room to absorb a mistake, and one walked guest on a busy night can mean a bad review that stays online for years. The fix is one source of truth for free rooms, kept in step with every channel.
How a PMS prevents it
A PMS checks every night of a new stay against the rooms you have before it accepts the booking, and a channel manager closes the room on every OTA as soon as it is sold.
LobbyMind's reservations calendar warns you before a booking or a move would overbook a room type, shows each night's free count above the tape chart, and keeps groups together.