Room allocation is simply the allocation of rooms to guests so you know how many and exactly which rooms will be occupied by different guests. Room allocation is a basic concept but a vital process necessary to avoid mishaps in the lodge. It becomes essential when the lodge becomes busier and you have back-to-back occupancies.
Rooming can be done at the time of booking by the reservations manager at a reservations level, see the Rooming tutorial in the Central Reservations module, or it can be done at a later stage by the property. The lodge staff would naturally use the Rooming Calendar to allocate rooms.
To allocate rooms navigate through Property > Rooming Calendar.
Once roomed the booking will then move from the ‘Unallocated Reservations’ list to the calendar in the row of the selected room.
The Room Function’s pop up will show you the pax amount and if there are adults or children staying in the room, e.g. (2A, 0C) alongside the booking name. This will assist your staff with ensuring the guest stays in a suitable or more appropriate room, e.g. double bed for a couple or twin beds for an adult and child staying together. If you have set up bed configurations (twin or double) as Rate components then this will also reflect in the popup under ‘Optionals’. This is an additional step to ensure your guests stay in the right room.
Guests may request a different room after already being roomed or perhaps you have to shuffle your guests around to accommodate new bookings. Changing rooms is very simple.
Guests may request a room upgrade after making their booking or it may be something you choose to offer a guest. There are various ways to do room upgrades in ResRequest including upgrades at no charge and for an extra charge. You will need to decide on a upgrade policy that works best for your team and must always ensure that your room type revenue reflects correctly for reporting purposes.
When allocating a room to a booking using the ‘Room Functions’ pop up, it will reflect the itinerary line details including the room type, e.g. Standard suites. Other vacant room types will also be reflected here giving you the option to select a room type that is not in line with the reservation.
The specific room type has been booked as is reflected in the Reservation Itinerary Summary, e.g. Standard suites in the Accommodation column.
Select the room you are choosing to upgrade to in the Room Functions pop up, e.g. instead of selecting the Standard suite as reflected on the reservation, select the Luxury suite. Rooming a guest in a room not reflected on the reservation itinerary line is considered an upgrade.This is also reflected on the Rooming tab as shown below.
Track these upgrades through the Room Discrepancy report which identifies the bookings with different rooming details on the itinerary line and rooming calendar.
By upgrading this way, it is very important to remember that:
If your guest is happy to pay the extra charge to stay in a more expensive suite that you have available, then you can change the reservation Itinerary line to reflect the upgraded room.
By upgrading this way, it is important to remember the following:
The Ops chart report (Property > Reports > Operations Chart) can assist you with rooming as it has an auto allocate function. In the report you may select the ‘Auto-allocate rooms’ option which means bookings that have not yet been allocated a room will be put into available rooms as the system sees fit. This may be used as a guide, but not as a function, for your own rooming. Remember, the report does not actually room the reservation and merely offers a suggested rooming solution. You will still have to room the bookings separately after running this report.
Using the example filters above, a report is simple to generate as a guide to room your guests. Remember to select the ‘Auto-allocate rooms’ option
Here’s an example of a report which shows roomed and recommendations for the unroomed reservations.
See the Reports for the Week tutorial for more information on the Ops Chart.
