GDS Lesson 5: Managing overbookings or complaints

To prevent overbookings, please take every day just 10 minutes to check the GDS Connector. On one hand this ensures that your hotel rooms can be sold at any time and on the other hand it avoids awkward situations with overbookings.

We recommend checking the following: 

  • Is the availability open at least for the following 6 months
  • Are all days closed at which you are already fully booked
  • Are the rates loaded at least for the following 6 months
  • Adjust the BAR for certain dates if necessary (increase in case of high demand periods, lower in case of low demand)
     

What to do in an “overbooking situation”
You know that all reservations coming through the GDS have to be honoured and the room that has been booked has to be made available or equally accepted accommodation has to be given. If no room is available, you are responsible to find equivalent or better accommodation for the guest at no additional cost.

Please inform Support about this situation immediately by email with a solution or an alternative hotel you can offer to the customer! We will then inform the travel agency accordingly. Please do never get in touch with the travel agency directly and force them to cancel the booking.

 

Complaints from Travel Agents

Claim definition
A claim stands for all incidents that can occur with a booking which have to be solved promptly or in due course to ensure customers satisfaction.

Incidents are for example bookings which are „pretended“ not to be received by the hotel, overbookings as a result of wrong inventory management of the hotel or if a guest is complaining about the received services in the booked property (bad quality, wrong rate etc.).
 

Claim procedures

  • Each claim which is forwarded from reconline to your hotel by email has to be acknowledged by you immediately! 
  • Claims for passed bookings have to be solved within a maximum of 5 working days
  • Claims for future bookings have to be solved within 24 hours
  • Claims for the same day have to be solved within 2 hours
  • In case of a claim, an official statement, explanation and/or apology letter from your hotel is required. This letter must be printed on hotels paper and signed by the hotel manager or its representative. Reconline can not accepted any lame excuses as it is clearly agreed in the contracts that confirmed bookings have to be honoured as booked
  • In case of non respect of these standards, reconline reserves the right to disconnect your hotel from the different electronic distribution channels with immediate effect to reduce the damage and the bad reputation caused by representing hotels which are not cooperative