Overview

📌 Got an overbooking you didn't expect?

This article is about allowing overbooking on purpose. The safeguard it describes is on by default: if nobody on your team has changed it, it is still on and it is not the cause. To find out why a booking came in for a room that was already full, and what to do, see Why did I receive a booking even though the room wasn’t available?.

By default, Amenitiz keeps your availability in line with the rooms you actually have. If a category has 3 rooms and 3 confirmed bookings on the same date, that date shows as full, and Amenitiz corrects the availability back down whenever it is set higher than the rooms still free on that date. This is a deliberate safety net to prevent overbooking.

This is also why availability you raise by hand sometimes drops back on its own: the safeguard is doing its job.

There are cases where you want to oversell — for example, you are confident a guest will cancel, or you have a flexible room you can offer instead. In those cases you can turn the safety net off from the booking engine settings.

⚠️ Warning

Your availability is shared by every channel you sell through. Turning off this safeguard removes Amenitiz's protection against overbooking everywhere at once — your booking engine, Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb and every other connected OTA. Once a booking comes in, you have committed to honouring it, and rehousing the guest is your responsibility. Only proceed if you understand and accept this risk.

Before you start

This setting applies globally to all room categories in your booking engine — you cannot enable overbooking for one category only. If you turn it on, all categories lose the safeguard.
It does not correct an oversell you already have. It controls whether Amenitiz keeps availability within your real capacity from now on.
The change takes effect as soon as you save.

Step by step

In the sidebar, go to Booking engine → Settings.
Open the Options tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Danger zone section.
Find Limit the number of possible bookings to the number of rooms in the category and select No.
Click Save.

From now on, Amenitiz keeps the availability you set, even when some of those rooms are already booked. Availability can never go above the total number of rooms in a category.

FAQs

I raised my availability and it went back down on its own. Why?

That is the safeguard. While it is set to Yes, Amenitiz corrects any availability above the rooms still free in that category, counting confirmed bookings and blocked rooms. To hold a higher number, set the option to No first. See How to understand your Inventory for how availability is calculated.

Will Booking.com, Expedia or other OTAs keep selling rooms I don't have?

Yes. With the safeguard off, the channel manager pushes whatever availability you set, even when those rooms are already booked. Connected OTAs will keep accepting reservations and you will be responsible for honouring or rehousing each one.

Can I allow overbooking for one room category only?

No. The setting applies to every room category at once. While it is set to No, no category is protected.

How do I turn the safeguard back on?

Go back to Booking engine → Settings → Options, scroll to Danger zone, set Limit the number of possible bookings to the number of rooms in the category to Yes, then click Save. Amenitiz does not recheck every date at once: it corrects each date the next time its availability changes, for example when a booking comes in or is cancelled.

I got an overbooking I didn't expect. What do I do?

Look after the guest first: contact them right away, explain the situation and offer to rehouse them in a similar property nearby. Then see Why did I receive a booking even though the room wasn’t available? — it helps you find the cause, most often a channel that confirmed the booking before your updated availability reached it, and lists exactly what to send us if you can't find it.

Does this affect bookings I have already accepted?

No. The setting controls whether your availability can exceed your real capacity from now on. Bookings already in your calendar are untouched either way.

How to allow overbooking on your calendar