Our software is designed to support the following best practices of booking process. Let’s follow the cases:

The Availability

A customer comes to a hotel’s website and finds the availability calendar. He has a certain date in mind. In case the day is…

• … free (green in calendar), he will make a contact, see below.
• … booked but unconfirmed (yellow in calendar), it also shows a deadline, until which it is booked. If the booking has not been confirmed (paid, etc) by that deadline, it’s free for anyone again. So, one can put himself into a waiting list for that date.
• … booked and confirmed (the red dates in calendar), he will curse himself of being too late and he checks few other dates or he leaves.

The First Contact, Booking

Having found an available date either from a website or by any other means, he will make a contact and make a booking.

• A nice receptionist informs the visitor that the booking will be only preliminary and there will be a deadline, let’s say that it has to be paid (or otherwise confirmed) within x days. Of course, the booking can be also confirmed at once, if it is a regular visitor or there is some other good reason to trust him.
• The receptionist creates a booking. As said, in most cases it is unconfirmed and so the date shows yellow with a deadline in public avalability calendar.
• In some cases, the visitor may have multiple dates in mind and needs to discuss with family first. Multiple dates or even different rooms may be pre-booked in a single booking record.

The Deadline for Confirmation

When the deadline arrives and the booking is not yet been confirmed (or cancelled), the software will send a reminder to the receptionist, who should then make a call to the visitor to remind about the deadline.

• In case there is still no confirmation by the next day, the unconfirmed booking will disappear from the public availability calendar and the date is available again.
• The receptionist may prolong the deadline.

The Confirmation

When the payment or other kind of acceptable confirmation is received, the receptionist marks the booking as confirmed. The date becomes red in availability calendar.

• Later on, the booking date can be changed, if allowed by hotel rules.

The Waiting List

Visitors may put themselves into a waiting list for dates with unconfirmed bookings.

• If the primary booking gets confirmed, the one in waiting list gets notified, that too bad, it’s gone now.
• If the primary booking does not get confirmed by deadline, the first visitor in waiting list is turned into a unconfirmed booking, the deadline of x days will be set and he will be notified. Of course, the owner of the expired booking will be also notified that it’s too late now.