Managing Availability

Use this page to keep your channel availability and rates accurate day to day. Connecting a channel is a one-time setup; after that, Veridien sends most changes on its own. It helps to know what is sent when, how to sell at a different price or hold rooms back on one channel, and how to read the monitoring facts so you catch problems early.

This page assumes your property is linked and at least one channel is live. If not, start with Channels setup.

Veridien sends two kinds of data to each live channel:

• Availability: how many rooms of each mapped room type are open to sell on each date.
• Rates and restrictions: the price of each mapped rate plan on each date, with its minimum stay on arrival, maximum stay, closed to arrival, closed to departure and stop sell.

Availability is worked out from your live inventory: the rooms of a type, minus the reservations occupying them and any blocked rooms, for each date. Because every reservation counts against the same inventory, a reservation from any source (direct, front desk or OTA) reduces what the OTAs can sell.

You do not send routine updates by hand. When inventory or pricing changes (a new reservation, a change, a cancellation, a room block or a rate plan change), Veridien works out the affected dates and sends the new availability and rates to Channex. This near real-time sync is your main protection against selling the same room twice.

Each send is logged on the Activity tab as Availability sent or Rates sent, with a status of Success, Partial or Error.

To sell a rate plan at a different price on one channel, add a rate adjustment on the channel's Rate adjustments tab (see Channels setup). Each adjustment names a room type and rate plan and moves its price Higher or Lower by a Percentage or a Fixed amount.

When rates are sent, the adjustment is applied to the price sent for that plan. A plan without an adjustment sells at its own rate. A common use is a percentage on a higher-commission OTA, so your net stays the same.

If your property has the Veridien Dynamic Pricing add-on, a Dynamic pricing row appears in the Sell group of the sidebar. It opens Dynamic pricing, with Prices, Strategy and Activity tabs. Its prices apply to your connected channels and to offers returned by the API only; front desk quotes keep your configured rates.

A full resend sends availability and rates for every mapped room type and rate plan, well over a year ahead, in one go. You do not start it by hand. It runs:

• every night, so your channels are reconciled even when nothing else has changed, and
• when you activate a channel, so it can sell straight away.

A full resend is logged on the Activity tab as Full resend, with how many entries were sent. If it fails, the error and its reason are logged there too.

Restrictions travel with the rates for each rate plan and date: minimum stay on arrival, maximum stay, closed to arrival, closed to departure and stop sell. Closed to arrival stops a rate plan from being sold for the first night of a stay even when rooms remain. These values come from your rate plans and their seasonal intervals, so manage them there rather than in the OTA extranet, and let the sync carry them to the channel.

To hold rooms back from one channel without changing what your front desk can sell, use the channel's Availability rules tab. Select Add availability rule, give it a Title, and choose a Rule type:

• Close out: closes the chosen room types on the channel.
• Hold back rooms: keeps a number of rooms (Rooms to hold back) off the channel.
• Cap allotment: sells at most a number of rooms (Room cap) on the channel.

Then set the Start date, an end date in End date (optional) if the rule should stop, the Days it applies on and the Room types it covers, and select Add availability rule. A rule applies only to what the channel sees; your front desk keeps every room.

Once your property is linked, the Channels page shows four facts at the top:

• Live channels: how many channels are live.
• Last sync: how long ago the last successful exchange with Channex was.
• Sync errors, last 24 hours: when there are any, select the count to open the Activity tab filtered to errors.
• Incoming reservations: Receiving when Channex can deliver new reservations, or Not receiving with the reason and a Try again button.

The Activity tab is the detailed log. Each row shows the Time, Event, Status, Details and Items. Use the Status and Event filters to narrow it down, for example to Error rows only or to Reservation received events, and select Refresh activity to reload it. The log also refreshes every 30 seconds and keeps two weeks of events. Check it first whenever a guest reports a reservation that did not arrive, or when Sync errors shows a count.

Overbookings happen when more rooms are sold than exist. Automatic sync keeps the risk low, and a few habits keep it lower:

• Manage inventory only in Veridien, never in the OTA extranet.
• Keep mappings correct. A room mapped to the wrong type sells the wrong inventory. Review the mapping after any change to your room types or rate plans.
• Check the monitoring facts daily, especially in busy periods. When Incoming reservations reads Not receiving, new OTA reservations are not reaching Veridien.
• Use restrictions and availability rules (closed to arrival, minimum stay, Hold back rooms) when you want to hold rooms back, rather than relying on memory.

If an overbooking does happen, handle it like any other: look for upgrades, early departures or rooms you can return to service; contact the affected guest as early as possible and arrange a comparable alternative if relocation cannot be avoided; and note the cause so it does not happen again. Make changes to OTA reservations on the OTA where you can, so the guest and the OTA stay informed (see Modifying reservations).

• Channels setup: linking your property, connecting channels and mapping.
• Rate plans: the source of the prices and restrictions sent to channels.
• Creating reservations and Front desk dashboard: where imported OTA reservations show up.
• Reservation sources: how each channel is tagged on a reservation.