Between 1st April 2022 and 31 October 2022, our support staff have been asked to investigate 19 instances of "double bookings". During that period, we processed over 100,000 OTA updates (Sync Outs) per month an average.
The average time taken to get to the bottom of these double bookings was over 40 minutes - nearly 13 hours in total.
In every single case, the cause of the over booking was found to be explainable as being something other than the Caterbook software.
We have extensive logging in place within Caterbook, both of user interactions with the software, and also of the updates we have sent to the OTA's, and when.
So, in one instance we were able to demonstrate that when a property owner claimed they were closed out, that they in fact only closed out their rooms 10 minutes after the 'unwanted' booking was received.
There are other cases where properties continue to move OTA bookings into different room types and then ask us to explain to them (again) why they have received another double booking. We have an article explaining how if you are moving bookings between room types, auto replenishment can affect this here.
There have been occasions where bookings from several sources have been received within a very short time frame for the same, last available room of a type, sometimes the same minute or next minute. To be clear, all channel managers are governed by each OTA's own rules about how often we are allowed to collect bookings from them. For some it is every 1 minute, for others it is every 5 minutes.
Once a guest starts the booking process (by searching availability on the OTA) there are no further checks that the room is still free. So if two guests start booking on a different OTA (or even the same OTA) when a room is free nothing will stop those two bookings from being made. This is of course not perfect, but it is just how it is - this is how the OTA's have designed the process, not anything to do with how we have implemented anything.
Sometimes the cause appears to be related to simple auto replenishment. An OTA booking is cancelled, they 'know' there was a room of that type, on that date that was booked through them, so they add the room back in for sale, no matter what the channel manager tells them.
If you have an overbooking, please spend some time using our support resources to try and understand for yourself the underlying cause. If you can't, then we will look into the cause for you but we reserve the right to invoice you for our time if the reason is found not to be Caterbook.
The fee for investigation will be £50 plus VAT, and this will be added to your next month's invoice.