These allotments can improve the occupancy of a hotel by enabling Tour Operators, Travel Agents etc. to not only book rooms from their own (limited) allotment, but to book additional rooms from a larger pool of rooms available at individual properties.
Shared allotments consist of a pool of rooms to which a number of Tour Operators, Travel Agents, etc. all have access. They may either use this allotment in case their own allotment is full, or they may not be allocated set number of rooms at all, but simply access the shared allotment whenever they wish to book a room.
Fallback allotments are established to provide a pool of additional rooms for certain customers to “fall-back” upon in case their regular allotments have been used up. During the reservation process, this allotment will come up as the last option.
The allotments should be set up with appropriate names, so that the “shared-” or “fall back-function” is obvious. Exactly who (i.e. which Agent or Operator) is allowed to book within these shared or fallback allotments is determined by the grouping.
The grouping for the respective contract is entered in the tab All contracts. It determines that clients with the same grouping can reserve rooms from the shared or fallback allotment. In the client’s profile the same grouping is entered in the tab Blocks, expander Grouping.
Figure 138: Grouping in a client's profile
The dialog box in a reservation showing available allotments behaves accordingly, it only displays the following:
•Allotments applicable during this period and
•Those allotments, in which sufficient rooms are available for this reservation and
•Shared allotments if no “normal” contracted allotment is available and
•Fallback allotments if no shared allotment is available.