An allotment is a number of rooms a hotel holds for you each night. The release period is how many days before that night the unsold ones go back to the hotel. A stop-sale closes a date whatever is left. Between them they decide what your agents can book. Judge the release on the hotel's own calendar, night by night, and never let a stop-sale touch bookings already made.
The four ways a hotel gives you a room
Each room type first needs one answer: how does the hotel give it to you? There are four, and they behave differently (the travel trade glossary has the short definitions).
Free sale. The hotel holds nothing for you; you sell until it tells you to stop. Easy to load, and only as good as the hotel's habit of telling you when it is full.
Allotment. The hotel holds a number of rooms a night for you, and takes back the ones you have not sold a set number of days before each night. That number of days is the release period.
Guaranteed. You pay for the rooms whether you sell them or not, so nothing is released: the rooms are yours, and so is the bill.
On request. No rooms are held and every booking waits for a yes. A different selling model, covered in on request or instant confirmation.
These are contract facts, not preferences. Load what the contract says, the same way you load rate plans and seasons.
How a release period actually works
A release period of 14 days means: the rooms held for the night of 20 March can be sold up to and including 6 March. From 7 March they belong to the hotel again.
Three details decide whether a system gets this right.
It is judged night by night. The hotel takes rooms back one night at a time. A three-night stay arriving 18 March needs the nights of the 18th, 19th and 20th, and the 18th releases first, on 4 March. From 5 March that stay cannot be sold from the allotment, even though a one-night stay on the 20th still can until 6 March. A calendar showing the 20th as open does not mean every stay through it is.
It is judged on the hotel's calendar. "Fourteen days before" means fourteen days in the place where the hotel is. Take a hotel in Bali (UTC+8) and an agent in Dubai (UTC+4). The hotel's date turns over at midnight in Bali, which is 20:00 in Dubai. At 20:30 on 6 March in Dubai, it is already 7 March at the hotel and the night of 20 March has gone back. Neither the agent's clock nor your server's is the right one.
Released means released. If an agent cancels a room for 20 March on 9 March, after the release day, that room goes to the hotel with the others, not back on sale. Whether the hotel charges you is a separate question, answered by your contract and the cancellation policy you sell.
A worked example: 10 rooms, 14-day release
Say a hotel gives you 10 Deluxe rooms a night for March, on allotment, with a 14-day release. Follow the night of 20 March.
| Hotel's date | What happens to the night of 20 March |
|---|---|
| Up to 6 March | Agents book from the 10 rooms held. Each booking takes its rooms under a lock: two agents cannot both take the last one. |
| End of 6 March | Six rooms are sold. This is the last day the night sells. |
| 7 March | The four unsold rooms go back to the hotel. The night stops selling to agents. |
| 9 March | An agent cancels one of the six. The room comes off the sold count and is counted as returned to the hotel: five now. |
| 20 March | Five rooms check in. |
Now change one thing. On 2 March the hotel calls: an event has filled the property and it can give you no more rooms for 20 March. You put a stop-sale on that night for the Deluxe room. The six rooms already sold stay sold, nobody new can book, and nothing is released on 7 March, because a closed night holds nothing to give back. If the hotel cannot honour the six stays, that is a conversation with the hotel and an action on each booking, not something the stop-sale does on its own.
What a stop-sale should do, and what it should not
A stop-sale is the strongest instruction you have. It has to override rooms still held, a special price, a promotion and selling on request once full. If any of those can reopen a closed date, the stop-sale is only a suggestion.
What it must not do is reach backwards. A stop-sale, or a lower room count, refuses new sales and leaves every existing booking as it was. If closing a date quietly cancelled confirmed stays, a routine call from the hotel would become a crisis for agents whose clients already hold vouchers.
Two smaller controls sit beside it:
- Closed to arrival or closed to departure: the date stays open for stays passing through it, but nobody may check in (or check out) that day.
- Minimum stay on arrival: arriving on that day needs at least N nights. Useful for peak dates without closing them.
And one trap with guaranteed rooms: a stop-sale does not stop the bill. Closing the date stops you selling them; you still pay for them.
Which control to use when
| Situation | Control | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel holds no rooms and tells you when it is full | Free sale | Simplest to load; you depend on its stop-sales arriving quickly. |
| Hotel holds rooms and takes back the unsold ones | Allotment with release days | You sell with confidence until the release day; then the risk is the hotel's. |
| You have committed to pay for the rooms | Guaranteed | Never released. The unsold room-nights ahead are your cost. |
| Every booking must be checked with the hotel | On request | No rooms held. The agent books, you confirm or decline. |
| Hotel is full or closed on some dates | Stop-sale on those dates | Overrides everything and refuses new sales. Existing bookings stay. |
| No check-ins on a changeover day | Closed to arrival | The date stays sellable for stays passing through it. |
| Peak dates need a longer stay | Minimum stay on arrival | Keeps the date open without one-night bookings. |
| Rooms held for one partner agency or a group | A room block | Kept apart from the general pool. See group travel software. |
| A whole destination closes for a public holiday | Close many hotels at once | One step instead of one hotel at a time. |
How a portal should behave
Whatever system you use, test these before you trust it with a peak season:
- Rooms are taken under a lock, inside the transaction that creates the booking: checked when the agent sees the price, checked again at the moment of sale.
- A cancellation gives rooms back through one path, read from what the booking took, not from today's settings.
- Release is judged per night, on the hotel's date.
- A stop-sale refuses everything new and touches nothing old.
- Agents see what is left ("only 2 left"), and a reason when a night will not sell.
- What went back is recorded, so you can show the hotel how much of the allotment you used.
These six are the core of a B2B booking engine for contracted hotels.
Setting it up in iTravel
- The room type says how the hotel gives you the room: free sale, allotment, guaranteed or on request. An allotment room has a default number of rooms a night and a release in days before arrival; leave the release empty and the rooms are never released.
- The availability calendar sets, for a date range and chosen weekdays, a number of rooms held, back to the default, or a stop-sale, one room type at a time. A separate mode sets only the day's restrictions (minimum stay when arriving, closed to arrival, closed to departure).
- Release is judged on the hotel's own date, taken from the hotel's location, and each night of a stay is checked on its own. An hourly sweep records the unsold rooms that went back.
- Bookings take their rooms under a lock in the booking transaction; a cancellation gives them back through one path. The calendar never writes the sold count, so neither a stop-sale nor a lower count changes a booking already made.
- Close and open dates across many hotels at once, with a preview and one undo. Only the stop-sale changes; rooms held, restrictions and sold counts stay.
- A rate plan can have its own block inside its room's allocation, and room blocks hold rooms for one partner agency or price tier with their own release days.
- The hotel's extranet, a link with no login, lets someone at the hotel keep the availability calendar current, stop-sales included. Every change is shown to you.
- The revenue view shows rooms held against sold for the next 30, 60 and 90 days, and the rooms releasing unsold this week. Switch on the daily release mail for a hotel and its reservations office gets one mail a day, at or after 08:00 hotel time, listing the rooms that came back.
- Supplier payment terms can fall on the room's release day, if that is what your contract says.
How rooms, rate plans and seasons are loaded is on hotel contracting software.
What to set up first
For every room type, before the first agent books:
- [ ] The allocation matches the contract: free sale, allotment, guaranteed or on request.
- [ ] Allotment rooms have a default number of rooms a night, and dates the contract treats differently have their own number.
- [ ] The release period is the contract's number, in days. Empty only if the contract really never releases.
- [ ] The hotel has a location, so its local date is the one release and stop-sales are judged on.
- [ ] Known closures and minimum stays for peak dates are entered now, not the week before.
- [ ] Someone at the hotel knows how to send you a stop-sale, or has their own extranet link.
- [ ] You have looked at the rooms releasing unsold this week, and decided whether to push them to agents first.
- [ ] For guaranteed rooms, you know how many unsold room-nights you are carrying: that number is your cost.
