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Online booking engines can be easily customized to handle over-booking. The issue I'm looking at is that online booking engines don't have accurate (and real-ti

by ajayr 15y ago

Online booking engines can be easily customized to handle over-booking. The issue I'm looking at is that online booking engines don't have accurate (and real-time) supply picture today. If this was available, it would become possible to make reservations without the need to get confirmations from the provider. Take sites like froomz.com or venuecricket.com, for instance. They are online marketplaces for renting spaces. They have many small-time providers renting out there dance studios or workshops. If such providers exclusively use the booking engines provided by the froomz/venuecricket, there are no issues. But if they also use Outlook to handle offline reservations, then keeping it in sync with online booking engines becomes a big challenge. You might end up booking venues only to receive a failed reservation several hours later resulting in extremely unhappy customers who will likely write bad reviews about the site and the venue.

kls 15y ago
That is the point I am trying to convey most of them don't give exclusivity to one provider, they provide allotments to many providers and many intentionally over allot, because they would rather give rain checks and discounts than have less than optimal utilization of the capacity. They are a lot of middlemen moving hospitality products, most work on a commission structure and most receive an allotment that they can fill (it is supposed to be guaranteed, it never is in practice). These middlemen perform at different efficiencies. Most hospitality providers try to track their efficiency to effectively manage allotment, but there is no guarantee of their performance. Therefore, hospitality providers generally over allot to compensate for this, even if they used an online system that sells their product, they are not going to turn away other middlemen, who basically equal a zero up front cost sales channel. Those other middlemen will have their own systems where they manage their own allotments.

by ajayr 15y ago

kls 15y ago

That is the point I am trying to convey most of them don't give exclusivity to one provider, they provide allotments to many providers and many intentionally over allot, because they would rather give rain checks and discounts than have less than optimal utilization of the capacity. They are a lot of middlemen moving hospitality products, most work on a commission structure and most receive an allotment that they can fill (it is supposed to be guaranteed, it never is in practice). These middlemen perform at different efficiencies. Most hospitality providers try to track their efficiency to effectively manage allotment, but there is no guarantee of their performance. Therefore, hospitality providers generally over allot to compensate for this, even if they used an online system that sells their product, they are not going to turn away other middlemen, who basically equal a zero up front cost sales channel. Those other middlemen will have their own systems where they manage their own allotments.