Hotel allotments: stop losing rooms to release dates
One missed release date in peak weeks can cost a hotel’s whole margin. A simple routine to track every allotment.
Allotment contracts give you rooms at agreed rates, but rooms you don’t use go back to the hotel on dates the contract sets. In peak weeks, missing one of those dates can mean paying for empty rooms, or buying the same rooms back later at a higher rate, depending on your contract’s terms.
Know where you stand every morning
Start the day with one picture of the weeks ahead: rooms contracted, held, confirmed and free, by hotel, night and room type. If you need more than one file to know that, you know it too late.
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Contracted | Rooms in the hotel contract for that night | The baseline for everything below |
| Held | Rooms held for a quote not yet confirmed | Chase confirmation before the release date |
| Confirmed | Rooms for confirmed bookings | Turn them into a rooming list |
| Free | Contracted minus held and confirmed | Sell it or release it before the deadline |
Decide before the deadline, not after
Set reminders well before each release date, and decide early: offer the rooms to your agents, move groups between hotels, or let the rooms go.
- Offer free rooms first to the agents who book most
- Combine small groups to fill quad rooms
- Record each decision against the contract itself
A weekly routine before release dates
Once a week, and twice at peak, go through the blocks whose release dates are coming up, in this order:
- Pull every block whose release date falls in the next two weeks
- For each: how many rooms are free, and how many holds await confirmation
- Offer the free rooms to the agents who book most in that period
- Decide well before the deadline: sell, move or release
- Record the decision on the block itself, so everyone knows what was decided
One source for every allotment
Every hold and every confirmed booking should come off the same allotment. When the allotment lives in a spreadsheet and two people sell from it at once, the same room gets sold twice.
How Umrah Link helps
Room blocks are recorded on your hotel contracts with their room types and rates, every hold and booking comes off that night’s allotment, and you see each block’s health before its rooms are due back. You can also ask the copilot which rooms are free on a given night; it answers from the allotments themselves and cites its source.
Common questions
What’s the difference between an allotment and a confirmed booking?
An allotment is rooms contracted with the hotel for set nights; a confirmed booking is what you’ve actually sold from it. The gap between them is what you must decide about before the release date.
What happens if a release date passes?
It depends on your contract’s terms: you may pay for unused rooms, or lose the right to hand them back. Read the release clause in every contract and record its dates.
Can we move a group between hotels to fill an allotment?
If the package and the contract allow it. Move before the release date, and update the rooming list and the transport.
