Split-Leg bookings may occur when NightsBridge has availability across two or more rooms, within the same room type. This best way to maximise the availability of a room type, allowing you to accommodate and accept more bookings - improving both your occupancy and revenue.
Based on the calendar below:
- A potential guest searches availability at your property for arrival, 08 June and departure, 11 June.
Although you don't have availability for 3 consecutive nights across one physical room - rooms 7, 8 and 9 in this example - you do have availability across the room type, Deluxe King Room with Mountain View.
- NightsBridge will note that you have the availability on your booking engine and accept the booking.
In the imaged calendar example, the availability noted is highlighted in yellow blocks on the calendar - the availability crosses three rooms within the same room type.
Along with the standard booking confirmation email, you will receive an email informing you of the split-leg booking.
This email will mention that:
- you have received a multi-day booking, and that
- it couldn't be entered into your system properly
The email will also confirm that you have the availability within the specific, only spread across more than one room.
Here is an example of the email sent to the property for each split-leg booking.
On PCBridge (the software version of NightsBridge), a split-leg booking displays as a double booking.
You are still able to 'shuffle' (or reallocate rooms to) your existing arrival bookings in order to allocate a room to the split-leg booking.
When accessing you calendar, a pop-up message will alert you to the double booking that needs correction - in this case it is a split-leg booking.
If you're currently on your calendar when synchronising, you will receive a new booking alert.
If you've close the pop-up and need to review it again, this can be found in the 'Double Bookings' section of the 'Tools' tab.
- Click 'Tools' at the top of your calendar.
- Select 'Double Bookings'.
- Double-click to the respective booking to move it to another room of the same type.
When accessing the Recent Bookings tab via Quick View, split-leg bookings are easily identified by the pink banner.
How to handle a split-leg booking
1. Reallocate arrivals
What we want to achieve is to have the 3 nights of availability, highlighted in yellow, across one physical room.
- Access your calendar and synchronise.
You will be notified that notified that the booking was added to your calendar.
The split-let booking will be allocated to the first available physical room, within the booked room type.
In the pictured example, the split-leg booking for Fernandez (Fer) is allocated to Room 7.
We can shuffle and temporarily reallocate some of the arrival bookings to assign a room to the split-leg booking.
In the pictured example, to allocate a room to the split-leg booking, we could:
- temporarily allocate the booking for Gabriel (Gab) to Room 10
- allocate the booking for Innes (Inn) to Room 9
- allocate the booking for Hanson (Han) to Room 8
- the split-leg booking for Fernandez (Fer) can now be allocated to Room 7 for the duration of their stay
- the booking for Gabriel (Gab) can now be allocated to Room 7
All the arrival bookings are now allocated to a room of the appropriate room type and there are no nights of lost availability.
2. Synchronise
Synchronise NightsBridge once you have made the required changes.
Confirmation
Revisit the double-booking notification.
Initially, the split-leg booking was identified as a double booking
Now, when reviewing the double-bookings, none are noted as this has been resolved.
This option will require the guest to change rooms during their stay.
To help manage the guests expectation, we recommend that you contact the guest to advise them that they will need to move to a different room during the stay.
- Here is an example of a typical message:
During your stay, for your last 2 nights, we will need to move you to a different room. Our apologies!
We will assist with moving you on the day and limit the inconvenience as best we can.
We felt it important to let you know ahead of time.
- Guests usually have no issue with moving rooms if you're able to do the physical moving as well.
- It is important that the guest knows about the move before arrival though.
To accomplish this, you would need to change the nights booked on the original room to the number of nights available, once done, you would manually book the other room(s) for the same guest so all rooms can be on one invoice.
We're here to help!
If you need any additional guidance on the topic, please contact NightsBridge Support.
Don't want split-leg bookings?
Please note that we do not recommend restructuring your NightsBridge Setup to avoid split-leg bookings. This will defeat the designed benefit of maximum availability to maximise revenue. A restructure will also require additional changes to all your connected channels. In addition, most booking channels will not accept multiple rooms with the same room type name as this will cause guests confusion - and confusion leads to less confirmed bookings.
Best Practice:
Cleaning the grid
Referred to as "cleaning the grid", this practice is simply:
- reviewing the arrivals your online calendar and
- moving the room allocations of future bookings around to free up consecutive available nights within the same physical rooms
This is best done according to you booking window - that way you're cleaning up room-specific availability in advance, reducing the occurrence of split-leg bookings.
- Many large properties and brands consider this a common practice and it is often a task assigned to Front Office staff.
That said, if you're certain that split-leg bookings are not for you, reach out to NightsBridge Support for guidance with your options.