Dynamic room substitution explained
Dynamic Room Substitution (DRS) provides hotels with the ability to set revenue management rules in the booking engine which will then intelligently substitute rooms to facilitate long-stay bookings.
Rules are built that would check if another similar type rooms are available that can be substituted to allow the booking.
This feature increases the hotel's availability for multi-night stays, without causing an overbooking scenario, and ensures the most competitive price for the customer.
You can set specific controls for different LOS and allow certain substitutions to only happen for certain rooms.
Key features of DRS
Secondary room must have availability to be used.
At no stage does the customer know about the substituted room.
Hotel is notified when DRS is used.
Primary room price is always used, no matter which room is being substituted in.
Multiple substituted rooms may be used.
1 DRS rule per room per LOS.
Highest matching LOS rule used.
Limits by LOS supported.
Secondary room restrictions do not apply.
Set up dynamic room substitution
Click booking engine in the top navigation.
Hover over manage rooms.
Click room substitution.
To create rules select the require LOS from the drop down. The LOS value of the customers search that this substitution rule will apply for.
Select the primary room for this rule you want to allow substitutions on, e.g. if you have no availability in a single room, but want to substitute from a double room that is available, you would select the single room as your primary room you want to allow substitution on.
Click + add rule.
Click into the room substitution box.
Select one or more rooms you want your primary room to pull availability from.
Enter a max number of nights to restrict the substitution. If nothing is entered it will pull inventory from another room for the number of nights the guest has searched for.
If there are particular dates you don't want room substitutions to take place for a particular DRS rule, you can click the exclusions calendar on the right hand side of each rule and select dates you wish it not to apply for.
Click apply.
Optionally specify that room substitutions will never happen on any dates greater than a minimum leadin period. This maximum leadin applies for all rules this is a global restriction.
If any day of stay for a given checkin + LOS query falls outside the maximum leadin specified, then the entire rule is ignored. This is also the case for global date restrictions where applicable.
If there are certain dates you don't want available to any DRS rules, then click the manage exclusions tab under global exclusions and select the dates you would like to have exclusions.
Click apply.
If there are particular rates you only want DRS to work on or if there are particular rates you want to exclude DRS on, you can set that up by clicking the rate control tab at the bottom of the page.
If you want DRS to work on the majority of your rates and not apply to some, then you should select the disable dynamic room substitution for all selected rates option. Then tick the box beside each rate you do not want to apply DRS on.
Alternatively, if you want DRS to only work on a small few of your rates, then you should select the enable dynamic room substitution for all selected rates. Then tick the box beside each rate you want to apply DRS on.
If you want to apply DRS to all rates, just select the disable dynamic room substitution for all selected rates option and ensure no rate boxes are ticked.
Click the rates you would like to include or exclude.
Click save changes.
Dynamic room substitution in use
To check if a Room has been substituted on a reservation follow the steps below:
Click booking engine in the top navigation.
Click room reservation reports.
Enter reference or last name of the reservation or select a date range.
Click more options.
Tick the button named inventory.
Click search reservation.
Search down through the results until you see a yellow warning triangle under the Inv column.
Click on any yellow warning triangle and it will bring you into the reservation with details of the DRS.
Pause dynamic room substitution
If you have dynamic room substitution (DRS) set up but do not want it available on specific rates, then please follow the below steps:
Click booking engine along the top navigation.
Hover over manage rooms.
Click room substitution.
Under the rate control, select the rates you want the DRS to be disabled on.
Click save changes.
Dynamic room substitution (DRS) and Siteminder integration
If you take an example of a Dynamic Room Substitution (DRS) rule you may have where if a single room isn’t available, then inventory from a double room is allowed to be substituted in.
If someone then makes a single room booking for 2 nights, where a single room isn’t available on one of those nights and is then subsequently substituted by a double room, so as to ensure the booker can book a single room for 2 nights. SHR BE will then send Siteminder a message to say that 2 nights for the single room were booked. Siteminder would then send SHR BE a message to reduce the inventory on the single room for each of those nights booked. Because one of the single room nights already had 0 inventory, so this will stay the same.
On the confirmation email from SHR BE for that booking (and in the reservation details screen on SHR BE), there will be a comment stating which rooms were dynamically substituted on that booking'
If you wish, you could manually reduce the inventory for the double room on the night the substitution is happening either by going into your PMS (if connected to Siteminder) or going into Siteminder and updating. That update will then automatically sync across to SHR BE.
Getting a booking on a room that isn't available
This is likely due to dynamic room substitution taking place.
DRS rules will not override restrictions sent by the channel manager or PMS.
Note: If Dynamic Room Substitution isn't the reason why you got a room booking when it should have been unavailable, the please email [email protected] with details of the reservation and why you feel it shouldn't have sold. The support team will then investigate this further.