Though Nitesoft is capable to update availability very fast in 1-2 seconds after change was made in the system. Most modern channel managers and channels require several minutes to do the update. Furthermore most channel managers do not provide feedback when a reservation is made in the channel and restrict minimal time when Nitesoft can ask them whether there are new reservations. Therefore when guest reserve a room in a channel, channel manager gets the reservation in 1-5 minutes after it is made. Nitesoft then gets the reservation 1-5 mins after channel manager got it. Then Nitesoft updates availability and push it to channel manager. This typicall takes 1-2 seconds. Then channel manager distribute the availability between channels. This can take 3-10 mins. After that channel applies the availability which is also could take several minutes. So that in total update cycle can take up to 20 minutes. During this time another guest in another channel may book a room. This can introduce overbooking.
It's up to hotel to choose the strategy to handle the overbooking scenarios. Here are several of them:
1. Hotel makes all rooms available by default and control availability for days with high occupancy manually. In this case Nitesoft by default sends all rooms that are availabile in the hotel. For instance, on April 10, most rooms get occupied hotel sets 0 availability or stop sell restriction of some room categories. Hotel decide which room types it would like to put on hold. It can be the most selling category because it's likely to be on demand by phone or email. Alternatively it can be premium category so that hotel can upgrade room in case of overbooking in the most selling category.
2. Hotel sets availability thresholds to some room categories to avoid overbooking. Here hotel can also choose what are the best categories for it to stop selling. For instance, hotel can set threshold 1 on most selling category. In this case Nitesoft will send 1 room less to channel manager and will send 0 rooms when hotel will have 1 room. So that in case overbooking happen all rooms will be sold out. And if it doesn't hotel will likely to sell this room by phone or email. Alternatively, hotel can set threshold 1 on a premium category. In this case in case overbooking happens in most selling category hotel will be able to upgrade room for one of the guests.
It's up to hotel to decide which strategy to use. To understand this you need to calculate probablility of overbooking for different categories. Probability of getting reservation by phone or hotel. Costs of having overbooking and costs of having room unselled etc. Nitesoft can only provide instruments for you to implement the selected strategy. We can help you in learning how these instruments are used. But we can not make strategic decisions for you.
By default Nitesoft sends all available rooms for every category. You can manually limit number of rooms at 'Units & Rates > BAR Management > Advanced > Availability'. There you also can set availability threshold. This threshold will be deducted from current availability. At 'Units & Rates> Channel Management > ChannelManangerName> State' (e.g. 'Units & Rates> Channel Management > SiteMinder > State') you can see current values that are exported to channels. There you can also forcibly push the values to channel manager.