Online Learning

Hospitality Leadership Through Learning

Overbooking Practices in Hotel Revenue Management

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Course Cost US$769
Hours to Complete Course: 6

This course is part of an Online Certificate.

Course Focus

Businesses that accept reservations must cope with the problem of no-shows - customers who make a reservation but fail to honor it. Hotels can protect themselves from the revenue-losing no-shows and generate increased revenue by overbooking. This course teaches you how to strategically overbook and how to manage issues associated with overbooking, as well as how to evaluate groups and determine which rates to charge.

This course explores the components of a successful overbooking strategy including no-show forecasting, no-show rates, arrival uncertainty, pricing policies, and cancellation forecasts. It explores the risks of overbooking and presents strategies to minimize costs and mitigate customer impact.

To fully realize your property’s revenue potential, you must be able to manage group reservations. This course teaches you how to create a group forecast and explores yieldable and non-yieldable business and incremental group costs and revenue opportunities. It introduces models to calculate displacement costs and contribution margins to determine which groups are most profitable.

Participants use Microsoft Excel to practice overbooking and group-management techniques.

Who Should Take this Course?

This course is designed for hospitality managers, general managers, revenue managers, and other hospitality professionals responsible for the financial performance of their organization.

Key Benefits

After completing this course, you will be able to--

Develop an overbooking approach
Manage issues associated with overbooking
Evaluate groups
Determine appropriate group rates

Course Topics:

Module 1 - Overbooking Practices
1. The Problem of No-Shows
2. Forecasting No-Shows
3. Developing an Overbooking Policy
Module 2 - Group Management
1. Group Management Decisions
2. Calculating Group Rates
3. Group Forecasting

Faculty

Sheryl Kimes, Professor, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University

Levels

Course Format:

Our online courses take a problem-based approach to learning, and we build each course around realistic case studies and scenarios. All courses are self-paced, and are managed by an online instructor who leads the online discussions and is available to answer any questions about the course content. You will have a 2-week instructional period at the beginning of the course within which you will complete the required elements of the course. You will have access to the course content for an additional six weeks following the instructional period.

Completion of this course qualifies for .6 Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Please choose from the following course start dates: