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Bookings and the calendar

Day use: a room sold for the day, not the night

A guest who arrives in the morning and leaves in the evening and never sleeps in the room. It reserves nothing, holds no room until the desk hands over a key, and the same room can serve two day guests and still take its overnight guest.

Hotels sell the same room twice — once for the night, and once for the day. Until September the system could not even hold such a stay: a booking arriving and leaving on the same date was not merely unpriced, it was unrepresentable. Now it is a product of its own, and it behaves unlike a night in three ways worth knowing before you use it.

It reserves nothing. A day-use booking holds no room and takes nothing off any night's sale. A hotel may take fifty day bookings for a Tuesday; what limits them is rooms coming free during that Tuesday, which is a fact about the morning and not a number anybody can work out in advance.

The room is chosen at the door. Not when the booking is taken, and not by the system — at check-in, by the person at the desk, from the rooms that are actually free at that moment.

It is given back the same day. Check the guest out and the room is free again: for another day guest at three o'clock, and for its overnight guest that evening.

Setting it up

Setup → the hotel → Day use: the window's two times, the two outer bounds, the overstay rate, and the categories a day guest may be put in.
Setup → the hotel → Day use: the window's two times, the two outer bounds, the overstay rate, and the categories a day guest may be put in.
  1. Check-in and check-out time, day use — the window the hotel sells, for example 09:00 to 18:00. It is one day and it does not cross midnight.
  2. Not before and not past — the edges of the product. A room let out before nine in the morning or held past eight in the evening is not a day use any more. The window must sit inside them.
  3. Overstay — what each hour begun past the day-use check-out time costs. Leave it empty and the hotel warns and charges nothing, which is a policy some hotels genuinely have.
  4. A day guest may be put here — tick the categories. This is a housekeeping and suitability decision, not an inventory one: ticking a category reserves nothing and takes nothing off its nightly sale. It is read at one moment only — when the desk looks for a room to put a day guest in. Until at least one is ticked, no day guest can be checked in.

Only an account administrator sets this. The same categories carry a day use tag on the Rooms screen.

The Rooms screen: the categories that may take a day guest carry a tag.
The Rooms screen: the categories that may take a day guest carry a tag.

Taking the booking

The booking form: the same date in and out raises the question, and the window is picked beneath it.
The booking form: the same date in and out raises the question, and the window is picked beneath it.
  1. Set arrival and departure to the same date. That is the only way a day use is asked for — there is no separate switch to forget, and no possibility of one being set by accident, because the same dates are also what a mistyped departure looks like.
  2. So the form asks, once: *is this a day-use room?* Tick it. The answer is what marks the booking; nothing is assumed.
  3. Pick the window if the hotel sells more than one.
  4. Type the price. There is no day-use rate table anywhere — whoever takes the booking types what the guest is paying, and a booking that comes from a channel carries the rate the channel sent. A day-use booking will not be taken without a price.

The booking is made against a category so that the bill, the reports and the channel have something to name — but it holds nothing against it, and the desk may house the guest in any day-use room whatever the booking says.

At the door, and afterwards

Check in as usual and give the guest a room. The rooms offered are the ones free at that moment in a category that takes day guests; a room with tonight's guest still in it is not one of them, and neither is one another day guest currently holds. The room is held from that moment until check-out, and only then.

Check out frees it at once. The same room may be given to another day guest the same afternoon and still take its overnight guest, which is the whole point.

A guest still in the room past the window's check-out time is charged the overstay rate for each hour begun — an hour begun is an hour charged, which is the only rule a receptionist can say out loud at twenty to seven without doing arithmetic. The charge lands on the bill at check-out. Past the hotel's not past time it stops being a day use at all: what the guest has taken is a night, and the stay has to be turned into one.

Check-out itself is never blocked by any of this. A guest standing at the desk with a bag can always leave; the charge is on the bill, and what was decided is on the record.

What it deliberately does not do

More in Bookings and the calendar

Reading the calendarRooms down the side, dates across the top, and four things worth knowing about the colours. Blocking a room from the chartRight-click a room, say why, from which night to which, and who is blocking it. The channel is told; the chart draws it; a booking into it is refused. Making a bookingNew booking, or click an empty square on the chart. What each field is for. Bookings that have no room yetEvery live booking with no room number, from any source, is drawn on the chart and listed beside it — and dragged onto a room. Where the price comes fromThe rate plan sets the price. Who may change it is a separate question with a deliberate answer. Changing the rate on a bookingAnybody at the desk may name the rate until the guest checks out; after that only an administrator, and it is a tax note. An OTA rate is never changed here. Changing a bookingDates, room, guest and rate can all be amended. Some changes are refused, and some can be overridden. Cancelling, and no-showsBoth need a reason from the list, and both leave the record standing. Holding a room, and the guest pay linkA time-boxed hold with a link the guest can pay on. It releases itself if they do not. Putting a stay in another guest's nameOnly an administrator. Any status, before or after check-out. The booking and its bills carry the new guest; the invoice number, the charges and the tax do not move. A room with more people than it sleepsMoving a party of four into a room that sleeps three is allowed: the picker warns, asks once, does it, and records who said yes. Booking the same stay againBook again copies a stay for a returning guest, and tells you what the price would be now. Group bookingsMany rooms under one name, created together and cancellable together. Moving a guest to another roomDrag the bar on the chart, or use Move room. It asks for a reason and refuses for good ones. UpgradesMove a guest up a grade, priced or complimentary, with the reason recorded. Messaging a guestTemplates render the message; a person sends it. Nothing goes out on its own.