Booking.com's Smart Flex programme (formerly Risk Free Reservations) is a free to use tool created by Booking.com to help properties increase revenue and occupancy. However this tool can cause serious problems: it is causing overbooking if you have multiple sources of reservations such as other OTAs or Internet Booking Engine. Let's see how it works and why it is risky.
What is the Smart Flex Programme?
Smart Flex Reservations Programme enables accommodation providers to get bookings that they otherwise wouldn’t get, by offering extra flexibility in the cancellation policy to customers on Booking.com's behalf. If a booking gets cancelled, Booking.com reserves the right to resell the same period and room for a new guest right away. In case they find a replacement, they get the room booked for the property. In case there is no replacement, they pay the cancellation costs for the property.
Most properties are automatically enrolled in this programme unless they are part of a hotel chain or from the following countries: French Guiana, Mayotte, France, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Pierre, Miquelon and Reunion.
It is possible to opt-out from the RF programme through the Booking.com extranet - Opportunities - Risk-Free Reservations Programme menu. If you cannot access this page or cannot opt-out from the programme please contact your Booking.com account manager or Booking.com local support team.
Please keep in mind that Booking.com automatically opts your property in after 3 months after you opted-out from the RF Programme unless you select to indefinitely opt out from it.
How can I see from SabeeApp that a reservation is part of the RF programme?
If a reservation has been included in the Smart Flex Reservation programme, then Booking.com will send this information to SabeeApp and we wil show it for you in the detailed reservation page's reservation details section. We will show a black RF tag which stands for Smart Flex. Just like this one:
If a reservation has arrived as a replacement of a risk free reservation we will also add the RFR tag for it. This stands for Risk Free Replacement:
In case the RF replacement reservation can still be replaced again, then the RF tag is kept and appearing like this. This means that the replacement guest can still cancel the reservation and Booking.com can find another instead:
You can also check out the reservation's change log and comments where you can find the detailed description of Booking.com about the relevant policy and payment information from Booking.com.
Why the RF reservations can cause you overbooking?
Smart flex reservations are great in case your only source of reservations is Booking.com. The problem comes when you have multiple OTAs and/or Internet Booking Engine sending reservations directly to your PMS.
If a reservation which is part of the RF programme gets cancelled, the cancellation is sent by Booking.com to SabeeApp. The reservation gets cancelled and the availability opens up in all connected sales channels. In the meantime Booking.com is actively looking for replacement guests for that room. If there is reservation added from other source (manually added, other OTA or IBE reservation) then the room gets booked and the availability is updated accordingly to all sales channels including Booking.com.
However Booking.com still keeps the right to sell the room for you, no matter what is the availability. After finding a replacement guest they automatically send it to the PMS and if there is no free space for the reservation in the connected room type it will result in an overbooking.
How to avoid such overbooking?
First of all we recommend you to opt-out from the Smart flex reservation programme immediately after the channel manager connection is established with SabeeApp.
It is also recommended to keep monitoring every month if you have been opted-in again to the programme automatically and opt-out if yes.
We also recommend to keep an eye on the auto replenishment on closed rooms tool which is quite similar to the smart flex programme and can cause you similar problems.
If you would like to learn more, please visit the Booking.com help pages:
FAQ about the Smart Flex Programme