What is shared inventory:
It is a common practice in the hospitality industry that maximises occupancy and revenue by selling the same physical space in multiple ways. For example:
- A villa can be offered as a single unit or as individual rooms.
- Two adjoining double rooms can be sold separately or combined as a family suite.
- In a hostel, a private room can be sold as one unit or as individual beds.
This flexibility allows properties to reach different types of guests and optimise bookings across various configurations.
Risks of Using Shared Inventory:
While shared inventory can increase revenue, it also carries a significant risk of overbooking. Since the same space is listed in multiple configurations on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), the channel manager has limited control over how these units appear and are booked on OTA public pages.
As a result, there is a possibility that guests may book the same space both as individual units and as a single unit simultaneously. This overlap increases the chance of overbooking, as the system cannot always prevent these double bookings across multiple formats.
With SabeeApp’s Shared Inventory functionality, the following reservations can be managed:
- Manually registered reservations
- Reservations made via the IBE (Internet Booking Engine)
- Reservations received through the Connect API
- Availability synchronization for Booking.com and Expedia*(In version 1, this feature covers only these two channels, with plans to include more in version 2)*
Step-by-Step Guide for Setting Up Virtual Rooms with Shared Inventory
1. Reach out to your account manager to enable this feature in your account.
2. Define your connecting rooms, which will share the same inventory.
For example: Imagine you have two adjoining double rooms. These rooms can either be sold separately or combined to form a family suite. To set this up:
- Create the two adjoining double rooms as physical rooms.
- Create the family suite as a virtual room.
In both cases (physical and virtual), you need to first create them as room types. Once the room types are set up, assign the specific rooms to their corresponding room types.
3. Create a Virtual Room Type
Just like setting up any physical room, the first step is to create a room type. This is what we are doing in case of virtual rooms as well, first we create the Virtual Room Type, then the Virtual Room.
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Go to:
Settings>Room Types -
Action: Click Add New and activate the "Virtual Room" toggle.
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Set up the virtual room type: This process is similar to setting up a standard room type, with one key difference:
- The "Remove from occupancy" toggle is automatically activated and locked for virtual rooms.
- Purpose: This ensures that virtual rooms are excluded from occupancy statistics. Since virtual rooms are not actual physical units, they do not impact occupancy metrics.
- Tooltip Information: Hover over the “info” icon next to this toggle to see a tooltip explaining that virtual rooms are removed from occupancy statistics.
- Once created, a green checkmark will display in the Shared Inventory column, indicating it is a virtual room type.
- Deleting Virtual Room Types: If no reservations are allocated to a virtual room type, it can be deleted just like physical rooms. If reservations exist, a warning message will appear with the necessary steps.
4. Create Virtual Rooms Within the Virtual Room Type
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Go to:
Settings>My Rooms -
Action: Click the Add New Virtual Room button to create virtual rooms associated with the virtual room type.
- Virtual rooms determine the availability of the linked or “connecting” room types. For properties with multiple identical connecting units, create multiple virtual rooms and link them to the same virtual room type.
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Room Type Association: Only virtual room types can be selected when creating a virtual room. Physical room types are not allowed.
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Exclude from Published Inventories: This toggle is automatically set to “off” and cannot be modified.
- Purpose: To prevent availability from dropping to zero for connecting units. The number of virtual rooms sets the number of available connecting units.
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Shared Inventory Settings: At the bottom of the virtual room form, a new section called Shared Inventory Settings will appear.
- Here, you can link each virtual room to specific physical rooms with an Active status.
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Bed Options and Available Units: These sections will appear for virtual rooms just as they do for physical rooms, allowing you to specify bed configurations and availability.
5. Set Up Prices for the Virtual Room Type
After creating your virtual room types and virtual rooms, the next step is to set their prices. Keep in mind that virtual room types can have different pricing for your booking engine and OTAs, just like any other room types.
Follow these steps to add prices:
- Go to:
Prices>Rate Plans - Locate the relevant rate plan and click on it.
- Add prices for the new virtual room type using the Price Wizard, just as you would for any other room type.
- For detailed instructions on adding prices, please refer to this guide.
Important Rules for Virtual Room Setup
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Unlimited Virtual Rooms per Type: You can create and link multiple virtual rooms to a single virtual room type.
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Multiple Physical Rooms per Virtual Room: You can link multiple physical rooms to one virtual room, even if these physical rooms belong to different room types. However, each physical room can only be linked to one virtual room at a time.
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Restrictions on Adding Virtual Rooms:
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If only one unlinked physical room remains, or if no active physical rooms are available, the “Add New Virtual Room” button will be disabled. This prevents setups that cannot be finalised.
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If you add only one physical room to the Shared Inventory section, a warning message will appear. This is because the Shared Inventory setting is intended for connecting rooms (e.g., two rooms combined into one) or for scenarios like hostels, where multiple beds are linked to a private bedroom.
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Shared Inventory Indicators: In both the Room Type list and the My Rooms list, rooms linked in a shared inventory setup will display a green checkmark in the Shared Inventory column:
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No Available Physical Rooms: If all physical rooms are already linked to virtual rooms, the “Add New Virtual Room” button will be inactive. Hovering over the button will display a tooltip explaining why it is disabled:
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Duplicate and Delete Functions: Virtual rooms cannot be duplicated. However, you can delete virtual rooms in the same way as physical rooms.
How to Connect Shared Inventory Rooms to OTAs (Booking.com and Expedia)
Let’s use the same example as before:
Imagine you have two adjoining double rooms that can either be sold separately or combined to form a family suite. In SabeeApp, you’ve set these up as follows:
- The two double rooms are created as physical rooms.
- The family suite is created as a virtual room.
Both the physical and virtual rooms were first created as room types, and then individual rooms were assigned to their respective room types.
Steps to Connect:
- Set up the double rooms on Booking.com.
- Set up the family suite on Booking.com.
- Map the rooms in SabeeApp:
- Go to Distribution > Channel Manager > Booking.com.
- Map the rooms under the Room Type Management section.
- Be sure to link the virtual family suite room type in SabeeApp to the corresponding family suite room type on Booking.com. (For detailed mapping instructions, refer to this guide.)
- For Expedia:
- Room mapping is handled by your account manager.
- Inform them of the corresponding physical rooms on Expedia for your virtual family suite in SabeeApp.
Shared Inventory in the Calendar View:
In the Calendar view, virtual room types and virtual rooms are always displayed. An icon next to their names indicates they are part of a connecting unit:
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Hover over the icon to see details:
- For a virtual room type: The names of its connected virtual rooms appear in a tooltip.
- For a virtual room: The names of its attached physical rooms appear in the tooltip.
Virtual room type:
Virtual room:
Connecting Blocks
To manage availability effectively, Connecting Blocks are generated whenever a reservation is made for a virtual unit or one of its associated physical units. These blocks:
- Are colored yellow to visually distinguish them from other calendar items.
- Link the virtual and physical rooms, blocking the availability of the other room.
Cursor Hover Highlights
- Hovering over a block in a virtual unit highlights its corresponding “parent” reservation in the physical room.
- Similarly, hovering over a physical room reservation highlights its associated blocks in the virtual unit.
Occupancy Chart Behaviour
Virtual room types displayed in the calendar are excluded from occupancy calculations. They will not appear in the “Available” or “Booked” sections of the occupancy chart.
Shared Inventory on the Dashboard
In the Dashboard tables (e.g., Arrival, Departure, Onboard, New Reservations, etc.), only actual physical reservationsare displayed.
This means that if a virtual room type has a corresponding physical reservation (not just a connecting block), the physical reservation will appear in the relevant table on the Dashboard.
Summary of Steps to Set Up Shared Inventory for Connecting Rooms
- Enable the Shared Inventory Feature
- Contact your account manager to activate this feature.
- Define and Create the Virtual Room Type
- Set up the virtual room type that represents the combined room configuration.
- Create the Virtual Rooms
- Add the specific virtual rooms under the virtual room type.
- Set Prices for the Virtual Room Types
- Configure the Rooms on OTAs
- Set up the connecting rooms (family suite) on the OTAs.
- Map the physical room type to their corresponding room types (double room to double room) and the virtual room type (Family suite) to its matching room type on the OTA.
For more information about how shared inventory works check out this help article.