Room dependencies let you sell one physical room in several layouts with shared inventory, so a booking in one layout closes the others. Set them in Settings > Properties > Rooms > Dependencies.
Typical uses:
- Sell a room as two different room types, for example double and twin.
- Offer a holiday rental as a whole house or rent individual rooms.
- Combine two rooms, for example into a suite, or rent them individually.
- Have a room type on OTAs like Booking.com or Expedia and individual listings on other channels.
- Sell a room as a dorm or as a private room.
- Sell a room only if another room isn't available.
Table of Contents
- What dependencies can do
- Real and virtual rooms
- Dependency settings
- How bookings are assigned
- Prices for linked rooms
- Manual and existing bookings
- Link rooms across properties and accounts
- Examples and use cases
Warning: Test your dependencies thoroughly to make sure the setup reflects your rules. If you connect one physical room more than once to a booking channel, you risk overbookings. This is especially true for channels that let guests book more than one room or unit in one booking.
What dependencies can do
- Make a room's availability depend on another room.
- Include bookings from another room in this room.
- Assign a copy of bookings in this room to another room.
- Link prices from a room to other rooms, with or without a price offset.
- Let a room use the prices of another room instead of its own.
Real and virtual rooms
Most setups use two kinds of rooms:
- Real rooms represent the physical rooms or units. Bookings end up here and block the inventory.
- Virtual rooms are the extra layouts you sell, such as a room type, a suite or a whole house. They take their availability from the real rooms through the dependency settings.
Create both in Settings > Properties > Rooms and set them up in Settings > Properties > Rooms > Setup. Settings the recipes use:
- Name and Quantity for each room.
- Sell Priority = Hide if you don't want to show a room on your booking page (optional).
- Overbooking Protection = Property. If you hide rooms, adjust the overbooking protection; the context help (?) next to the setting explains how.
- Give a virtual room the same characteristics as the real rooms it sells.
Use the context help (?) next to each setting for further setup instructions.
Default dependency settings
A room without dependencies has these values. Where a recipe says "leave all other settings at the defaults", it means these:
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Requires Availability in | Nothing selected |
| Combination Logic | Sum of all bookings |
| Dependency Level | Ignore Sub Dependencies |
| Assign Bookings to | This Room |
| Include Bookings from | Nothing selected |
Dependency settings
| Setting | What it does | Values used in the recipes |
|---|---|---|
| Requires Availability in | The rooms this room takes its availability from. With First Available Dependency Room, the order matters: put the preferred rooms first. | One or more rooms |
| Combination Logic | How the availability of the selected rooms is combined. | Sum of all bookings; All rooms must be available; Any room must be available; 1 (2, 3, 4…) unit(s) must be available; 2 or less units must be available; No Units must be available |
| Dependency Level | Whether the dependencies of the selected rooms are also taken into account. | Ignore Sub Dependencies; Include Sub Dependencies |
| Assign Bookings to | Where a new booking for this room is placed. | This Room; a specific room; First Available Dependency Room |
| Include Bookings from | Shows the bookings of other rooms in this room as shadow copies, which blocks this room. | One or more rooms |
| Assign a Copy Booking to | Creates an independent copy of each booking in another room. | One or more rooms |
| Use Prices and Restrictions From | Uses the prices and restrictions of another room. See Prices for linked rooms. | One room |
How bookings are assigned
Bookings can be assigned to the original room or directly to another room. They can also be assigned to the first available dependency room: in that case, order the dependency rooms with the preferred rooms for bookings at the top. Another option creates the booking with a copy placed in every dependency room.
Booking copies
There are two ways to copy bookings into additional rooms:
- Include Bookings from (generally preferred): doesn't create a new booking. It shows a shadow copy of the booking in the additional room that keeps any changes to the original booking. In a virtual room, you can use it to see the bookings of the real rooms. The unit allocation within the units of the virtual room doesn't work in this case.
- Assign a Copy Booking to: creates a new booking in the room with the values from the original booking. Once created, it's an independent booking: changes to the original booking don't apply to the copy, so you need to change all copies manually.
Prices for linked rooms
Real and virtual rooms can have their own prices, or you set prices for one room and share them. There are two options:
- Link prices: both Daily Prices and Fixed Prices can be linked across rooms.
-
Use Prices and Restrictions From another room, in Settings > Properties > Rooms > Dependencies. These values from the other room apply:
- Daily Prices
- Fixed Prices
- Price Multipliers (including those set by the Yield Optimiser)
- All restrictions set in the Calendar
- A minimum stay or maximum stay set in Settings > Properties > Rooms > Setup. Values in Daily Prices, Fixed Prices or the Calendar override it.
Note: If you use Use Prices and Restrictions From, you can't map channel rate IDs directly in the daily prices or rates.
Note: Don't use Use Prices from if you have voucher codes, because it can cause issues with applying the code. See Voucher Codes.
Manual and existing bookings
- If you add a booking manually, add it to the real room, not the virtual room.
- If you already have bookings in a room that you turn into a virtual room, move them to one of the real rooms.
- Occasionally a booking for a virtual room can't be assigned automatically, for example because a two-night booking would need a room change or other bookings would need to be reassigned. The booking then stays in the virtual room and you need to reassign it manually to block the real rooms.
Link rooms across properties and accounts
- Limit the visibility of inter-property and inter-account room linking for a property in Account Management > Manage Account > Manage Property > Room Linking. Open Account Management with the User icon at the top right (in the old control panel: Sub Account at the top right).
- If Room Linking is Property Only, rooms in other properties aren't visible to this property.
- If it allows linking to properties in other accounts, the rooms are available for linking with the rights set in Make Property Available in Multiple Accounts (same menu). That setting defines the visibility of the property in the control panel, inventory (price and availability) and bookings independently.
- Only the account that owns a property can set dependencies. To set dependencies between rooms in different properties, log in to the account that owns the property.
- If you link rooms across accounts, the account that sends a booking to a property in another account needs write access to the property where the booking is placed.
Examples and use cases
| Use case | Recipe |
|---|---|
| You have individual rooms connected to individual listings at a channel (for example Airbnb or Tripadvisor Rentals) and also want to sell them on Booking.com or another channel that needs a room type with a quantity. | Combine individual rooms into a roomtype |
| You have a room type with a quantity of more than one on a channel (for example Booking.com) and want to show each room individually on your booking page. | Combine individual rooms into a roomtype |
| You sell rooms independently, and combined as a suite if both are available. | Combine two rooms to sell as a suite |
| You have two room types and some bookings can go in either type if available. | Bookings can be assigned to more than one room type |
| You rent a house as a whole or as individual rooms or apartments. | Divide a house into separately bookable units |
| You have a dorm that you also offer as a private room. | Sell room as dorm and private room |
| You want to sell dorms on Airbnb. | Dorms on Airbnb |
| You offer a room only if another room is unavailable. | Sell a room only if another room is unavailable |
| You have several rooms of one type but want to limit how many are open for booking and open another one automatically with each booking. | Auto Top up rooms |
| You set up individual properties but also want to show them under one property. | Combine individual properties into one property with multiple rooms |