Release Room Block

Rooms in a Group Block are not available for booking outside the Block. This may limit your ability to sell rooms to Guests, and leave you with unsold rooms. Releasing Rooms from a Block makes those rooms immediately available for booking outside of the block reservation/stay. It is recommended that any rooms not picked up from a Group Block within a certain time range of the expected Arrival Date (for example, 3 weeks before) are released back into your general availability.

NOTE: Once rooms have been released, they cannot be unreleased.  In order to "bring rooms back" into the Group Block you will need to go into the booking (modify the Group Block), go to the rooms tab and select the number of rooms per night/room type you wish to still have available in the Block.   

 

There are two ways to release rooms: Automatically as a function of the Group Block booking, and Manually at any time you choose.

 

When you Create a Group Block, the Payment screen of the Group Reservations Wizard allows you to automatically release rooms a specific number of days prior to the Arrival Date, using the Days Before Auto-Release option:

Create a Group Block example Payment screen

Days before Auto-Release: This optional field is the number of days before the current Arrival Date of the Group Block reservation that any rooms assigned to the Group Block that have not yet been picked up will be released back into general availability.

This number is determined by you and your Property. By default it is 0. (This means that any unpicked up rooms will be released during Night Audit on the Group’s arrival date).

Enter the number of days prior to the group's arrival date that the rooms should be release. When the date changes through the night audit to the "release date" the system will automatically release any rooms not picked up.  

This option can be changed any time you wish; after a Group Block has been created, you can reach the Payments screen of the Wizard from the Main Folio screen, where you can make changes to the reservation by clicking the Modify Group button from the local toolbar. See Modify a Group Block for more details.

You may also alter the Days before Auto-Release option directly on the Group Main Folio screen.

Group Main Folio screen with Days before Auto release option circled

This field is located in the Reservation Wizard on the Payment screen, AND (once the reservation has been created) in the Accommodations section of the Stay tab of the Main Folio. You can adjust numbers in either location when modifying the Group Block.

 

Note: With a Wholesaler block, this will be a "rolling release", meaning that rooms will be released one day at a time (not the entire block on the release date as with a regular Group Bookings) based on the number of days entered here. The system will “roll” through the booking, releasing one day of the block at a time.

For example, a group is in house on the 7th, 8th, and 9th and through the remainder of a given month, and the number of days out for this Wholesaler block is set to seven.  This means that on the 1st, all the remaining rooms (that have not been picked-up) for the night of the 7th only will be released. On the 2nd, the remaining rooms for the 8th will be released and on the 3rd, the remaining rooms for the 9th will be released. 

This feature is especially helpful for room blocks with many nights.  

 

To manually release rooms, you will use the Group Main Folio screen, where you may release rooms by clicking the Release button in the local Tool Bar.  Any rooms that have not been picked up from the block may then be released.

Release All Un-Picked Up Rooms: This allows you to Release Remaining Group Rooms i.e. RELEASE from the block of rooms in the Group.

Tool Bar detail, Release all un-picked up room button selected

This button, if used, will open a pop up window allowing you to release rooms from the Group block by Date, day, or Room Type, and allow you to choose if you wish to release ALL rooms from the block, or a percentage.

Pop Up window to use to Release Remaining Group Rooms

This means you may choose to release only a portion of your blocked rooms rather than all rooms on a specific Date, and then subsequently release more rooms if still not picked up. By default it is set to release ALL rooms.

 

You may wish at times to use BOTH the automatic and manual options for releasing rooms from a Group Block to ensure you sell the maximum number of rooms, at the best possible rate, at your Property.

 

Once rooms have been released, your Skyware System shows Group Blocks that have been released in the Select Group Search screen in with a RED confirmation number.

Select Group screen with Groups to select from shown, released rooms in red

and the Group Main Folio screen will show **RELEASED** next to the Name.

Group Folio screen showing the word Released next to the name

 

Date Updated November 18, 2020