How does Automatic Room Allocation work?

If users enable the 'Allocate Rooms Automatically' option on the Administration > Property page, Hop will use an algorithm to automatically allocate available rooms to reservations.

The algorithm runs in the background, dynamically reallocating rooms to achieve best usage. It uses the previous six months of occupancy to determine which rooms have been used the least and will then try to allocate those ones first. This should prevent the same rooms from being used again and again and degrading at a faster rate than other rooms.
   

The allocation process runs intermittently in the background as new reservations are added, so you may find there are a few minutes between a reservation being made and a room being allocated. There are also a few scenarios where the algorithm will not be able to allocate a room:

1. When a reservation is made on the same day as arrival. This is to avoid housekeeping and logistical issues caused by allocated rooms changing right up until check-in.
2. When rooms are 'locked'. If a user has 'locked' the room for a reservation, the algorithm will not change it. This can sometimes create scenarios where the other rooms cannot be organised in a way to satisfy occupancy and manual intervention is needed.
3. Complex arrival/departure scenarios. On very rare occasions, the sequence of arrivals and departures for a given number of reservations may yield a scenario where the algorithm is not intelligent enough to organise the rooms to satisfy occupancy. On these seldom occasions, rooms may need to be allocated manually using the Room Schedule view.
4. If you have ticked 'Disable Auto Allocation on Day Of Arrival' on the Administration > Property page then the algorithm will turn itself off the day prior to check-in on your reservations.