http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2006/12/19/a-brilliant-idea-pre-select-a-specific-hotel-room/ Living the first class life -- at coach prices Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:21:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2006/12/19/a-brilliant-idea-pre-select-a-specific-hotel-room/#comment-522 Oliver Tue, 26 Dec 2006 15:29:30 +0000 http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2006/12/19/a-brilliant-idea-pre-select-a-specific-hotel-room/#comment-522 What took them so long? Well, it's not clear that it's quite as easy to implement as airplane seat reservations. Consider the following simplified example of a Hilton with just two rooms. For a given week, I reserve room 1 on Wednesday. Another traveller comes along and reserves room 2 for Tuesday. Now traveller 3 comes along and wants to book the hotel for a week. Ooops, sorry. No space. Today, hotels have the flexibility to assign people to "random" rooms to make room utilization more efficient. If people are allowed to pick a particular room, this won't work anymore. What took them so long? Well, it’s not clear that it’s quite as easy to implement as airplane seat reservations. Consider the following simplified example of a Hilton with just two rooms. For a given week, I reserve room 1 on Wednesday. Another traveller comes along and reserves room 2 for Tuesday. Now traveller 3 comes along and wants to book the hotel for a week. Ooops, sorry. No space. Today, hotels have the flexibility to assign people to “random” rooms to make room utilization more efficient. If people are allowed to pick a particular room, this won’t work anymore.

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