🔐 Required Role Permissions: Products, Update Availability
In this article, you will learn how to create a new allocation and how to override availability for allocations.
Additionally, consider the following when setting up allocations:
What are you going to achieve with this setup?
Do your tickets have 2 or more PAX? Consider how that might impact allocations and subsequent bookings of your product.
Test your setup thoroughly before going live. If you have any questions, please reach out to our support specialists or your Ventrata account manager.
Prerequisites:
You have resellers, optionally reseller bands, created in the Ventrata dashboard.
📒 NOTE
Allocations can be used with products whose capacity is determined by assigned resources or resource groups. An allocation limits how much of the available capacity the selected sources, resellers, or reseller bands can sell. It does not increase the capacity provided by the assigned resources.
Select a Product
In your Ventrata dashboard, go to Products > Products.
Products
Select an existing product.
Create a New Allocation
On the product page, go to the Allocations tab.
Allocation
Press the + NEW ALLOCATION button.
New Allocation
Enter an allocation name.
Allocation Name
Deselect any sources through which the allocation should not be able to sell your product.
Sources
Deselect booking types the allocation cannot sell.
Booking Types
Reserve availability of package products for the allocation.
Packages
📗 TIP
Products included in a packages are automatically added to the 'Packages' field.
Select the ‘Direct Sale’ checkbox to create an allocation for sales made directly through your own channels.
Select the 'Indirect Sale' checkbox to create an allocation for sales made through third-party channels. 'Indirect Sale' is enabled by default.
Direct and Indirect Sale
📗 TIP
Select both 'Direct Sale' and 'Indirect Sale' to apply the same allocation settings to both scenarios without duplicating configurations.
Allow or disallow bands or specific resellers in this allocation.
Allow/Disallow Bands & Resellers
📗 TIP
Group resellers that share inventory in one allocation.
📗 TIP
Enter an advance and/or release notice (optional).
Advance Notice & Release Notice
📗 TIP
Advance notice applies the allocation cap on product availability for a limited amount of time. You can set the advance notice in hours, days or weeks. For example, if you set 2 days, the reseller can sell the allocated number of spots from now for the next 2 days. After the 2 days elapse, the reseller has access to the full capacity.
📗 TIP
Release notice releases the available inventory for sale to everyone else. This is especially useful with exclusive allocations, see the 'Exclusive' setting below. In other words, the allocation limit is lifted within the release notice period. You can set the release notice in minutes, hours or days. For example, if you set 4 hours and there are extra spots left for the tour date, other resellers gain access to the remaining spots and can sell them in those 4 hours.
📒 NOTE
Setting the release notice to 0 means the allocation is never released to full capacity. Resellers can sell only at the capacity configured on their allocation.
Tick the ‘Exclusive’ checkbox to reserve a guaranteed number of tickets for the allocation.
Tick the ‘Uncapped’ checkbox to allow an exclusive allocation to sell from the remaining capacity pool after they have sold out their allocated spots.
Exclusive & Uncapped
📗 TIP
To illustrate exclusive allocations, consider the following example: the parent capacity on the product level is set to 100. A reseller has an exclusive deal for 56 tickets, so an allocation for the reseller is created with 56 tickets and the allocation is flagged as ‘Exclusive’. The overall capacity on all sources now shows 44 instead of 100. If ‘Uncapped’ is also enabled, the reseller also has access to the remaining 44 spots in the capacity pool.
When capacity is determined by resources, an exclusive allocation reserves capacity from the availability provided by those resources.
Tick the ‘Percentage’ checkbox to allocate capacity in percentages (%) or keep the box unchecked to use exact numbers.
Percentage
Enter allocation capacity.
Check the 'Open' box to have the channel use allocation capacity. If unchecked, the channel will use source capacity.
Capacity
Press the Create Allocation button.
Create Allocation
Repeat these steps for each allocation.
📘 EXAMPLE
Use the 'Capacity' field and 'Open' checkbox to control where availability is drawn from.
Overall product capacity: 100
Source (Concierge) capacity: 80
Allocation capacity: 24
For products using resources, resource availability is also taken into account. The effective availability cannot exceed the capacity currently available from the assigned resources.
General Availability
(expand the sections below to view image examples)
1. 'Open' is checked
The channel uses the allocation capacity as its sales limit. In this example, the reseller can sell up to 24 tickets, provided sufficient underlying product or resource capacity remains.
The channel uses the allocation capacity as its sales limit. In this example, the reseller can sell up to 24 tickets, provided sufficient underlying product or resource capacity remains.
Allocation Settings
Concierge Portal View
Notice that in the Concierge Portal, the agent can see the allocated capacity (24 remaining) and the source capacity (0/80).
2. 'Open' is unchecked
The channel draws from the source capacity (80). The allocation is ignored, and the reseller sells from the standard pool.
The channel draws from the source capacity (80). The allocation is ignored, and the reseller sells from the standard pool.
Allocation Settings
Concierge Portal View
3. Closing an allocation
To fully close an allocation, keep 'Open' checked and set 'Capacity' to 0. The reseller cannot sell any tickets through this allocation.
To fully close an allocation, keep 'Open' checked and set 'Capacity' to 0. The reseller cannot sell any tickets through this allocation.
Allocations Settings
Concierge Portal View
Override Availability
On the Allocations tab, press the AVAILABILITY button.
Availability
You can choose to override availability using any of the available modifiers (tour, tour group, source, etc.).
Override Availability
Enter the new allocation capacity.
Press the Save button.
Update Availability