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No-show and overbooking calculator

How many extra bookings to accept so no-shows and late cancellations don't leave capacity empty, with the cost of getting it wrong.

Hospitality · OptimisationLive

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What it does

Every business that takes reservations loses money to people who don’t turn up. Accepting a few extra bookings recovers it, but too many means turning people away. The calculator finds the number that balances the two using your no-show rate and your costs.

Who can use it

  • Revenue managers
  • Restaurant and clinic schedulers
  • Anyone who takes reservations and sees no-shows

Where it fits

  • Hotel rooms
  • Restaurant reservations
  • Clinic and salon appointments
  • Tours and transport seats

How to use it

  1. Enter capacity and bookings for the date
  2. Enter your usual no-show and late-cancel rate
  3. Enter the value of a sale and the cost of turning someone away
  4. Read the suggested number of extra bookings and the expected cost

Limitations

  • It treats no-shows as random, so a large group cancelling together isn't covered
  • The no-show rate is yours to supply until it can read your history

What's next

  • Learn no-show rates by day and booking channel from history
  • A version for appointments with time slots

Run it on your own data

  1. In the browser (today)Free, no sign-up. What you enter stays on your device. Good for trying it and for small teams.
  2. On your files or databasePoint the same logic at your exports or a database view (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Azure SQL or DuckDB), on your own machine or network.
  3. As a pipeline and warehouseA scheduled ETL job pulls from your systems (reservations, point of sale, inventory, payroll) into a star-schema warehouse, runs data-quality checks, and the tool or a Power BI report reads the result every morning.

What that adds here

  • Calculate no-show rates from your own booking records instead of a typed number
  • Recalculate the safe overbooking level each day for every date ahead

How I'd set it up for you

I'd map your exports or database to the tool's model, package the job in a container that runs on your server or cloud account, add the checks your data needs, and hand over the code and a runbook. Your data stays on your systems. Get in touch if you'd like it fitted to your business.

Updates

No logged updates yet. Changes to this tool will appear here and in the activity log.