Availability blocks improvements - call for feedback

Hello Mews community,

I manage availability blocks regularly, and I’d like to share a few features that would create major time savings and improve functionality for group-heavy properties.

1. Availability block report improvements
It would be extremely valuable to have a visible column showing:

• Number of rooms allocated
• Number of rooms picked up

This should appear both in the report view and in the Excel export. Having this information directly in the report would save a significant amount of time and reduce the need to enter each group availibility bloc to view this data. 

2. Easier handling of booking series / recurring group blocks
A duplicate feature for availability blocks would be very useful.

For example, I may need to create 30+ group blocks at once for the same client, with:

• Same inventory
• Same rates
• Same conditions
• Different dates only

Being able to duplicate an existing block while still allowing date and detail adjustments would save a huge amount of repetitive setup time.

3. Better support for FIT blocks managed through group blocks
I also manage FIT allotments by creating them as group blocks. This is currently the best way I have found to protect inventory while applying rules, release clauses, and contracted conditions.

However, it would be very helpful if invoicing and pickup reporting could function differently for this type of block. Ideally, invoices would be truly consolidated rather than individually grouped reservation by reservation, with a dedicated pickup style for FIT allotments.

This would make availability blocks much more flexible for users who also manage FIT business through contracted room allocations.

These improvements would make a meaningful difference for users managing both group and FIT business.

Thank you :)
 

Hi, we actually are a group heavy accomodation (80% of our bookings are groups), but we don't use the availability blocks. The reason for this: they don't show up on the timeline, untill they are actually picked up. This means that when we receive a booking request, we can't see from the timeline if there actually is room, as the availibitly blocks don't show up there. 

Hello ​@daniel.do 

The survey is taken and I really looking forward to that Mews is looking into this again. This was a “rushed product” at best and there is so much improvement potential here. 

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

I’m very happy to hear that! Before I find the time to complete the survey, I’d like to share important points from our side in advance. Otherwise, I can align myself with the points raised by @Charlene:

1. It is still extremely difficult for our team to identify on which days we have groups in-house due to the lack of visibility in the timeline.
2. Missing updates to the channel manager: This is a known issue at MEWS and costs us time every day for manual updates, and frequently also results in incorrect availability online. Once all rooms in a block have been picked up and the release date has passed, the following happens when changes occur:
   For example, if a room from the group is canceled, it does not return to the block because the release date has already passed – this is expected behavior. The room becomes available again within MEWS, for example for phone sales – also expected behavior. However, no update is triggered for the channel manager – and that is the problem. Due to the number of groups, we currently send manual updates twice daily for the next 365 days.
3. In the “Availability Blocks” report, it is very impractical that the filter is always set to a full year by default. This has to be manually adjusted for every search, otherwise the list becomes unnecessarily long. One month would be completely sufficient.

Kind regards,
Kathi

​@Andreas Behl : JFI

Hi all,

I fully agree with ​@Charlene and ​@Kathi .

Similarly to the FIT, having an allotment feature would be most welcome. We might have an event organizer only providing links to their attendees, not guaranteeing the rooms.
It would be great to have visibility on this potential pick up as well as providing a dedicated weblink, without blocking inventory. 
For such blocks, a different staggered release strategy would be nice: for example, 45 days prior to arrival, 50% release of unpicked rooms on each night of the block, 30 days prior to arrival, another 50%, 10 days prior 100% release.

The availability to overbook the property and/or the room type by adding more rooms to a block should be allowed according to user permission. Right now, it takes a lot of clicks to make it happen, involving 2 different teams.
Similarly, user permission base possibility to overbook a block while picking up rooms would be great.

Have a lovely day!
 

Great news! Looking forward to some improvements.

We have a lot of individuals Groups, with very individial wishes (Corporate events, big Families, etc.). While im not very experienced with Availability blocks, I have a few general points to improve:

1. Group Names in the Timeline/Lists
   There should be a smart and easy way to change the name of a group shown in the timeline and reseservation list. Right now we create a neutral guest Profile with the name of the group. When you click “make owner” of an individual guest in that group, it shows that persons name in the Timeline and Reports. Now its very hard to identify who is part of the group. Its very hard to change it back. 
   The tab “group name” does not actually change anything about the group name shown anywhere. 
   There should be a simple “lable” funktion for this that is not bound to any technical wokflow like invoices or guest profiles. (kinda like in WhatsApp groups)
2. Splitting group reservations
   It’s possible to merge groups via group names. Please make it possible to select a certain amount of rooms/bookings on the right side and add a funktion like “split from current group and create new one”. 

Best,

Mario

Hello,

I have just submitted my responses to the survey.

I’m really hoping that we’ll soon be able to use dynamic rates in blocks that automatically follow price updates from the rate they were copied from, rather than the current setup where the rate is fixed at the time of creation and does not update.

Another point I forgot to mention is that I want to be able to offer selected products as add-ons, but only to specific blocks.

​@Vivien Polauf  schau dir das bitte mal an!

yes finally. the most important to us is definitely that it shows up on the timeline + please think about the integration with MEWS Events!!!

I fully agree with the points raised so far, and I would like to add one more aspect regarding availability blocks.

This relates to the booking link functionality. At the moment, the system requires the block status to be set to “definitive / confirmed” in order to generate a booking link. However, this creates a misleading forecast, as it suggests that all rooms within the block are guaranteed to be picked up.

In reality, we know that with call-in allotments, a portion of the rooms typically remains unused for various reasons. As a result, marking the block as “definitive” overstates the expected occupancy and impacts forecasting accuracy.

It would be beneficial to allow booking link generation without requiring the block to be marked as “definitive,” or alternatively introduce a more flexible status that enables link creation without fully committing the inventory in the forecast.

Hey ​@Charlene, thanks for your feedback! About your points:

1. Availability block report improvements - this is something we’re planning and will be both in the report and also in the exported Excel :) 
2. Easier handling of booking series / recurring group blocks - we know about this issue and it’s on our radar. I can’t promise any timeline here but it’s definitely something we are considering.
3. Better support for FIT blocks managed through group blocks - okay, got it - so basically during the block setup, you’d like to define the billing and set it to have 1 bill for the whole group, right? How often are you setting the FIT blocks and what portion of blocks is it in your property?

Blocks on the timeline is something we know is an issue for a lot of our customers. We don’t know yet when we’ll take on this challenge as timeline in general needs some improvements before adding blocks to them. Depending on our capacity, we might start gathering feedback about this issue in the next ~5-6 months.

​@Kathi Thank you for your feedback. About your points:

1. As I mentioned before, it’s something we know about but don’t have capacity to solve now but we might start discovery on this in the next 5-6 monhts.
2. Interesting, I didn’t know about this at all. Let me DM you to find out more details.
3. The new report will have search functionalities so finding the block you need should be simpler.

Hey ​@aline.bossard, can you please a bit elaborate on the “The availability to overbook the property and/or the room type by adding more rooms to a block should be allowed according to user permission”?

Adding the functionality to overbook block is something I heard of but it sounds the same to me like the point above. 

Thanks ​@Andreas Behl for the feedback!

The rate handling make sense but do you want to have it linked to the active daily rate at all times? I’m thinking if this won’t cause more issues than benefits. 

We’re in discussion with Event Temple about these changes and are figuring out if there’s anything on their side update once we roll out these improvements :) 

Hey ​@Mario.Z. , thanks for the feedback :) These improvements sound a bit different than the changes we’re making on the blocks. I noted it down and will keep an eye on them to see if it’s a problem for more properties :) 

​@Vivien Polauf Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

I think this might get complicated and I can think already of a lot of questions. I’ll write them here that pop up in my mind:

• How would it work if we have “optional” reservation counted in the block?
• Is the block “confirmed” or is it “optional” as not all reservations are counted for?
• How these “optional” reservations within block get counted into the blocked categories?
• How should they be released or by which time confirmed?
• Should they be counted as “picked up”? 
• If we’ll add forecasted revenue to the blocks, how does that number behave?

I’m not an expert in groups so maybe the answers are easy. I think it might complicate the block management significantly as the whole logic would need to change in our PMS and also with the integration partners.

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for following up.

Imagine you have 10 rooms left available in your hotel, but none in the Standard room type.
You need 2 more in your blocks, because all that were blocked have been picked up. So before trying to pick up more rooms in the block, you need you adjust the block itself by adding more rooms blocked in the room block. 

However, the system won’t let you. You first need to go to the A&O report, adjust that room type available number (sometimes doing math to calculate the correct adjustment to input to get the number of rooms needed), go back to your block to adjust the number of blocked rooms, go back to the A&O report to remove the adjustment at the risk of overbooking the property otherwise.

It is something we had demonstrated to Aldair Borges in Sept-Oct 2025, but I’d be happy to redemonstrate if necessary.

Adding rooms to a block should take seconds, but when you have first to adjust the A&O report, and keeping in mind that we usually adjust in our S&C Tool, giving time to resync...it can take minutes. I spent 15min updating several dates on a block once.

Hope you can make the process smoother with a pop-up informing of the overbooking and a “Add Anyway” button. :)

Hey,

I know the questions weren’t to me, but we’ve longed for an allotment feature since the beginning.

We were used to 2 types of Call-in Allotment: Deducted and Non-Deducted.
An Allotment Deducted would remain on optional status, taking inventory but differentiated from Confirmed and actually on-the-books blocks. We would provide a booking engine link to our customer, and any picked up rooms would automatically be with a Confirmed status, while the rest of the unpicked up rooms would remain under Optional. At the release date, all unpicked rooms would be released back to the hotel inventory.
An Allotment Non-Deducted would be on another status, parallel to the optional one, with the difference that it doesn’t take at all from the hotel inventory. Similarly, a dedicated booking engine link would allow the customer to pick up rooms directly under a Confirmed status. 

Hope this helps. :)

​@daniel.do I’ve asked one of my Group manager colleague to do the survey, but the link seems to no longer work. Is that on purpose? If not, would you have a new link for us please?