Overselling

The concept of overbooking (English overbooking ) denotes the sale or providing a service, which is several times, ie more than the actual capacity of the service sold or provided. When designing a service, it is assumed that it is not (eg passengers) or service recipients (eg IT equipment ) use all customers the agreed service, so the service in the worst case is not ready or not is entirely a number of recipients. This business advantages by not arise for the service provider to the maximum load be dimensioned structure or by reducing unused residual capacity of the claimed for the service deployment resources.

Overbooking in the information and communication technology

Applies overbooking in the information and communication technology, for example in the provision of an agreed data transfer rate for a particular service. Thus, network connectivity in corporate networks, telephone networks, Internet access and other WAN networks of providers (eg Frame Relay ) are overbooked by the sum of the individual data rates higher than the data transmission rate of the backbone connection. At times, where not claim all service recipients at the same time the full data transfer rate, the active service recipients provided the full or a satisfactory speed. In communication networks, there are charakterischerweise peak times (eg in corporate networks in the morning before starting work ), in which there is a service restriction for the individual service user. In this case, the data transfer rate for some or all users be restricted or the service is not completely available.

But is Overbooked computational power of IT systems, thereby the performance of server or mainframe is not designed for the maximum possible load.

Overbooking in the tourism industry

The term refers to overbooking on travel, events, or in hotels the fact that they were booked to more people than there are places.

Since it occurs again and again that people do not take an already booked hotel or a journey (no-show ), it is at Hotels / Airlines has become common practice to " overbook ", that is, there are more bookings confirmed as spaces available are hoping that some guests withdraw from the reservation. Must be a confirmed reservation be withdrawn, is usually before a trip deficiency which the service provider has to eliminate in an appropriate manner or possibly obliged him to compensation. The elimination can be a so-called "upgrade" done for example in the form, that is, the customer gets a better product (eg a higher booking class or a free flight, a higher quality hotel rooms), which would normally be more expensive and therefore often not available stands.

Economically weigh the cost of disposal or damages and the probability of occurrence with the additional revenue of 100% occupancy. This is a typical problem of decision under risk. The image is another factor. On the other hand, a provider who overbooked, offer product cheaper, giving him a competitive advantage.