👉 When the hotel can’t accommodate the guest… and must relocate them elsewhere.
📘 What is Walking or a Walked Guest?
A walked guest is a guest who, despite having a confirmed reservation, cannot ultimately stay at the hotel and must be relocated to another property due to an oversale or overbooking situation.
The term walking refers to the operational act of transferring or relocating the guest to another hotel.
It is a common practice within controlled overbooking strategies, although it remains one of the most sensitive situations in terms of guest experience.
📊 Walking Formula
There is no single standard formula, although it is commonly measured through:
Walk Rate = Guests Walked / Total Arrivals
Where:
- Guests Walked = number of relocated guests
- Total Arrivals = total scheduled arrivals
✅ Why is Walking important?
- It directly impacts guest experience.
- It can affect reputation and online reviews.
- It generates operational costs and compensation expenses.
- It is a critical KPI when evaluating overbooking strategies.
- It helps assess the balance between maximising occupancy and protecting service quality.
💡 Practical example of Walking
A hotel ends up oversold by three rooms for a particular night.
Upon arrival, the last guests are relocated to a nearby hotel of similar category, with the original hotel covering:
- transport,
- rate differences,
- and additional compensation where necessary.
🔄 Disambiguation of Walking
- Walking vs Oversale:
Oversale is the strategy of selling more rooms than available in anticipation of cancellations or no-shows.
Walking is the operational consequence when actual availability falls short. - Walking vs Relocation:
Relocation is the logistical process itself.
A walked guest is the affected customer. - Walking vs Overbooking:
Overbooking may exist without any walking if cancellations offset the oversold inventory.
Walking only occurs when the overbooking cannot be absorbed operationally.
In summary: Walking = relocating guests due to a genuine lack of availability caused by oversale or overbooking.
