When your Best Western two-way communication with Visual Matrix goes offline, it can quickly become a stressful situation, with the potential for overbookings, duplicate reservations, and operational disruptions. To minimize the impact and keep your reservations and availability under control, follow the steps below to protect your data and ensure a smooth guest experience despite the outage.
1. Monitor Member Web
While the communication is offline, Member Web may still be accessible. Actively monitor Member Web for new reservations and availability updates, checking frequently to ensure your system remains current until the connection is restored.

If the Channel Manager itself is offline or experiencing an outage, its information will be temporarily inaccessible. In such cases, the only option is to manually check each OTA's website for new reservations or updates. Once the Channel Manager is back online, it will automatically sync the information to your system and subsequently with the PMS.
2. Manual Entry of Urgent Reservations Only
Only manually enter reservations that are due to check in very soon (e.g., within the next 24 hours).
Avoid entering future reservations unless necessary, as this can lead to duplicate entries when the interface is back online.
3. Prevent Overbookings
If you notice that your availability is nearing full capacity, apply a hard close in Member Web.
This will stop additional reservations and prevent overbooking in your system.
4. Handling Duplicate Reservations
Entering reservations too early can cause duplicate bookings when the interface is restored. If this happens, you will need to cancel the duplicate reservation in your system manually. Following these steps will help you avoid overbookings and duplicate reservations while ensuring your property remains in sync with its reservation data.
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