Room Assignment
Automatically assign a room to every reservation, based on rules you set. Guestway picks a free room of the booked type, sends it to your PMS, and logs each step in the Inbox.
What is Room Assignment
When a reservation arrives in your PMS without a room number, someone at the front desk usually has to pick a room by hand. Room Assignment does this for you. It picks a suitable room for each reservation and sends it to your PMS.
You set up a few simple rules once. From then on, Guestway:
Finds the reservations that need a room, at the moment you choose (as soon as the booking is confirmed, a few days before arrival, or on the day of arrival).
Chooses the best free room of the booked room type, following your rules. It avoids rooms that are already booked or blocked, and can prefer rooms that give housekeeping more time.
Sends that room to your PMS, so the reservation, the guest’s access and your housekeeping planning all show the same room.
Records each step in the guest’s conversation in the Inbox, so your team can always see what happened and why.
Why use it
Less work at the front desk. Nobody has to allocate rooms each morning.
Rooms that are ready on time. On arrival day, Guestway can wait for a room that housekeeping has marked clean.
Better occupancy. The Best fit strategy fills rooms in a way that keeps longer free periods open for future bookings.
Even room wear. The Least recently used strategy spreads guests across all your rooms.
Where to find it
Go to Settings → Room Assignment.
The overview page shows one card per room assignment configuration. Each card shows:
the Name of the configuration
an Active or Off badge
a Testing badge if enabled
when the room assignment happens (for example “Days” or “Hours” before the check-in time)
which properties it covers (for example “All properties”, or a count of buildings, units and listings)
Click a card to open it, or click Add configuration to create a new one.
How to create a configuration
Enabling and testing the configuration
The main Enabled switch turns the whole configuration on or off. When on, rooms are assigned automatically for this scope.
When it’s off, the card shows Off and nothing happens for those properties.
Testing mode: Guestway runs through all the steps and shows which room it would choose, but does not send anything to your PMS. Use it to check your rules safely before going live.
Assignment trigger
On booking confirmation: as soon as the reservation is confirmed. Good for properties that want rooms fixed early (e.g. to share room details before arrival).
Days before check-in: A set number of days (1 to 365) before the check-in date.
On check-in day: a set number of hours (0 to 24) before the reservation’s allowed check-in time. This helps properties that want the most up-to-date view of which rooms are ready.
Assignment logic
The steps run from top to bottom.
Step 1 - Early check in first
Reservations are handled in order of arrival, earliest first, so an early arrival gets a vacant room before later guests.
Step 2 - Cleaning gap
If switched on, the logic will prefer rooms that give housekeeping enough time between the previous guest leaving and the new guest arriving (and between this guest leaving and the next guest arriving).
You can set a target gap from 1 to 12 hours.
Rooms that meet the target all count as a good fit, and the placement strategy (Step 3) chooses among them.
If no room meets the target, Guestway picks the room with the most empty time.
The cleaning gap is a preference, never a blocker: a reservation is always assigned a room if one is free.
Step 3 - Placement strategy
Best fit: the room where the stay fits most tightly between existing bookings, leaving as few empty nights as possible. Keeps long free periods open for future bookings.
Least recently used: the room that has been empty the longest (never-used rooms first). Spreads usage evenly across rooms.
Completely random: any free room of the booked type. When you have no preference.
Good to know
The following factors are always taken into account when auto-assigning a room:
Rooms that are already booked, or blocked in your PMS (out of order, maintenance…), are never chosen.
Guestway also counts rooms it has already sent to the PMS but that aren’t confirmed yet, so two guests are never given the same room.
Assignment is automatically re-run when a reservation's dates, unit type, or party size change.
Reservations that already have a room (e.g. one you assigned by hand in the PMS) are always left alone.
A reservation is picked up when all of these are true:
It is confirmed (not cancelled, not a confirmed no-show).
It was booked on a room type and has no room yet.
Its check-in date is today or later.
It belongs to a property and room type covered by an enabled configuration.
Guestway posts short activity messages in the reservation’s conversation.
Room assignment started: Guestway started looking but couldn’t place the guest yet, for example because all rooms are taken or not clean yet. It keeps trying automatically.
Room assigned: a room was chosen and sent to your PMS. The message names the room. In testing mode it is marked Testing and nothing was sent.
Room assignment failed: the PMS didn’t accept the room. See Troubleshooting below. This message flags the conversation so your team sees it.
Click a message to open the details: which configuration was used, the room, when the reservation was queued, when Guestway started assigning, when the room was assigned, and any error your PMS returned.
FAQ and troubleshooting
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