Allocations allow you to limit product availability for resellers. This article works with a specific example to better illustrate how allocations work. Feel free to adjust the settings for your purposes, however, we recommend you limit your changes to as few combinations as possible to avoid clashes in availability.

Prerequisites:

You have created allocations in the Allocations tab.
None of your allocations are 'Exclusive'.

If you need guidance on creating allocations, read our article on How to Create a New Allocation.

Your product DOES NOT have assigned resources and resource groups.

Setting allocations on products using multiple resources may result in unwanted availability clashes and your manifests and bookings may not display the correct resources. If you are looking for more information on how to manage product availability using resources, read our article on Availability Management.


In your Ventrata dashboard, go to Products > Products.



Select an existing product.

Set Parent Capacity

Press the pen and paper icon next to the product name.



Scroll to the middle of the product form or simply search for ‘Capacity’.



Review the total product capacity.

This indicates how many tickets can be booked at a time. If you are limited by seat numbers, use the number of seats as an indication.

If you changed the capacity, press the Update Product button. If you did not change anything, simply close the form.

Cap Source

Go to the General Availability tab.



Select 'Source' on the vertical axis and keep 'Weekday' on the horizontal axis.
Select the DIRECT API source.



Enter the capacity for this source. In our example it is 80.

Set Allocations Capacity

Go to the Allocations tab.



Check the capacity for each allocation. Press the pen and paper icon to change the capacity.

If you wish to override the allocation availability using any of the modifiers (tour, tour group, source, etc.), read the Override Availability section of our article on How to Create a New Allocation.

Allocations in Practice

Overall Tour Capacity (Retail Capacity): 100
Direct API source (Parent Trade Capacity): 80

In our example we have assigned the following inventory for the allocations:

	Exact	Percentage (%)
GoCity	24	30
CityPASS	8	10
OTAs (Viator, GYG + Expedia)	56	70

What each allocation will see as available inventory for this event is shown in brackets above the allocation container [ ]. A line is drawn at the inventory limit across each allocation container. The source limit is drawn at the 80 line, which is how many tickets can be sold through all three channels together.

23 tickets are sold through Retail.

These tickets fill from the bottom of the Retail container and from the top of the other allocations.

Result:
Retail has 77 tickets left

Allocation capacities are unchanged

Next, GYG sells 40 tickets from the OTA allocation pot.

The OTAs container fills from the bottom.

Result:
GoCity's limit has been reached. GoCity have 17 tickets left.
80 (parent channel capacity) - 63 ( 23 by Retail + 40 by OTA ) = 17

Retail's limit has been reached. Retail has only 37 tickets left.
100 (total capacity) - 40 (GYG sale) = 60 (reduced capacity) - 23 (Retail sale) = 37

The other allocation capacities are unchanged

Next, CityPASS sell all 8 of their allocation.

Result:
GoCity's limit has been reached. GoCity have 9 tickets left.
17 (reduced capacity) - 8 (CityPASS sale) = 9

CityPASS have no tickets left

OTAs' limit has been reached. OTAs have 9 tickets left.
80 (parent channel capacity) - 31 ( 23 by Retail + 8 by CityPASS ) = 49 - 40 (OTA sale) = 9

Retail's limit has been reached. Retail has only 29 tickets left.
60 (reduced capacity) - 8 (CityPASS sale) = 52 (reduced capacity) - 23 (Retail sale) = 29

Next, Viator sells 4 tickets from the OTA allocation pot.

Result:
GoCity's limit has been reached. GoCity have 5 tickets left.
9 (reduced capacity) - 4 (Viator sale) = 5

OTAs have 5 tickets left

Retail's limit has been reached. Retail has 25 tickets left.
52 (reduced capacity) - 4 (Viator sale) = 48 (reduced capacity) - 23 (Retail sale) = 25

Finally, GoCity sell the 5 remaining tickets from the overall trade allocation.

There are still 20 tickets left to sell, but only for Retail.

Result:
GoCity have no tickets left.

OTAs have no tickets left.

Retail's limit has been reached. Retail has 20 tickets left.
48 (reduced capacity) - 5 (GoCity sale) = 43 (reduced capacity) - 23 (Retail sale) = 20

It is decided that Retail is not selling fast enough, so the parent trade allocation is raised from 80 to 90 (see Steps 3-7.) for this particular date/event.

See how the caps change:

	Exact	Percentage (%)*
GoCity	27	30
CityPASS	9	10
OTAs (Viator, GYG + Expedia)	63	70

*the percentage values have not been changed

GoCity's limit has been reached. GoCity have 10 tickets left.
90 (new parent capacity) - 75 ( 23 by Retail + 40 by GYG + 8 by CityPASS + 4 by Viator ) = 15 (reduced capacity) - 5 (GoCity sale) = 10

CityPASS have 1 ticket left
9 (new capacity) - 8 (CitPass sale) = 1

OTAs' limit has been reached. OTAs have 10 tickets left.
90 (new parent capacity) - 36 ( 23 by Retail + 8 by CityPASS + 5 by GoCity ) = 54 (reduced capacity) - 44 ( 40 by GYG + 4 by Viator ) = 10

Retail's limit has been reached. Retail has 20 tickets left.
100 (total capacity) - 57 ( 40 by GYG + 8 by CityPASS + 4 by Viator + 5 by GoCity ) = 43 (reduced capacity) - 23 (Retail sale) = 20

Updated on: 20/02/2024