Closing dates for sale: private events and category closures

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Why	The property or a room type is needed “in-house” — a wedding, a corporate event, a renovation: close the dates so the channels stop selling, while the bookings that already exist stay intact.
Who	The administrator preparing for an event or maintenance work.
What you’ll get	Closed dates, zero outside sales, untouched existing bookings, and a verified delivery of the closure to the channels.
Limitations	A closure applies to new sales only: bookings that already exist remain and need a manual review if their dates overlap with the closure.

Sometimes the dates are needed not by guests but by the hotel: a wedding takes over the whole property, a corporate event occupies one room type, maintenance puts a floor out of service. The mechanics are the same: the “Closed for sales” restriction (or “Closed for OTAs”) in the “Price Manager”. Below is a four-step checklist, plus the fork on which tool to close with.

Pick the tool

Before closing anything, answer honestly: what exactly should stop selling? The answer picks the tool:

Situation	Tool
The dates must not be sold at all — neither by channels nor directly	“Closed for sales” — a full closure: the channels get zero availability, and direct sales stop too
Sell direct only: the channels step aside, while the hotel website and the front desk keep going	“Closed for OTAs” (“No OTA” in the bulk update)
Not whole dates and not the whole inventory but specific rooms — say, part of a floor for event guests	Maintenance blocks on the grid

The rule that holds it all together: a block is not a sales closure. A block takes specific rooms out — the dates keep selling for the rest of the inventory. A closure governs the sale of dates — it does not touch the rooms, but every point of sale stops selling the date at once. The full restriction mechanics — every field, the three switch states, single-date and bulk editing — live in Sales restrictions: conditions for selling a date; here we run the scenario end to end without repeating them.

Step 1: close the dates

Open the “Price Manager” in the left menu and go to the “Bulk Update” tab.
In the “1. SCOPE” section, set the rate plan, the “From”/“To” period, and the room types. Closing the whole property — tick every room type with “Select all”; the event took over one room type — that one.
Open the “3. RESTRICTIONS” section and set “Closed for sales” = “Yes” — that is the full closure. Stopping the channels only — “No OTA” = “Yes”.
Click “Check and apply”.

Result: the selected dates are off sale — no new bookings can be made on them from the outside: neither through the hotel website nor through the channels.

The prices of the closed dates stay as they are: a closure is about selling, not about the price sheet.

Step 2: sort out the bookings that already exist

A closure applies to new sales only. Bookings created before the closure remain — there is no automatic cancellation, and rightly so: decisions about live bookings belong to the hotel, not the system.

Review the overlaps before the event:

Build the list: open the “Bookings” section and filter the bookings by the closure dates.
Decide on each one: keep it — the event tolerates guests — or cancel and rebook. The editing and cancellation path is in Change or cancel a booking.

Do not put the review off: the closer the check-in date, the harsher the cancellation terms inside the booking and the less time to settle things with the guest amicably.

Step 3: verify the channels saw it

The closure zeroes out the date’s availability in every channel — the export leaves on its own, there is no “send” button to look for. The check takes a minute:

Open the Channel Manager, the “Events” tab, and the “Outgoing” sub-tab.
In the “All event types” filter, pick availability.update — availability and restrictions travel as this type.
Look at the status of the recent events: DONE — delivered. A FAILED status is sorted out in Delivery log: verify what was sent to channels.

Result: the channels see zero availability on the closed dates and take them off sale.

Step 4: put the dates back on sale

The event is over — the same bulk update in reverse:

On the “Bulk Update” tab, set the same scope: the rate plan, the dates, the room types.
In “3. RESTRICTIONS”, set “Closed for sales” back to “No” — the closure comes off. The ”—” value leaves dates untouched: handy when some dates in the range must stay closed.
Click “Check and apply”.

Check the return: in the price manager “Calendar”, click the cell of a closed date — the “Closed for sales” button in the editor should be off. A fresh export with the DONE status will appear in the channels’ “Events” — and the channels are selling again.

Common mistakes

Closed the channels only — and the website kept selling. “Closed for OTAs” leaves direct sales alive: the hotel website and the front desk carry on. If the goal is to take the dates off sale entirely, close the date (“Closed for sales” = “Yes”) rather than the channels one by one.
Mixed up a block with a closure. The tools are not interchangeable: a block hides specific rooms, a closure governs the sale of dates. Maintaining a single room is a block; an event across every date of a room type is a closure.
Forgot the bookings beyond the horizon. The channels sell up to two years ahead — “six months before the event” may already be sold by then. Close with a margin of dates, not exactly along the event range.