Hotel room status codes explained: VC, VD, OOO, OOS and more

Hotel room status codes are short labels that tell the front desk and housekeeping the state of a room at a given moment: whether it is clean, whether a guest is in it, and whether it can be sold. They are common hotel practice rather than a published standard, so codes and their meanings vary by property and system.

It is 14:40, three walk-ins are at the desk, and room 214 still shows vacant dirty on the screen although the attendant finished it an hour ago. Nobody is lying. The floor and the desk are simply holding two different pictures of the same building, and the gap is costing a sale. After reading this article you will know what each code means, which one answers which question, who may set it, and how to run the twice-daily check that keeps both departments reading from the same board.

What are hotel room status codes?#

They are short labels shared between the front desk and housekeeping that state, at a given moment, whether a room is clean, whether a guest is in it and whether it can be sold.

Three questions sit behind every code: cleanliness, occupancy and saleability. Most codes answer one of them, a few answer two, and confusing which is which is where most operational errors begin. A room can be spotless and unsellable, or sellable in theory but occupied by someone the system cannot see.

There is no single published standard that defines VC, VD, OOO or OOS. They are working shorthand, so a code that means one thing in one property can mean something else down the road. Write your own list down once, and treat it as the property's definition.

A status is a shared state, not a private note. The desk sells from it, housekeeping sequences work from it, and the night audit, the fire list and the revenue report all read from it. A stale status costs money in both directions: a clean room left marked dirty is inventory nobody sells, and a dirty room shown as clean is a complaint at the door.

Every status should carry a timestamp and a person. Without them nobody can tell a status from a guess, and the morning meeting turns into a memory contest. Statuses also fit into the wider rhythm of the business day, which is worth understanding separately in how one hotel business day fits together.

What do VC, VD and inspected mean?#

VC means vacant and clean, VD means vacant and dirty, and inspected means a supervisor has checked the room after cleaning.

VC means no guest, cleaned, ready to assign. This is the only cleaning status the desk should sell from without a second check. VD means no guest, but the room has not been cleaned, or has been cleaned and not yet checked. It is not sellable until it moves, and the desk should see it as work in progress rather than as a problem.

Inspected is handled differently from property to property: some systems carry it as its own code, others as a flag on top of VC. Know which one yours does, because the desk's pick list depends on it. The pick-up rule that follows: assign inspected rooms first for early arrivals and for any guest who has asked for a specific room or floor. An uninspected clean room is the second choice, not the first.

Who sets what matters as much as what the codes mean. The room attendant sets the cleaning status at the door, the supervisor sets inspected, and the desk never marks a room clean on its own authority. A check-out should turn an occupied room into VD automatically. If it does not, the desk keeps seeing a departed guest's room as occupied and stops selling it.

What do occupied, DND, due out and late checkout mean?#

Occupied means a guest is checked in to the room, do not disturb means the guest has asked not to be contacted, due out means the guest is expected to leave today, and late checkout means the guest has been granted a later departure time.

Occupied carries a cleaning dimension too. Occupied clean and occupied dirty tell housekeeping whether the room still needs service today, which is what decides the afternoon sequence. Do not disturb blocks housekeeping and also blocks promises: the desk should not commit a DND room to a same-day arrival until the guest's departure is confirmed by phone, message or the guest app.

Due out is a forecast, not a fact. The room stays occupied until the guest checks out or the system applies the departure rule, so a due-out list is a plan and not an inventory. Late checkout moves the sellable time, not only the label. A room granted until 15:00 cannot go to a 14:00 arrival, so the grant has to reach the desk's assignment screen the moment it is given.

Group departures make due-out lists longer and less reliable. Confirm the group's real departure time with the tour leader the evening before, not on the morning. Expected arrivals and early arrivals sit on the same board as departures, and the desk sequences the day from both lists at once, which is why a wrong due-out status shows up as a queue at 15:00. Group movements have their own mechanics, covered in block, rooming list and master folio for group bookings.

Out of order versus out of service: which one takes the room out of saleable inventory?#

Out of order takes the room out of saleable inventory. Out of service keeps the room in inventory but out of use for a short, defined period.

Out of order (OOO) means a real defect with a defined repair: a name against it, a start date, a return date and a reason. The room is not counted among the rooms the hotel can sell. Out of service (OOS) means a short block for cleaning, painting, a deep clean or a small repair, usually hours rather than days. The room stays in inventory and comes back in the same selling cycle.

The confusion is costly in both directions. A two-hour repair logged as out of order shrinks the denominator and flatters the occupancy rate; a week-long bathroom rebuild logged as out of service overstates what the hotel could actually sell. A working rule: if the room cannot be sold tonight and nobody can say when it can, it is out of order. If it will be back before the next selling cycle, it is out of service. Both need an end date, because an out-of-order room without a return date quietly disappears from the inventory for a month, and nobody notices until the month is closed.

There is a benchmarking nuance on top of the operational one. STR's forward-looking guidelines list out-of-order rooms, refurbishment, extended room closures and property closure dates among the reasons the rooms-available number can vary (CoStar Group, "Forward STAR Data Reporting Guidelines", 2026-11-01 (opens in a new tab)). For historical data, by contrast, rooms available are the rooms at the property multiplied by the days in the period, with no adjustment for rooms temporarily out of service for renovation for less than six months (CoStar Group, "Historical Benchmarking Data Reporting Guidelines", 2026-11-01 (opens in a new tab)). The same room can therefore be excluded from one count and included in another.

Keep the effect on the occupancy rate definitional rather than numerical: which rooms sit in the denominator changes the rate, so the out-of-order decision is a reporting decision as much as a maintenance one. The formulas behind this are set out in RevPAR, ADR and occupancy rate: formulas and common mistakes.

What are skippers and sleepers, and how do you run the discrepancy check?#

A skipper is a room the desk believes is occupied but the floor finds empty, usually because the guest left without checking out. A sleeper is a room the desk believes is vacant but the floor finds occupied.

The skipper is a billing problem before it is an inventory problem. The room is physically free but the account is still open, so it should not be resold until the departure is recorded and the bill settled or routed. The sleeper is a safety problem before it is a billing problem. Someone is in a room the system calls vacant: a guest who moved rooms, an unregistered occupant, or a stay that was never checked in. Verify in person, then correct.

Both are found by comparing two lists, never by trusting one. Housekeeping's floor sheet and the desk's room board are the two sources, and the mismatch is the finding. Run the check twice a day: after the morning check-out wave, and again before the afternoon arrival peak. The second run is the one that protects the arrivals.

The resolution rule: the floor wins on physical presence, the desk wins on the record until a supervisor confirms what the floor reported. Then both are corrected in the system, not on paper only. Log every mismatch with room number, time, both statuses and who resolved it. A pattern on one floor or one shift points at a process problem, not at a person.

Anything still unresolved at close belongs to the sequence described in the night audit checklist for closing the business day in order.

Who may change each status, and when?#

The person closest to the fact sets the status, and the more expensive the consequence, the higher the authority needed.

Room attendants set the cleaning status only, at the door as the room is finished, never from the pantry at the end of the shift. Housekeeping supervisors set inspected, plus the release of an out-of-service room once the work is done. The front desk handles check-in, check-out, recording a do-not-disturb request, and extending a due-out time with the guest's confirmation.

Late checkout sits in between: the desk may grant it within a written limit set by management, and anything beyond that limit goes to a manager, because it removes sellable time from the day. Out of order and out of service belong to the duty manager or rooms division manager only, with a reason and a return date. A desk agent alone should not be able to shrink the inventory. The night audit reconciles the board and closes the business day; it does not invent statuses, and anything unresolved is handed to the morning with a name against it.

Every change should be attributable: who, when, and what the previous value was. Without that, the discrepancy meeting becomes an argument about memory.

What is the one-page reference for English codes and the Turkish terms desks use?#

Keep one list in both languages and treat it as the property's own definition, not a universal one.

Turkish desks commonly say boş temiz for vacant clean, boş kirli for vacant dirty, kontrol edildi for inspected, dolu for occupied, rahatsız etmeyin for do not disturb, çıkışı beklenen for due out and geç çıkış for late checkout. For availability, arızalı oda or kullanım dışı oda is used for out of order, and geçici kullanım dışı for out of service. These are working terms, not official translations, and they differ between properties.

Skipper and sleeper usually have no settled Turkish equivalent; desks describe them instead, as a guest who left without closing the account, and as an occupant in a room the system shows as vacant. Describe them in plain words rather than forcing a label.

Print the list, put one copy in the housekeeping pantry and one at the desk, and make it the reference in the daily briefing. Review it once a year and after every system migration. Migrations are where codes silently change meaning, and the first symptom is a discrepancy nobody can explain.

What to do next#

Write your own one-page list in both languages, agree who may set each code, and run the housekeeping and front desk discrepancy check twice a day. The codes only work as a shared picture: once both departments read from the same list and the same timestamp, the 14:40 queue at the desk stops being a mystery and becomes a room you can sell.