Design a Hotel Management System
What is the Hotel Management System Problem?
Section titled “What is the Hotel Management System Problem?”Design a hotel management system that allows guests to search for available rooms, make reservations, check in, and check out. The system should handle room management with different room types and amenities, check room availability for date ranges, manage reservations with proper state transitions, and apply pricing strategies based on room type and season.
In this problem, you’ll design a system that handles the entire guest lifecycle—from searching for a room to final check-out.
Problem Overview
Section titled “Problem Overview”Design a system to manage a single hotel’s operations, focusing on room inventory, reservation processing, and guest check-in/out flows.
Core Requirements
Section titled “Core Requirements”Functional Requirements:
- Room Search: Search for available rooms for a specific date range.
- Conflict Detection: Implement date range overlap detection to prevent double-bookings.
- Booking Management: Allow creating and cancelling reservations (releases rooms back to Available).
- Lifecycle Flow: Support check-in (Reserved → Occupied) and check-out (Occupied → Available) processes.
- Room Hierarchy: Manage different room types (Single, Double, Suite) with varying base prices and amenities.
- Dynamic Pricing: Apply rates based on room type and season (Peak vs. Off-season) using Strategy Pattern.
- State Tracking: Monitor room statuses (Available, Reserved, Occupied, Maintenance) using State Pattern.
- Guest History: Maintain guest information and their reservation history.
Non-Functional Requirements:
- Consistency: Reservation operations must be thread-safe to handle concurrent booking attempts.
- Modular Design: Separate room logic, reservation logic, and pricing strategies for high extensibility.
- Testability: Core logic should be easy to validate through unit tests.
- Extensibility: Easily add new amenities, membership tiers, or room types in the future.
What’s Expected?
Section titled “What’s Expected?”1. System Architecture
Section titled “1. System Architecture”The system revolves around the Hotel which acts as a container for rooms and a service for reservations.
2. Key Classes to Design
Section titled “2. Key Classes to Design”classDiagram
class Hotel {
-List~Room~ rooms
+searchRooms(criteria)
+bookRoom(guest, room, dates)
}
class Room {
-int roomNumber
-RoomType type
-RoomState state
+updateStatus()
}
class Reservation {
-String id
-Guest guest
-Room room
-DateRange dates
-ReservationStatus status
+cancel()
}
class PricingStrategy {
<<interface>>
+calculatePrice(room, dates)
}
Hotel --> Room
Hotel --> Reservation
Room --> RoomState
Reservation --> PricingStrategy
System Flow
Section titled “System Flow”Reservation & Check-In Flow
Section titled “Reservation & Check-In Flow”
Key Design Challenges
Section titled “Key Design Challenges”1. Preventing Double Bookings
Section titled “1. Preventing Double Bookings”Checking availability and creating a reservation must be an atomic operation. If two threads check at the same time, they might both see the room as available.
Solution: Use Synchronization or Locks. Wrap the booking logic in a synchronized block or use a ReentrantLock for the specific room to ensure only one reservation can be finalized at a time.
2. Complex Room States
Section titled “2. Complex Room States”A room isn’t just “Available” or “Full.” It might be “Reserved” (booked but not checked in), “Occupied,” “Being Cleaned,” or “Under Maintenance.”
Solution: Use the State Pattern. Encapsulate state-specific behavior (e.g., you can’t check in to a room that is “Being Cleaned”) in separate state classes, making the transitions clean and bug-free.
3. Dynamic Pricing
Section titled “3. Dynamic Pricing”Prices change based on weekends, holidays, or room upgrades.
Solution: Use the Strategy Pattern. Create a PricingStrategy interface and implement various concrete strategies like SeasonalPricing, WeekendPricing, and BasePricing. The Reservation can apply these strategies based on the current context.
What You’ll Learn
Section titled “What You’ll Learn”By solving this problem, you’ll master:
- ✅ State Management - Handling complex object lifecycles.
- ✅ Availability Logic - Implementing date-range overlap detection.
- ✅ Concurrency Control - Building thread-safe booking systems.
- ✅ Design Patterns - Applying State, Strategy, and Factory in a real-world scenario.
View Complete Solution & Practice
Section titled “View Complete Solution & Practice”Ready to see the full implementation? Open the interactive playground to access:
- 🎯 Step-by-step guidance through the 8-step LLD approach
- 📊 Interactive UML builder to visualize your design
- 💻 Complete Code Solutions in Python, Java, C++, TypeScript, JavaScript, C#
- 🤖 AI-powered review of your design and code
Related Problems
Section titled “Related Problems”After mastering Hotel Management, try these similar problems:
- Library Management - Resource tracking and borrowing.
- Movie Ticket Booking - Concurrent seat allocation.
- Restaurant Management - Table state and order flow.