Stay — Rooms & Flats (Raj Sharan)¶

Part of the Aashray Business Logic. Related: Booking Lifecycle & Engine, Payments, Credits & Reconciliation, Adhyayan & Utsav, Status & Cron. For implementation detail — exact routes, database structure, and known code-level defects — see the companion Technical Reference — Stay: Rooms & Flats.

Raj Sharan is on-site accommodation at the Research Centre. It runs on a finite, staff-managed inventory — a fixed set of shared rooms the centre owns, plus flats privately owned by individual members — and a member's booking request only succeeds because that inventory has room for it, not the other way around. There are two distinct products: a shared room (centre-owned, assigned automatically to whoever books it) and a flat (privately owned by a member, who can lend it out to others but never books it for themselves).

Room inventory: availability, assignment, and block-out dates¶

A room booking is per person, for a date range. The member doesn't pick a specific room — the system automatically assigns one from whichever rooms of the right type are free for those dates, drawing from pools that are split by gender and by floor category (a ground-floor preference is treated as its own category, so ground-floor rooms stay separated from upper-floor ones — see "What a member can request," below). A room number exists behind the scenes as soon as the booking is made, even though the member doesn't see it right away (see "How a stay actually happens," below).

On top of day-to-day availability, staff can also close off the inventory entirely for a stretch of time: they can mark date ranges during which the Research Centre is closed to new arrivals — for maintenance, festivals, or other operational reasons. A member cannot book a room whose stay would fall inside a blocked range. (This block-out control only covers rooms, not flats — see "Known limitations today," below.)

What a member can request¶

When booking a room, a member chooses: - Room type — Non-AC (the default) or AC. - Floor preference — Any floor (the default) or Only Ground Floor. As described above, this determines which pool of rooms the system assigns from.

A member can book a room for themselves, for a guest, or for one or more fellow seekers (mumukshus) they're acting on behalf of. When booking for a group, the group can be split into smaller sub-groups, each with its own room type and floor preference — for example, some people wanting AC and others Non-AC on the same trip.

One-Day Visit¶

Alongside a normal date-range stay, a member can book a same-day visit — arriving and leaving the same day, with no night spent. This is booked instantly with no payment step: it's always Non-AC-equivalent, has no floor preference, and costs nothing.

Flats¶

Flats sit outside the room-inventory model above — a flat is owned by one or more members, not by the centre, so there's no shared availability pool to assign from. An owner cannot book their own flat for themselves — the app doesn't even offer that option. What an owner can do is reserve their flat for other people: guests they're bringing, or fellow seekers they're acting on behalf of. The owner simply picks the dates and who's staying; there's no room type or floor choice, since a flat has neither.

If the owner themselves is one of the people staying in their own flat during that reservation, their own stay is free; everyone else pays the standard charge (see below).

A flat booking always stands on its own — it can't be combined with a room booking or added onto a festival registration in the same booking.

Charges¶

An overnight room stay costs a nightly rate that depends on room type: the AC rate is higher than the Non-AC rate.
A one-day visit is free.
Staying in someone else's flat costs a nightly rate equivalent to the Non-AC room rate, regardless of the flat's own amenities — flats don't have a separate AC/Non-AC pricing tier. The flat owner's own stay in their own flat is free.
Any credit balance a member holds can be applied toward a room or flat charge — the two draw from the same pool of credit.
Payment, refund, and credit mechanics generally follow the rules described in Payments, Credits & Reconciliation.

How a stay actually happens: room reveal, check-in, and check-out¶

Even though a room is assigned the moment a booking is made (see "Room inventory," above), the app doesn't tell the member which room it is right away. Instead, it shows a placeholder until the booking is fully paid and it's close to (or on) the check-in date — at that point the actual room number appears. Flat numbers, since the member already knows which flat they're staying in, are shown right away with no such delay.

Checking a guest in and out is likewise a staff action, not something the member does themselves.

Check-in can only happen once a booking is confirmed and paid, and not before the scheduled arrival date.
Check-out on the scheduled date, by late morning, is the normal, no-extra-charge case.
Checking out later in the day incurs an extra charge: a smaller fee if it's still early afternoon, a full extra night's charge if it's later than that.
Leaving early (before the originally booked departure date) recalculates the stay for the nights actually used and credits back the difference — the member is never charged more than they would have been for the shorter stay.
Staying longer than booked is meant to be handled by extending the stay and charging for the extra nights, but for rooms this currently isn't charged at all — staff simply close out the booking as checked out. For flats, staying longer than booked isn't allowed at check-out time; the guest is asked to make a separate new booking instead.

Cancellation¶

A member can cancel their own room or flat booking. Cancelling refunds or credits any payment already made, following the same rules as other bookings (see Payments, Credits & Reconciliation).

Known limitations today¶

Rooms almost never go on a waitlist — the only time this happens is for a single night that falls right on the edge of a festival, when the centre is at its busiest. When it does happen, nothing automatically moves a waitlisted room booking forward when a spot opens up — staff have to do that by hand.
Block-out dates are only enforced for rooms, not for flats. A flat can currently be booked over a date range the Research Centre has otherwise closed.
Overstaying a room booking isn't charged extra today, even though the intended design is to charge for the extra nights.

Full engineering detail, and every other known defect, is tracked in the technical reference.