Stay, Rooms & Flats (Raj Sharan)¶

Part of the Aashray Business Logic. Related: Booking Lifecycle & Engine, Payments, Credits & Reconciliation, Adhyayan & Utsav, Status & Cron.

Raj Sharan is on-site accommodation at the Research Centre. It uses finite room inventory and member-owned flats. The member app treats shared rooms and flats as separate products. The backend also allows a flat booking that includes the owner, and that owner's stay is free.

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

A room booking is per person, for a date range. The member does not pick a room. The system assigns a free room that matches room type, gender, and the selected floor category. A booking gets a room number only when the system finds a room. A waitlisted booking uses a placeholder until staff or the system moves it forward.

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 is no shared room pool to assign from. The member app lets an owner reserve the flat for guests or fellow seekers. The backend can also include the owner in the occupant list. A flat has no room type or floor choice.

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 cannot be an extra. A flat as the main booking cannot include a room or festival booking as an extra. The current booking flow can include food, travel, or study-session extras with a flat.

Charges¶

An overnight Non-AC room costs ₹700 per night.
An overnight AC room costs ₹1,100 per night.
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¶

The app shows a room number only after payment is complete and the check-in date is within 24 hours or has passed. It shows a placeholder before then. A waitlisted room booking keeps its placeholder. A flat number shows without this room-number delay.

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

Normal staff check-in requires a confirmed and paid booking and cannot happen before the scheduled arrival date. Gate entry can also auto-check in a room or flat booking that is pending payment when the stay starts that day.
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¶

Room waitlisting has three current causes. A stay can exceed the 9-night limit within a 30-day window, have no matching room, or be a single night on a festival boundary date. The rolling-limit and no-room cases carry a reason. Boundary waitlist promotion is manual.
Flat waitlisting can also result from the 9-night limit within a 30-day window. Residents are exempt from this limit.
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.