Booking.com FAQ

Booking.com supports:

• Cancellations
• Modifications
• Minimum length of stay
• Maximum length of stay
• Rate Plan Mapping
• Close Day (Stop Sell)
• Closed to Arrival
• Closed to Departure
• Credit Cards
• Cutoff (Early booker or Minimum Advanced Booking)
• Last-Minute Booking (Maximum Advanced Booking)

Yes - You can report No Show back to Booking.com, without leaving Cloudbeds system.

Check out this article for further details about this feature: How to report No Show reservations to the channels from Cloudbeds PMS.

ISSUE: When Booking.com sends us a booking, they include a value for the "Occupancy" of the booking.  This value actually corresponds with the occupancy of the entire room - not necessarily the true number of guests that booked the room.

In this example, we have a booking for a 6 person private room.  

However, on the channel the guest actually specified the following information:

• 2 Adults
• 2 Children

What our channel manager received: Since this is a Private 6 person room, Booking.com actually sent the number of occupants as 6 (full occupancy of the room) and not the actual number of the guest (4).

This is how the connection is designed and cannot be changed on our channel manager side. For further information on this topic please contact your Booking.com Account Manager.

How it works?

Cloudbeds PMS sends the standard rate (BAR) of your accommodations to Booking.com. Once your Booking.com account is properly configured, you can create various rate plans based on the BAR. Since Cloudbeds PMS will only sync the standard rate, other rate plans should be derived from the BAR in the extranet, as well as the per person pricing.

Pricing per guest allows you to tailor your room or unit rate based on the number of guests staying in it. It's easy to set up and update directly on the Extranet. Follow the steps to enable it in this Booking.com help guide: Setting up and updating pricing per guest

Background: Since Strong Customer Authentication was enforced for European customers/properties, Booking.com chat system automatically removes the links necessary for the payment approval from the emails.

Solutions:

1. For you to charge the card, the guest needs to approve the payment, but since the links are removed, you need to contact the guest, ask for their email address, change the email address on the credit card billing information, run the payment again, and then the guest has to approve it.
2. To avoid such a situation for the future, you can switch to channel collect type of payment method.
3. If previous solutions didn't work for you, you need to mark the credit card as invalid. This is the solution for the situation when credit card cannot be charged and the guest cannot be contacted. Here are the instructions on how to do it:
   How do I mark a credit card as invalid? This will notify booking.com that you cannot charge the card and will cancel the reservation.

Reason: When a Booking.com reservation is cancelled on the Booking.com extranet by a guest, the channel will automatically open the room and rate for the dates that the booking had been previously booked under, even if those rooms/rates are closed by the channel manager.  This can lead to unexpected availability and thus could potentially cause an overbooking.

As per Booking.com Support team, there are 2 types of "Auto Replenish":

1. General auto-replenishment
   This option is integrated by default to all properties on Booking.com and cannot be deactivated. Whenever a cancellation comes through Booking.com, the room is put back on sale automatically to give the property another chance at reselling it.
   
2. Auto-replenishment on closed rooms 
   This feature can be deactivated at the property level, however, the general auto-replenishment for Booking.com cancellations will remain active. Deactivating this feature means that if the room/date is closed in red (stop sell), it will not be auto-replenished even if there are cancellations.

SOLUTION:

The first option above is normally enabled by default but is agreed on in the commercial agreement between the property and Booking.com Account Manager. If you want to change this, please contact your Booking.com Account Manager.

REASON: Let's suppose that the property closed a specific room for three days in myfrontdesk.
On Booking.com extranet the same room with Standard rate was closed for reservations as well.

However, you can see that there is still 1 availability for this room with a Non-refundable rate. Myallocator (channel manager by Cloudbeds) only manages XML enabled rate plans. In this particular case, it is only the Standard rate.

That's the reason why availability wasn't closed for the Non-refundable rate, and the booking was allowed.

SOLUTION: There are 2 ways to fix it.

1. Manually manage availability for this rate plan on the Booking.com extranet.

2. Contact your Booking.com account manager and ask him/her to XML enable this rate plan. So both availability and rates are derived from the Standard rate and thus managed by the channel manager.

Booking.com offers two methods of payment for their bookings:

1. Channel Collect - Booking.com handles guest's payments on behalf of your property. You will then get the payment via virtual credit cards (VCCs) or bank transfer from Booking.com according to the agreement you have with the channel. If the payment method is VCC, the card will be included in the reservation and you can process it.
2. Hotel Collect - you charge your guests directly. Your property is responsible to collect the payment from the guests. Depending on your policies on Booking.com, you can charge your guest credit card (will be included in the reservation) or the guest will pay at your property in your local currency.

You can see which method was used by checking the Payment Type in the reservation details:

VCCs are temporary, digital Mastercards that Booking.com uses to pay you for bookings that your guests pay for on Booking.com. They function like regular credit cards and give you guaranteed payouts from Booking.com. They also save you time because you don't need to pre-authorize or validate them.

• For every relevant booking you receive, Booking.com send you a new VCC included in the guest's reservation.
• Each VCC has a unique card number, expiration date, and card verification code (CVC), and these details will never be reused.
• Each VCC comes with a balance available to be charged.
• Each VCC also has an activation date when you can start charging the card.
• To avoid any errors while processing the payment, it is important to charge the VCC within the period when the card is active and not more than the balance available.

With Payments Clarity feature, you can see the VCC balance, activation and expiration date in the Special Requests field on Cloudbeds PMS. Follow the steps below.

1. Access the guest's reservation.
2. Click Show More.

3. You will see one of the messages below:

1. You have received a virtual credit card for this reservation. You may charge it as of [activation date]. The virtual card expires on [expiration date]. You can charge the card [amount] until this expiration date.

2. You have received a virtual credit card for this reservation. The virtual card has no funds. This is due to the reservation being a Risk-free Reservation where the guest has selected to 'Pay Later'.

Booking.com will help refund the guest on your behalf.

If you’ve already received money for the reservation, all you need to do is return that same amount back to the same virtual credit card.

Virtual credit cards can be refunded even if they have expired. If the expiry date is in the past, just enter the current month as the expiration date instead. Booking.com will return the money to your guest.

With Channel Collect you can get the payment via virtual credit cards (VCCs) or bank transfer from Booking.com depending on the agreement you have with the channel.

If the payment method is VCC, the card will be included in the reservation and you can process it.

Otherwise, you should receive the payout via bank transfer from Booking.com. Contact your Booking.com Account Manager for more information.

Problem: The rate plan was correctly connected through Cloudbeds PMS to your Booking.com account, but it is not visible on your commercial page, even though you can see it in your extranet account.

Solution: This can happen if your property is not verified by the booking.com relevant team. There will be certain restrictions on your property until it gets verification. Please, contact your channel account manager to fix it.

Reach out to your Local Booking.com Support team and request to allow for viewing restrictions on the Calendar. For reference, the relevant internal setting is called Edit restriction rights.

When you select myallocator as your channel manager on Booking.com, the username MyAllocatorByCloudBeds will be associated automatically to your Booking.com account. This is an expected behavior.

Booking.com gives Cloudbeds limited access to property accounts to assist in troubleshooting connection issues between the two systems. The limited access means we are able to see:

• Calendar & Availability
• Property Details
• Reservations
• Connectivity Provider
• Promotions

However, we do not have access to your account settings that might contain sensitive information (i.e, Change Password, Create and Manage Users, Notification Settings, Contacts, Contracts, Connected Applications, Security).