guest damage

Sorry to hear that Sebastian - and welcome to the community!

If it was minor damage, it might be best to fix and forget, move on. If it was bigger damage, you can go to the booking information in your Extranet and you will find a button in the right hand column for Report Guest Misconduct.

Did you take a damage deposit? If so, you could keep some or all of that. If it's really really bad damage, you should have property / business insurance to cover your losses.

If you haven't set up a damage deposit yet, set it up for future guests from Property > Policies. The problem is that Booking.com don't like you to take damage deposits - they think hosts are criminals. They might restrict you to taking it by cash on arrival. Send Booking.com a lot of messages asking that they change the settings to Bank Transfer. If a guest doesn't pay the damage deposit say 14 days before arrival, report them for non-payment and Booking.com will phone them up.

I strongly believe there should be some form of online based escrow payment system that could easily handle this. 

How I see it working....

• Guest prepays up to 24 hours before arrival say euro50 into the escrow system.  
• Host receives notification with the reservation booking number and status of Deposit paid.  
• That escrow system via API to booking.com can see the duration of the booking.  
• The system then by default adds 48 hours post the check out date scheduled to auto refund to the guest if no claim made.  
• Host on checkout day ,even if after guest has left early etc still has 12-24 hours to inspect and confirm any issues.  
• If issues, then using the system can notify, update status to incident reported, category - minor, major etc, memo details box.   
• A radio button options of :
  • >Claim  Full Deposit
  • > Claim Partial Deposit - Amount sub-box.
    • Here if the cost to repair equals or exceeds claim the full deposit.
    • If the cost to repair, replace is partial.
• >Upload Document Browse button
• >Upload photos browse button
  • Gives Host ability to record notes of discovery of damage, replair and replacement as relevant.

there's possibly more steps/options/features that needs to be added, so its just an initial idea.  

"Guest had accident in our studio apartment causing damage. What should I do?" Without some general details its very hard to gauge an appropriate response or next steps..