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BrookAve
payment

HowTo - Use 3rd Party Prepayments for Guests and reduce Fake Reservations and No Shows

 

SCOPE: reduce and/or eliminate

  • No Cancellation fee can be collected
  • No Shows reduction
  • No Fake Reservations
  • Delay in payout from BdC

 

What you need 

 

  1. Sign up for a third party service such as Square / Wise / Sumup
    1. Wise is good for payment links or simply they use your emailaddress to send money its a feature on wise.
    2. Payment Service Providers for handling Cards (includes VCC but you need to ask them for it)
    3. google for more payment service providers.
       
  2. Consider asking your POS provider for what they provide and do shop around and compare whats best deal for you.
     
  3. Once you have your ducks in a row, ideally 2-3 methods ready to go 
    1. Bank Transfer - share info
    2. Payment link - paypal.me/<name>
    3. Smart Bank App - referral and pay link e.g. Revolut
    4. Square
       
  4. Message Templates - New Reservation  & Reservation Now Void Failure to Prepay
    1. Convey to the Guest right from the start , top of the message 
      1. PREPAYMENT REQUIRED WITHIN x Hours/days , min 24h (not Last Minute or disable Last minute)
      2. See the following pre pay methods
        1. outline the process for each one
      3. second reminder of time limit before voided.
         
    2.  Create a new Message Template - Reservation Now Void Failure to Prepay
      1. write out a reusable notification to the Guest that the reservation will now be void and cancellation process started.
         
    3. Time Limit Expiry Action 

      ​​​​​​​The process to cancel No prepay, no deposit or fake booking is:
      1. On details page scroll to bottom message area, use the call message template feature to call up the new template for notifying Guests of next action will be Voiding their reservation due to no prepayment received
      2. on same details page, right pane , top rea, click Request Cancellation
      3. choose OPTION1
      4. wait 10 minutes and then phone partner support to engage them to make sure the cancellation goes through
         
  5. New Prepayment service live  now opt out of  BdC VCC aka Online Payments or Payments by Booking
    1. this will now apply the new method via the Message template  which all are manual by guest and you.
    2. any existing future bookings will either need to complete or ask BdC Partner Support to remove the prepayment if any so guest can then be informed to prepay you.

 

 

 

 

Profile picture for user m.adamopoulou.hotmail.com m
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M Adamopoulou 1 year ago

Thanks Barry for posting!!!

 

 

Lately I had problems with “Payments by Booking “ …


Wish you. beautiful day…

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Ileanette Mejia 1 year ago

This is so great, thank tou so very much.  I had not signed up to BDC VCC yet, and will not.  I had selected the only cash option, what should I select instead?  I will inform partner support to remove the prepayment option and that I should be paid directly by the guess!

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Indago Bluu 1 year ago

Hi,
You mention,  Square / Wise / Sumup ( as third-party payment services).
I am new on the Booking.com platform. So I am not able to use Payments by Booking.

I do have Stripe. Stripe allows me to generate a payment link that can be emailed to guests for payments.
Would the 3 you mention be a better choice over Stripe?
If yes, why?

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BrookAve 1 year ago

I mention them as examples only

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Indago Bluu 1 year ago

Thanks for responding.

I am new on the Booking platform. My first 3 reservations were all fraudulent or fake. I would like to use these steps you provided.

But I’m not understanding a few parts. After a guest makes a reservation on BookingDCom, how is their reservation payment (say $500 as an example).. how is this amount automatically transferred from Booking to my Stripe account? 

Are your steps explaining how to do things manually.. meaning ..
Will I have to login to Stripe each time a guest books a reservation on BdC, then create a payment link in Stripe (or create an invoice), then *manually* add the break out line by line (itemized charges) for room rate, cleaning fee, taxes, and any other charges, and then email or text the payment link or invoice to the personal email or to their assigned BookingDCom email address??

I used to use a channel manager and they created an invoice to be sent to the guest. The invoice had all the itemized fees. This is probably due to the API integration between the channel manager, Bdc and Stripe. But I cancelled the channel manager. So now I am trying to figure out how to get payment from the guests (until I qualify for Payments by Booking as an automated solution - IF it is a good solution).

i understand the concept of creating the templates on BdC and adding the payment link to the message. 
But it’s required by Stripe for me to added all itemized fees before sending the payment link or invoice.

Next Question 2

Right now, I have a guest who paid using American Express. I can see the credit card in Bdc, but the CVC code is blocked from my view. The payment has not been received in my Stripe account… because I don’t know how to integrate Stripe with BDC. I read some articles in Partner Hub that mentioned VCC. What would be the best way to collect the money from this guest?

I am in contact with the guest. But now, she is not responding. I asked her for the CVC code because I can login to Stripe and add the card number and CVC manually to charge the card.

But I want a time limit on this so that the guest acts fast.. say within 24 hours. After this, I want to mark the card invalid ( if this is the best way to do this).

I called Partner support for help, but the 2 reps I got were not helpful. One of them did not understand virtual credit cards and transferred me to a different group who never answered the phone… my goodness.

 

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BrookAve 1 year ago

Hi

  1. It's not. Bdc have nothing to do with it. It's up to you to provide the process to the guest via the first automatic message,  New Reservation.  Do included a time limit to then cancel.
  2. Yes manual depending on what 3rd party method types you offer them, at least 2 recommended 
  3. Integrate with payment service provider.  That's not a thing. Yes a channel manger would be great way.
  4. At end of the day the whole point is to take prepayments but not via BDC.
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Steve Geisler 1 year ago

What a helpful post, thank you BrookAve!! I have just gotten two properties set up on Booking after years with Airbnb & VRBO and... well, it's VERY different from both of them! I was wondering whether it was permissible to simply invoice guests through PayPal and it appears, if I understand your post correctly, that while I cannot integrate PayPal checkout into the booking process here, it's perfectly fine to just send the guest an invoice directly and let them complete payment at PayPal's website. Is that correct?

Is there a way to indicate that we will invoice guests through a third party? At Airbnb & VRBO, the listings are extremely customizable, you get to write your own copy for just about every section of the listing, but that is not at all the case on Booking. I suppose I will have to just add it to the "About the property" section of the Host profile, or do you have another suggestion?

We may yet set up payments through Booking, but I am not the owner, I only manage the bookings & listings so it is not up to me. 

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