"Is it possible that the staff member agreed to waive the cancellation fee by mistake?" - I don't think so - this staff member never allows free cancellation - I think that maybe a little 'lost in translation' might have been the cause.
We have asked BDC various times for this policy, but to no avail. I can't find it anywhere in their system.
Yes. From now on we will only allow guest cancellations or No-Shows.
The guest turned up at the hotel in a drunken group at 05.00h (a.m.) forcing the front door open and were aggressive to the night porter. They were 10 hours early for check-in and did not understand whey could not check-in to their room 10 hours early with extra friends! They left.
Later that morning the guest contacted the hotel and said that they had not read any of the terms and conditions of the reservation, and stated that they would not be needing the room and so would not be checking at from 15.00h. They understood that there would be no refund against their Non-Refundable reservation.
The staff member contacted BDC by telephone to cancel the reservation - the reason for cancelling the reservation was marked as 'Guest Misconduct'. Even though the guest was not going to be staying in the hotel that night, we wanted to protect ourselves and make sure that they would not be able to reserve here in the future.
Unbeknown to us, the BDC policy is that once a reservation is cancelled for Guest Misconduct the reservation is cancelled free of charge.
Andrea, we asked that same question about a 'guest trashing your place' and we were told that we should set a damage deposit for every reservation.
You say "A nice way to provide this information to the guest is to send them an email after the reservation was made, explaining all conditions of the deal"
Do you really think that it is "nice" to suprise guests with extra terms and conditions only once they have made their reservation?
We now understand that we wanted to do cannot be done on Booking.com but we think it is truly shocking that you are advocating deceiving guests by not being transparent with the terms and conditions!
We like the photo idea, however we don't think that it is fair that a guest should have to look at every photo just incase there maybe some important terms and conditions about their reservation on one of the pictures.
The terms and conditons of a reservation should be obvious and available for the guest to see along with all the other information regarding the reservation before they actually make and confirm the reservation.
There should be no 'after confirmation' suprise amendments to the terms and condition.
BDC would not allow us to add the text to the fine print as they deemed it not important enough.
We don't feel comfortable suprising guests with 'extra' terms and conditions either once they have made their reservation or even worse once they have arrived at the hotel. To us it is not fair practice and we were surprised with BDC would consider it acceptable.
We continue to sell more and more half board rates through our our own website and are about to add beverage package too.
Maybe.
The strange thing is that in the reservation details in the extranet, it says "You have cancelled this reservation because your property has closed"!
When I questioned, BDC were unable to explain this! Our property is not closed, nor was it closed!
Hi Andrea.
"Is it possible that the staff member agreed to waive the cancellation fee by mistake?" - I don't think so - this staff member never allows free cancellation - I think that maybe a little 'lost in translation' might have been the cause.
We have asked BDC various times for this policy, but to no avail. I can't find it anywhere in their system.
Yes. From now on we will only allow guest cancellations or No-Shows.
Thanks for your advice!
The guest turned up at the hotel in a drunken group at 05.00h (a.m.) forcing the front door open and were aggressive to the night porter. They were 10 hours early for check-in and did not understand whey could not check-in to their room 10 hours early with extra friends! They left.
Later that morning the guest contacted the hotel and said that they had not read any of the terms and conditions of the reservation, and stated that they would not be needing the room and so would not be checking at from 15.00h. They understood that there would be no refund against their Non-Refundable reservation.
The staff member contacted BDC by telephone to cancel the reservation - the reason for cancelling the reservation was marked as 'Guest Misconduct'. Even though the guest was not going to be staying in the hotel that night, we wanted to protect ourselves and make sure that they would not be able to reserve here in the future.
Unbeknown to us, the BDC policy is that once a reservation is cancelled for Guest Misconduct the reservation is cancelled free of charge.
Andrea, we asked that same question about a 'guest trashing your place' and we were told that we should set a damage deposit for every reservation.
Hi Community Admin.
Thank for your message.
You say "A nice way to provide this information to the guest is to send them an email after the reservation was made, explaining all conditions of the deal"
Do you really think that it is "nice" to suprise guests with extra terms and conditions only once they have made their reservation?
We now understand that we wanted to do cannot be done on Booking.com but we think it is truly shocking that you are advocating deceiving guests by not being transparent with the terms and conditions!
Thank you for your time.
It has been over 18 months since we received BDC's slightly odd advice so we feel that it won't happen.
On a website so large everything has to be very generic and not tailored to individual hotels or seasonal hotels. It is a shame.
Hi M Adamopoulou,
We like the photo idea, however we don't think that it is fair that a guest should have to look at every photo just incase there maybe some important terms and conditions about their reservation on one of the pictures.
The terms and conditons of a reservation should be obvious and available for the guest to see along with all the other information regarding the reservation before they actually make and confirm the reservation.
There should be no 'after confirmation' suprise amendments to the terms and condition.
Hi Barry,
BDC would not allow us to add the text to the fine print as they deemed it not important enough.
We don't feel comfortable suprising guests with 'extra' terms and conditions either once they have made their reservation or even worse once they have arrived at the hotel. To us it is not fair practice and we were surprised with BDC would consider it acceptable.
We continue to sell more and more half board rates through our our own website and are about to add beverage package too.
Hi Barry, Thanks for your answer.
We tried to add it to the fine print but were told by BDC that it was not important enough text to be considered 'fine print'.