Optimization of card payments/pre-authorizations (Booking channel)

Hello everyone,

We wanted to share with you an important need we currently have in booking management, especially regarding customer cards coming through Booking.com.

Currently, we make a manual charge of 1€ through Paycomet (in a non-secure environment) to the cards of customers who have booked through Booking. This action serves as a filter to detect false cards or cards without funds, since we do not work with Booking virtual cards. When the operation is rejected, we consider it a possible no show reservation and we mark the card as invalid in Booking.

This applies only to Booking reservations, since it is the only channel with reservations without previous payment, and we prefer not to use the virtual cards of this portal.

Our request:

We would like to automate this process and optimize it from Hotelgest, with functionalities such as:

• The possibility to schedule payments or pre-authorizations depending on the booking channel (e.g. Booking), arrival date or cancellation policy (e.g. X days before check-in, once the free cancellation period is over).

• An amount X (e.g. €1 or the amount of the first night) can be automatically pre-authorized on the tokenized card via Paycomet. This operation should be possible in a non-secure environment, since the customer has not authorized a direct debit.

• More secure alternative: an automatic link can be sent to the customer to enter his card and it will be tokenized with a charge of 0€. If the customer completes this action, an amount could then be pre-authorized in a non-secure environment, as we would have proof that the customer previously validated the card.

• It would also be very useful to receive automatic alerts/notifications on the status of collections:

  • Which amounts have been successfully charged.

  • Which ones have been rejected.

  • To be able to mark these cards as invalid and then mark them in Booking.com and later access the portal and mark them as invalid cards so that the customer can add another card or if he/she passes ...