Playbook, hotel
Whoever took the payment is the only one who can send it back
Most hotel refund messages are not disputes about whether money is owed. They are people trying to work out where their money went and who is holding it, and in this trade that is genuinely complicated. A prepaid agent booking, a card charged at the desk, a deposit taken by reservations and a hold that never became a charge are four different sums with four different routes back. Establishing which of the four this is does more than any refund policy.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The hotel frequently never touched the money. On a prepaid agent booking the guest paid the site, the site settles with the hotel later, and no amount of goodwill at the front desk puts anything back on that guest's card.
- A released pre authorisation is mistaken for a refund and for a missing refund at the same time. Nothing was taken, so nothing comes back, and the pending line simply stops appearing at the guest's bank's own pace.
- A charge questioned at checkout is a folio adjustment made before the card is settled, which is faster and mechanically different from a refund, and only possible while the guest is still standing at the desk.
- City tax, a facility charge, the car park and a bar tab all sit on the same folio as the room and can each be adjusted on their own, so a guest asking for a refund usually means one line rather than the whole stay.
How it arrives
- we cancelled a week ago and nothing has come back
- we booked through an app who refunds us
- there is a charge on our card we dont recognise
- can you refund the breakfast we didnt have
- how long does a refund take to show up
- we were charged for the minibar and never opened it
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which party holds the money on each booking channel | Direct card payment, a deposit taken by reservations, payment at the desk, a prepaid agent booking, a corporate account billed later. One line each saying who took it and therefore who returns it. This short paragraph answers more refund messages than the refund policy does. |
|---|---|
| The difference between a hold, a charge and an adjustment | Written for a guest rather than for accounts. What a pre authorisation looks like on a statement and what becomes of it, what a folio adjustment is, and why an adjustment is only available before the card has been settled at checkout. |
| What is refundable on the folio, line by line | The room, breakfast taken or not taken, city tax, the car park, the minibar, a late checkout charge. Guests dispute one line and get answered as though they had disputed the stay, which is how a two figure argument becomes a three figure one. |
| The timescale you can honestly state | How long a refund takes to leave the hotel, and the plain fact that how long it takes to appear belongs to the guest's bank. Publish the first and disclaim the second. A single combined figure will be wrong for somebody and it will be quoted back. |
The reply
The first thing to work out is who took the payment, because whoever did is the only party who can send it back. A booking made through a travel site was paid to that site under its terms, and the refund comes from them rather than from the hotel [1]. If a card was charged here at the desk, the money goes back to that card, and the terms give the time it takes to leave us, though how long it takes to appear is your bank's business [2]. It is also worth checking whether the amount is a pre authorisation rather than a charge, since a hold shows on a statement for a while and then simply stops. I cannot see a folio or a payment, so leave me your name, the email on the booking and your dates and reservations will look at it.
It reorders the question: the guest asked when the money is coming and the answer they need is who has it. The pre authorisation is raised unprompted, because a real share of these messages are about a sum nobody ever charged. Naming the bank as the source of the remaining delay is accurate and stops the desk being chased for something it has already done.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest names an amount, disputes a line on a folio, says a refund was agreed and has not arrived, or wants money back on a stay already taken.
I cannot see payments, folios or refunds, and I am not going to guess where an amount came from. Give me your name, the email on the booking, your dates and the amount you are looking at, and reservations will check the folio and come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a refund has been issued, is on its way, or will land by a particular day, because nothing here can see a payment.
- Never agree to refund a folio line such as breakfast, a minibar charge or a car park fee, which is a decision for whoever has the folio in front of them.
- Never tell a guest who prepaid a travel site that the hotel will refund them, when the hotel was never paid by that guest at all.
- Never call the release of a pre authorisation a refund, since a guest told to expect money back will spend a fortnight chasing money that was never taken.
Questions
- Can it tell a guest whether a refund has gone through?
- No. It has no view of the property system, the card machine or any account. It explains the four routes, asks which one applies, and hands over with the dates and the amount already captured so the answer takes one look.
- Most of our refund messages are agent bookings. Is that fixable?
- Largely, if the position is published as its own paragraph rather than as a clause inside the terms. It is the same answer every time and it is the one the desk least enjoys giving, which is exactly the profile of something worth writing down once.
- Should we publish how long refunds take?
- Publish your half of it and say plainly that the rest sits with the guest's bank. Hotels that quote one all in figure spend the difference answering a second message from everybody whose bank was slower than the average.
Keep reading
- Everything for a hotelRate inclusions, check in times, parking and room accessibility answer well. Live availability and a named reservation do not.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- The folio, the invoice and the booking somebody else paid forFinance wants the company name on it and the tax on its own line, and the desk can only invoice for money the hotel actually took.
- Sold out tonight is not sold out on ThursdaySold out is a moment rather than a verdict: cancellations and a group release date reopen rooms, and none of it is visible from a chat window.
- Is anybody on the desk at three in the morningWhether the desk is manned all night, whether the door locks at eleven, and what a guest can get at three when the kitchen shut at ten.
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