Hotels either have their own ‘Online Booking Interface’ on their website or the service is outsourced from any third party service provider. Reservation through ‘Online Booking Interface’ works out cheaper to hotels since they do not require paying any commissions for the generated bookings.
A major flaw in most of the ‘Online Booking Interface’ of hotels or other third party service providers has been found recently. This flaw should never be allowed to go unnoticed by the Hotel. The flaw in the service may affect the Hotel Availability and thereby wrong revenue forecast. It could also reduce the profit levels of hotels.
The major Flaw in Booking Interface.
Most of the Booking Interfaces are meant to generate ‘Confirmed Room Reservations’ (Guaranteed by Credit Card) so the Hotel could keep the room unsold till the Guest’s arrival. If the guest doesn’t turn up Hotel has full right to charge the given credit card account for the retention charges as per the terms and conditions specified on the website. So most of the Hotels consider these reservations as guaranteed and block rooms for these guests without any doubt.
But all the assumptions that the Hotel can retrieve the retention charge in event of no-shows (Guest who is having reservation doesn’t arrive at hotel) stands good only if the provided Credit Card Details are valid enough.
Its found that in most of the ‘Online Booking Interface’ the validation of Credit Card is not done as it should have been. Anybody can make a booking at a hotels website and provide a credit card number. Most of the website checks whether the provided number’s algorithm (Each Credit Card Company has its own algorithm for Credit Card Numbers) is valid or not. They never check whether the Credit Card is valid or authorized. This helps the booker to fool the hotel easily by providing any number that matches the Credit Card Algorithm.
This flaw has been found in almost 70 percentage of the ‘Online Booking Interface’ used for Hotel Booking.
Its quite surprising to notice that even leading hotel chains still have ‘Online Booking Interface’ with this defect on their site.
Effect of Flaw.
Normally the booking received through the Hotel’s ‘Online Booking Interface’ directly updates the PMS system and hotel’s availability online. Hotels do not realize the genuinity of reservation until and unless they got to know that the credit card details provided are not valid one. By then it would have been too late for the hotel.
This flaw could generate booking which are not truly credit card guaranteed and might hinder the actual room availability and revenue forecast. If this defect is allowed to exist for long, hotels might end up making false forecast of availability and have many a room kept unsold and no ways to retrieve the retention charges.
How to resolve it??
Prevention is better than Cure. Log into your hotel website and make a dummy reservation for any date range. Provide the credit card details to guarantee your booking. For Instance One could select credit card type as ‘Visa Card’ and provide the Number as ‘4111111111111111’, Expiry date as any future date. If the site requires a CVV number then provide any three-digit number. (There can be various combinations of numbers that matches the algorithm of a credit card.) Then try submitting the Reservation.
If the website is not full proof, then the system shows that the booking has been confirmed. In this case one should either contact the service provider (Third Party Online Booking interface Providers) or the responsible Department in Hotel to rectify the same and get the ‘Online Booking Interface’ Full Proof and reliable. There are various ways to prevent this defect. In general one could reach any agency that provide ‘Credit Card Validity’ authorization and discuss about the effective implementation of service at their ‘Online Booking Interface’.
So its still not late to correct the defect on your booking interface. It‘s not far away that hotels will largely depend on ‘Online Booking Interface’ for most of their booking, so it’s the prime requirement to make the ‘Online Booking Interface’ secure enough to rely on.
