Unfortunately, bad actors can always make bookings with fraudulent credit cards. And they do, evermore frequently. There can be a variety of reasons for this – hoteliers should determine their policies and procedures, within jurisdictional requirements, to handle bookings as they believe is best.
We suggest options for hotels as follows:
At the least, hotels should validate credit cards placed on bookings daily. They can do this by reviewing the prior days bookings out of their PMS and validate the card for a nominal amount to ensure the number is valid.
Better, a hotel can require a deposit. This can be of a nominal amount or for a partial or full stay, and refundable or not, depending on their need/jurisdiction. This can then be processed in a variety of ways:
As with #1 in a manual method for the day’s prior bookings
Using a payment processor connected to their PMS that automatically processes bookings upon receipt from any source. They will need to check for rejected cards regularly.
Using a payment processor that intercepts the booking after being made via the CRS, processing the payment (or lack of payment if not approved/valid) and sending to the PMS for hotel review. They will need to check for rejected cards regularly.
Using a payment gateway connected to the booking engine, which will process the payment during the booking process – and rejecting it if not approved/valid.
Hotels should ensure their booking requirements meet the needs to dissuade fraud but aren’t too stringent to turn away business – for instance, if all hotels in the market require a credit card hold only, but the hotel chooses a fully prepaid booking, they may lose bookings – perhaps a option #2a or b would be better in that situation.
A note that by handling the above this would also better manage transaction costs and, likely, reduce cancellation rates. Also note that SynXis Pay will be rolling out globally late in 2026 to offer an easier way of implementing the above.
