Booking.com - Fraud Prevention Best Practices

Below are best practices for fraud prevention with Booking.com.

📝  Ways to screen guests

On Booking.com, the user can update the settings to only accept guests who:

1. Have their phone number verified

2. Have a valid email address

3. Have had a previous stay on Booking.com (with good behavior, optional)

4. Provided their address details

5. Add an age limit to avoid younger guests (parties optional)

📝 Other Booking.com setup recommendations

1. Do not accept last minute reservations

2. Only accept 100% payment upon confirmation (non-refundable policy)

3. If you do not want to set up a non-refundable policy, you can join their ‘risk-free’ program, where if a a guest cancels and the room is not re-booked, Booking.com will take the cost.

📝  Guesty setup recommendations

1. Users should only accept 100% upon confirmation (following the non-refundable policy with Booking.com). This is in relation to AutoPayment rules, which the user can read more about in our Help Center 🔗here
2. Don't send a booking confirmation message until they have checked and confirmed that the payment, in fact, went through (this requires manually sending the message). The user can send a booking confirmation with a rental agreement or a link to a document where they can ask for additional information regarding the guest, which you require for handling their reservation.
3. OR send a booking confirmation message with no information (or with a rental/verification request) and send the check-in instructions only 2-3 days prior to check-in. This should be done only if the reservation was made more than 1 day, and as a general rule we recommend not allowing last minute reservations on Booking.com.
4. Ensure that the user has a security deposit/authorization hold set-up to hold funds prior to check-out in case damage was caused (possible with Stripe only).