Will I be charged a cancellation fee for a reservation made on Booking.com?

Question

I made a reservation on Booking.com for my bachelorette party in September. I needed to cancel one of the three rooms since a couple of my guests recently had a death in their family and contributing to funeral costs is going to keep them from being able to attend. I called the hotel and they cancelled one of my rooms and said that there would be no fees since I called so far ahead of time.

I checked my policy for cancellation on booking.com after getting the cancellation number and it said that cancelling or modifying my reservation would lead to me being charged $1000+. I sent in a request to cancel because they said that they would contact the hotel and see if they could get it waived as it is the hotels policy anyway (which had already been waived by the hotel when I spoke to them earlier).

The email I received from booking.com yesterday said that unfortunately the hotel refused to waive the cancellation fee? I'm not sure if I should have contacted booking.com before I spoke with the hotel since I'm thinking this might be a mixup since my room was already cancelled.

Do I still need to contact booking.com and speak with them on this? The third room is still listed in my online booking. This is my first time using this site and I've not had this happen before.

And since the hotel told me that I would not be charged for cancellation and booking.com says that it is dependent on the property whether or not I would be charged, will booking.com hold them to that?

Answer 1

First of all, condolences for your party on their loss.

I believe the booking.com fee is if you cancel the entire reservation, and between booking and the hotel, the hotel is the one that will actually enforce the fees and demand them (booking.com is just a broker).

So for any further communication regarding your reservation, I would recommend speaking directly with the hotel - I usually do the same.

The only reason I would go back to booking is if I were to cancel the entire reservation and especially if it was prepaid.

Finally - congratulations on your wedding =)

Answer 2

previous answer is wrong. Any booking with booking.com should be handled via booking.com. The hotel is not able to make any modification.

Multiple times I needed to modify a reservation, and asked directly to the hotel reception. They told me I should have spoken with booking.com because they cannot touch a reservation made with booking.

So, just to be on the safe side, you ask to the hotel if they are ok in not charging any fee.

Then you call booking and explain the situation. They will call the hotel and solve the problem.

Please consider that if your reservation has a "no cancellation policy" you will have hard times trying to cancel without having to pay fees.

Answer 3

It depends on how it was billed. If you booked through the OTA and they collected payment upfront, then yes, you would want to start with the OTA. If you reserved through the OTA and used your own CC information for billing upon check in then you'd go through the hotel, because they would be the party that charges you, not the OTA. A hotel can cancel OTA reservations, but it is not a good practice and they should be directing back to the OTA because they charged you, not the hotel. Um, as far as the 1000+ fee, that's a bunch of bull. I find it interesting that on these OTA sites they will say things can't be canceled per the hotels policy. That is really not the case. A hotel can cancel OTAs. They can cancel as long as it falls within the hotels policy. If the hotel cancels an OTA reservation before the check in date, the hotel has not been paid and therefore the cancellation would not create a refund because the OTA has the money. I just had my own situation where I went to check in and the hotel could not offer me a room. So they cancelled the reservation and refunded the virtual credit card that the OTA submitted to pay the hotel. When I contacted this OTA and advised them of the situation, they are trying to collect a 30 recovery fee for their efforts in trying to get me a refund. They did nothing and the hotel already returned the funds, but they are still trying to keep 30 out of a 51.00 rate. Mind you, I work in the hospitality industry and manage the front desk. So, basically I am going to have to dispute the entire charge because this OTA wants to take my money as a recovery fee, which they did nothing to recover it. The name so you are all aware is Super Travel. You have been warned.