Capturing payment details before confirming a direct reservation

Hi Esmeralda,

We have reported the same issue to Mews last year, unfortunately the only work around we have at the moment is to remove the confirm button from the quotation email template, send a seperate email with payment link and manually confirm once the payment link has been fulfilled. 

Would love to hear anyone else’s process. 

We do see the same issue here, but hope with the new automation feature we can sent an automatated email to the costumer with the link and set a task for reservation that the reservations has been confirmed.

You're right that this is a gap, and it caught us too. Two things to know about how Mews behaves here:

1. The quote/confirmation email does not force a card. A guest can confirm an optional reservation in one click with no payment method attached. So that email can't be your safety net, because it isn't one.

2. Optional reservations don't auto-expire. Mews shows a release date and highlights it, but it will never cancel the option for you. You release it manually.

So the fix is to stop letting the confirmation be the close, and make the card the close instead. How we handle it across our properties:

Best option, fully automated. Push the booking through your Booking Engine instead of taking it as an optional reservation in Commander. In the booking engine settings, turn on "Require payment or preauthorization for start." With that on, the booking can only confirm if the guest enters a card, and Mews preauthorizes or charges it at the moment of booking. No card, no booking, nothing for you to check afterwards. For a phone enquiry, just send the guest your booking engine link with the dates and rate pre-set. It's the closest thing to "card entry triggers the confirmation," and it's hands off.

If you need to keep it in Commander as a held option. Attach a deposit to the rate group (Settings, Services, your stay service, Rate groups, enable "Use settlement deposits"). Then instead of the plain confirmation email, send a payment request for the deposit. The guest can't pay it without entering a card, so the card becomes the gate. Once it's paid, you confirm. If they never pay, you release the option on the release date. To make that fast, save a Reservations filter for optional bookings and clear the unpaid ones in one pass each morning instead of checking them one by one.

Backstop before arrival. Turn on online check-in with payment validation (Settings, Services, your stay service, Options). Any confirmed reservation that slipped through without a card is then forced to provide one before the stay.

And since this should really be native, put it on feedback.mews.com (force a card on option confirmation, and auto-expire unpaid options). Worth upvoting so it gets built properly.

I can share the exact deposit and preauth settings we use if you want them.

Erick
The Haus Group

Hello ​@Erick Adorno , 

Although I understand and agree with your workaround, I think there’s a simpler solution that would make a lot of sense: a setting to “require credit card to confirm reservation.”

An Optional or Inquired reservation should not be confirmable in the Guest Portal unless credit card details have been provided. In my opinion, this is a feature currently missing in Mews, and it would help properties better control the reservation confirmation process without adding unnecessary complexity.