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Best ways to require personal credit card before check-in if reservation was paid by OTA virtual credit card?

  • 5 March 2023
  • 3 replies
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AndrewN
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Do any MEWS community members out there have tips on best practices to get the guest to provide their own personal card to hold for any future damages if they have booked through an OTA that pays by virtual card from the OTA?

 

Our property policies require full payment prior to check in.  We require a personal credit card to be on file in case there are damages or incidentals.  Typically the personal credit card use to make the payment will be also held on file for damages or incidentals.

 

This works except in the case where a guest has pre-paid the OTA like Booking or Expedia, and then the OTA gives us a virtual credit card to charge for the payment.  The virtual card can only be charged for the amount of the reservation; not for any other costs for damages.

 

We want to require a personal credit card to be on file before the guest is allowed to check in.   

 

We are not seeing a way to automate this or make it a requirement to be completed before check in is allowed.

 

Front desk employees have to manually ask guests to provide a credit card in cases where the reservation was paid by virtual card.  

 

Anyone else faced this problem and found a good solution?

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Best answer by MarketaOupi 8 March 2023, 15:15

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MarketaOupi
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Hi Andrew!

This is Markéta from Mews, thanks for this question! 🙌🏻

There is no great solution for this at the moment, the card details are not even with Mews, and due to security reasons we will never have the full CC details.

Clients pay to the OTAs, I was thinking of charging some extra amount for the incidentals (which is currently not possible), but this extra amount would cost hotels the OTA commission, so that is not an effective solution.

If the clients go through the online check-in, they need to fill in the card and like that, you can charge the incidentals on this card.

We are also working on adding pre-authorization capability for Kiosk, but this will only be when it is paired with a Mews terminal.

Have a great day! ⭐

Markéta

Markéta - Community Coordinator @ Mews
Sanne
Userlevel 4
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Hi Andrew!

As long there is no solution within Mews, a “work-around” would be using the email templates. Not sure if you are using them, but if you try to emphasize (f.e. in the before start email) a benefit for the guest if they enter their personal cc details, guests are more likely to do so. So I would look at it from a guest journey perspective - and maybe create an attractive text with your marketing team.  

Have nice day! 

Regards, Sanne 

DanS.
Userlevel 3
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We just came back from ITB and had met with several guest comm’s companies.. too many if you ask me. And if you decide to turn off Mews mailing, then some of these other suppliers could request that the guest fills in all details including CC.

We spoke with Akia, Runnr, Duve, Hotel Network, HiJiffy, and and and… some can ask for CC and some can’t.

Dan

#beexcellenttoeachother

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