Hi everyone,

We’ve configured payment policies in Mews for our main rate groups (“Non-Refundable,” “Best Available Rate,” and “Long Stay”) to automatically charge the guest’s credit card at the time of booking confirmation (mode: automatic, timing: confirmation, method: charge from payment card). This setup was mainly intended for direct bookings on our website, where we also want to enable alternative payment methods.

However, we’ve recently noticed that these automatic policies are also being applied to channel manager bookings (e.g., via Booking.com), which is causing issues. For every channel booking, we now receive an “Action required – failed to charge card” message, as we prefer to handle these payments manually.

I have two questions regarding best practices:

1. Rate groups vs. payment policies
   – Does it make sense to create separate rate groups for direct bookings and channel manager bookings (e.g., separate BAR, BAR 7 nights, NRF rates) to apply different payment policies?
   – Or is there a better way to assign different payment policies to individual rates (e.g., for Booking.com) without duplicating rate groups?
2. Best-practice setup
   – What is your recommended approach to ensure that automatic charging only applies to direct bookings, while channel bookings remain on manual processing?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best regards,

Julius