Temporary Overnight Guests in Existing Bookings: Billing & Reporting

Discuss Mews Products
, ,
1

Hi Community,

I’d like to ask how you are managing temporary overnight guests in long-stay and corporate bookings.

We often have long-stay guests who have an overnight visitor for only part of their stay, if their room category allows it. When we add the second guest to the booking, however, city tax and breakfast are recalculated for two guests for the entire stay, instead of only for the visitor’s actual dates. The only way to correct this is manually, which creates a lot of extra work.

There is also a reporting issue: if we don’t split the booking for the visitor’s exact arrival and departure dates, the additional guest is not correctly reflected in the Police Report or other emergency reports. Indeed, if the booking is not split, once the visitor checks out and their profile is removed from the booking, there is no longer a clear record linking the visitor to the booking, the dates of their stay, or the original guest they stayed with. On the other side, if the booking is split, further manual corrections are needed as items such as city tax are added again from the visitor’s check-in date based on the new number of guests.

The same issue occurs with corporate bookings where a double room is booked for single use. If an overnight companion arrives, the company should still be charged for one guest, while the visitor should pay their own city tax and breakfast separately.

We previously used the “+1 child” workaround, which allowed us at least to avoid triggering city tax and handle the additional charges separately, but this is no longer possible. The “keep old price” option doesn’t solve it either, as it subtracts the additional breakfast cost from the nightly room rate instead of charging it separately.

Is anyone else experiencing this, and is there a recommended setup that would allow us to charge the additional guest’s city tax and breakfast separately and only for their actual stay dates, while ensuring the additional guest is correctly recorded in the booking, in the Police Report and other relevant reports (e.g. emergency reports) for those dates?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

1 Like
2

Hello,

This is indeed a significant issue in Mews. As you mentioned, the only workaround currently available is to split the reservation.

However, there is an additional complication when it comes to products from your Bookable Services. Any product added either through a product rule or manually via the Items tab will automatically be added based on the total number of guests in the reservation, unless the product is configured to charge once, of course.

For example, if there is an extra guest who should pay City Tax and Breakfast separately, these products cannot simply be added to the reservation in the usual way. They would first need to be cancelled and then added separately through the Billing screen (Additional Services). This allows the charges to remain separate from the otherwise grouped postings associated with the reservation.

When adding products through the Billing screen, you can specify the consumption date, which is useful for assigning the charge to a specific day.

However, if the extra guest is staying for multiple nights, this becomes somewhat cumbersome, as you need to add the product separately for each night and specify a different consumption date for each entry.

So, unfortunately, while it is possible to achieve the desired setup, the current process requires quite a lot of manual work and is not particularly practical for longer stays.

It is also important that the reports remain accurate, especially in the event of an emergency when one needs to know exactly who is staying at the property.

Please consider voting for the feature request I created back in 2021. Every vote helps increase its visibility and hopefully brings it closer to being implemented:

3

I have voted for your idea and recommend everyone to vote too! The requirement in this thread would, however, be better addressed by share reservations I think, which is another idea really worth upvoting.

1 Like