No-shows and invalid cards on booking sites: what to report, when, and what to keep

A no-show is a guest who neither arrives nor cancels. On Booking.com you can mark it from 00:00 on the check-in date until 48 hours after planned check-out, then charge only what the rate plan allows. Report an invalid card before 00:00 on check-in day. Keep a dated record of each step (Booking.com Connectivity Developer Documentation; confirm the current window and rules with your account manager).

It is 00:20. The room is empty, the card on file was declined three days ago, and the reservation is still sitting in the arrivals list. What the desk does in the next few minutes decides whether the hotel can charge, whether commission is due, and whether the guest's chargeback succeeds. This article gives you the two reporting windows, the rules for each payment model, and the record that wins a dispute.

What counts as a no-show, and what counts as an invalid card?#

They are two different reports with two different windows. An invalid card is a payment problem you raise before arrival; a no-show is an arrival problem you record once the check-in date begins.

A no-show is a guest with a confirmed reservation who does not arrive and does not cancel before the arrival date. It is not a late arrival, and it is not a same-day cancellation, which is a separate event with its own rules. For how to handle the guest at the desk itself, see hotel no-show handling: when to charge, release or reinstate.

An invalid card means the card on the reservation is expired, the number is wrong, or the card has insufficient funds, the three examples Booking.com's own documentation gives. The two reports do different jobs: the card report invites the guest to fix the payment, while the no-show mark closes the reservation and opens the door to a fee under your policy. Both are reports about the reservation, and both change what you are allowed to do afterwards, so neither belongs in a free-text note only.

A guest who calls at 01:00 to say the flight is delayed is a late arrival. Keep the room, write the call into the reservation, and do not mark anything.

Source: Booking.com, connectivity developer documentation, "Reporting API: Report reservation changes", accessed 4 November 2026.

How do I report an invalid card before arrival?#

Report it inside the platform's window, from the moment the booking appears until 00:00 on the check-in date in your local time, and let the platform ask the guest for a new card.

A channel manager or property management system can report it through the platform's reporting interface, the same interface connectivity partners use to send reservation changes; check the platform's Partner Help for the route available on your own extranet. Choose the reason that matches reality: expired, incorrect number or insufficient funds. A wrong reason weakens the hotel's position when the guest later disputes the charge.

The report covers the whole reservation, not single rooms. In a five-room group booking with one bad card, the platform treats all five rooms as affected, so decide before you press the button. The platform then emails and texts the booker with a deadline to enter valid details. That deadline depends on when the reservation was made relative to the planned check-in, so never promise a guest a fixed number of hours.

If the booker does not respond, the property may cancel the reservation, provided the conditions in the platform's Partner Help are met. Read those conditions for your own case instead of assuming the cancellation is automatic. Record the time of the report and the reason chosen; that timestamp is the first document in any later dispute.

When does a booking become a no-show?#

At 00:00 on the planned check-in date the reservation becomes eligible to be marked, and it stays eligible until 48 hours after the planned check-out date (Booking.com documentation, 4 November 2026).

Eligibility is not obligation. The window tells you when the mark is allowed, not when it is right; the arrival check at the desk still decides. Two conditions must hold: the reservation status must allow modifications, and the reservation must not be overbooked. If either fails, the mark will not go through, and the real problem is upstream in room allocation.

Once marked, the reservation can no longer be modified. The decision is one-way, so it belongs after the desk has confirmed the room is genuinely empty. Align the mark with night audit: night audit closes the business day, so releasing the room and posting the fee should happen in the same run rather than in two systems at two different times.

In a multi-room reservation, rooms can be marked individually. A group where two rooms arrive and one does not is handled room by room, unlike the invalid-card report. Write down who decided and at what time; the clerk working at 03:00 is rarely the person who answers the dispute six weeks later.

Where do I mark it, and what is the deadline?#

Through the channel manager or property management system that reports on your behalf, or by the route your platform's Partner Help describes, and always before the 48-hour window closes.

Pick one route per property. Marking in both the extranet and the channel manager creates two records that disagree, and the guest's complaint will quote the one that suits them. The window ends 48 hours after the planned check-out, not after the arrival date: a guest booked for three nights who never appears can still be marked two days after the date they were due to leave.

If the window closes, the mark can no longer be filed, and your own system and the platform may then tell different stories to the guest and to the card issuer. Check the status before starting; a locked or overbooked reservation will reject the mark, and retrying does not fix the cause. Keep the confirmation the platform returns, a reference, a timestamp or a visible status change, in the reservation file rather than in someone's inbox. A morning routine that catches these cases early is described in extranet routine: what to check on booking sites every morning.

What may I charge, and what happens to commission?#

Charge only what the rate plan and the payment model allow, and remember that waiving the no-show fee also removes the commission (Booking.com documentation, 4 November 2026).

The platform's rule is that no-show fees follow the cancellation policy the hotel has set on the platform, not a number invented at the desk on the night. For how to write that policy so it holds up, see hotel cancellation policy: how to write clear, consistent terms.

Hotel collect: the card is a guarantee, not a payment. You charge it under the policy, and a declined charge is a collection problem to handle separately, not a reason to change the no-show record. Virtual card: the card is issued for a defined amount and date range, so charge inside its validity window or the authorisation lapses and the money is gone. Prepaid and non-refundable: the money was usually taken at booking, so the no-show mark is a record of what happened, not a second charge.

If the hotel waives the fee, the platform does not charge commission for that reservation. If the hotel charges the fee, commission follows the normal rule. Never take a second charge for the same night from a card that was already charged at booking; two charges for one room night is the fastest route to a chargeback.

The payment models behind these rules are explained in OTA payment terms explained: hotel collect, OTA collect and virtual cards.

What record do I keep if the guest disputes the charge?#

Keep a dated trail that shows three things: the guest never arrived, the hotel reported the payment problem inside the window, and the charge matches the policy the guest accepted.

The file contains the reservation confirmation, the rate plan and cancellation policy as shown at booking, the invalid-card report with its timestamp, the platform's notice to the guest, the arrival-night check, the night audit report, the charge and the invoice. Screenshots must show the date, the reservation number and the platform's status, not just a room list; a picture of a blank room proves nothing.

No card numbers anywhere in the file. A dispute folder that contains card data creates a second, larger problem while solving the first. For a chargeback, answer inside the card scheme's deadline with the documents above; this article gives no legal advice, so confirm your own case with your bank and your adviser. The mechanics of chargebacks themselves are covered in hotel payment technology terms: virtual POS, 3D Secure, tokens and chargebacks.

Daily: at the end of each shift, list arrivals that never checked in and any card reported invalid that day, so nothing rolls into the next window unnoticed. Weekly: reconcile no-show marks in the platform against your own system, and look for marks that failed because the reservation was locked or overbooked.

Excluded on purpose: any card number, expiry date or security code.

What to do before the next night audit#

Write the two windows into your procedure: invalid cards can be reported until 00:00 on the check-in date, no-shows can be marked until 48 hours after the planned check-out. Then decide once, in writing, who is allowed to press the button and where the confirmation is filed, so the answer at 00:20 is a procedure rather than a judgment call.