Signing hotel contracts electronically: when a secure e-signature counts as a wet-ink signature

Article 5 of the Electronic Signature Law (Law No. 5070) gives a secure electronic signature, held on a personal certificate the signer alone controls, the same legal effect as a handwritten signature. Excluded: acts needing official form or a special ceremony, and guarantee contracts other than bank letters of guarantee and insurer suretyship bonds. A scan is not one.

An agency sends a rate agreement as a PDF, asks for a signed copy back by Friday, and the sales office has three tools in front of it: a scanned signature page, a portal button and a hardware token. They do not do the same thing, and one of them is the one the law treats like a hand signature. After reading this article you will be able to tell the four apart, know which document types the law keeps outside the secure electronic signature, and write a one-page signing rule for your own sales office.

What do people call an e-signature, and which kind does the law recognize?#

Four different things get called an e-signature in a hotel sales office, and only one of them carries the legal effect the law gives a handwritten signature.

A scanned signature image pasted into a PDF is a picture of a mark. It has no link to the person who made it and no link to the rest of the file. A click-to-accept on a portal or a booking page records that an account was used to press a button; it says nothing about who was at the keyboard. A one-time code by SMS or e-mail adds a second step to that click, but it is still an account-level confirmation, not a signature tied to one person's certificate.

The fourth is different. A secure electronic signature (güvenli elektronik imza) is produced with a certificate issued to one person and kept under that person's control, on a hardware token or a qualified device. Anyone can check it against the certificate, and the check fails if the file changes afterwards.

The distinction is commercial before it is legal. When a counterparty's finance team asks for "a signed copy", the useful question is which of the four you are about to send. Sales teams tend to collapse all four into the word "signed", and that is where the argument starts six months later.

What does the e-signature law say about the secure kind?#

Article 5 of the Electronic Signature Law (opens in a new tab) (Law No. 5070) says a secure electronic signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten signature.

The wording is short, and it is the whole basis: the same legal effect, not "similar", not "acceptable as evidence" (Source: Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi, Elektronik İmza Kanunu, Article 5, consolidated text, 13 November 2026). The mechanism behind that sentence is that the signature is created with a key the signer alone controls, and anyone can verify it against the signer's certificate. Change one character of the file after signing and the verification fails.

The practical consequence for a hotel is that an agency contract, an allotment agreement or a set of standard terms can be signed, returned and filed without printing, couriering or scanning anything. That is what makes secure electronic signature contracts in Türkiye a workable option for routine commercial paper.

Two things the article does not do. It does not prove that the signer was authorized to bind the company, and it does not make the contract's content lawful or fair. Those are separate checks, dealt with below. It also does not cover every document: the same article carries two exclusions, which the next section deals with.

Before you build a practice on it, confirm with your adviser that the certificate your counterparty uses is one the law recognizes. A signature tool that issues its own certificates is not automatically the secure kind.

Which documents still cannot be signed with a secure e-signature?#

Two groups: legal acts that the law subjects to official form or a special ceremony, and guarantee contracts other than bank letters of guarantee and suretyship bonds issued by insurers resident in Türkiye.

The exclusion is written into Article 5 itself, next to the equivalence, so the two have to be read together (Source: Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi, Elektronik İmza Kanunu, Article 5, consolidated text, 13 November 2026). "Official form" means the law prescribes a particular form or ceremony for that act. Where it applies, an electronic signature does not stand in for it, however good the certificate is.

The guarantee carve-out is narrower than it looks: bank letters of guarantee and suretyship bonds from insurers resident in Türkiye stay usable, other guarantee contracts do not.

Which of your own document types fall inside these two groups is a legal question, not a software question. Take the list of what your sales office signs most often to a legal adviser before you change any practice. Do not assume that a document is outside the exclusions because it is commercial, routine or low in value; the article does not grade by value. A safe interim habit is to keep the old ink route open for any document type nobody has yet confirmed as outside the exclusions.

Is a scanned signature on a PDF the same as a signature?#

No. A scan is a copy of a mark; it is not a signature with the effect Article 5 gives the secure kind.

What a scan shows is that a mark resembling a signature existed on a piece of paper at some moment. It does not show who made it, when, or whether the file around it was edited afterwards.

Evidence is a different question from signature. A scanned contract, the e-mail thread that carried it and a written confirmation can all be put before a court; how much weight they carry is for the court, and that is a question for your lawyer, not for the software. The everyday risk is version drift: the same scanned signature page gets attached to a revised contract, and the only record of which version was agreed is the e-mail trail.

If a counterparty insists on a scan, keep the paper original and log how it traveled: courier, hand delivery, which address, which date. Do not describe a scan as an "electronic signature" in your own correspondence; the phrase invites an assumption the file cannot support. The same reasoning applies to a photographed signature page sent from a phone.

Does an e-mail count when you warn, terminate or withdraw from a contract?#

Between merchants, the Commercial Code names the channels for default notices, termination and withdrawal: a notary, a registered letter, a telegram, or registered electronic mail sent with a secure electronic signature.

The rule is Article 18(3) of the Turkish Commercial Code (opens in a new tab) (Law No. 6102) (Source: Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi, Türk Ticaret Kanunu, consolidated text, Article 18, 13 November 2026). Signing method and notice method are two separate questions: a contract signed with a secure electronic signature does not turn a plain e-mail into a valid termination notice. Registered electronic mail is the electronic channel the article names, and it is named together with the secure electronic signature, not on its own.

Put the notice address and the accepted channel into the contract itself, so both sides know where a termination has to go before anyone needs to send one. Whether registration for registered electronic mail is compulsory for your own company is a separate question this article does not answer; confirm it with your adviser. The wider lesson: read the notice clause at signature time, because that is the clause you will need when the relationship has already broken down. For more on that clause in context, see the notice clause in a sample hotel and agency contract, section by section.

What rule should the sales office follow?#

Write one page that says which signing method is accepted for which document type, and who is allowed to accept it.

Tier one: the secure electronic signature, accepted for rate agreements, allotment contracts and standard agency terms, once the signer's authority has been checked. Tier two: click and one-time code confirmations, accepted only inside your own systems, for internal approvals, never as the signing method of a contract with a third party. Tier three: a scanned wet signature, accepted only where your own policy and your adviser allow it, with the paper original kept and logged.

Tier four: ink, and a notary where the document type calls for it, for anything inside the Article 5 exclusions and for documents the counterparty's own rules require in original. Name the person who may say yes, and the person who may say yes when the first is away; an unowned rule is not a rule. Record the decision on the contract file: method used, date, who verified the signer, and where the final version sits. Review the page once a year, or whenever a counterparty sends a signing tool nobody in the office recognizes.

If you also deal with agencies on certificates and payment terms, see agreements with travel agencies in Türkiye: certificates, terms and payment; if the contract is with a software vendor, read hotel software contracts: clauses to read before you sign before you apply the same rule.

Who is signing for the hotel, and where does the final copy live?#

Two failures cause most of the trouble: a signature from someone without authority, and no single place where the agreed version lives.

A certificate proves identity, not authority. Check the signer against the company's own records: the signature circular, the trade registry announcement, a board resolution where one is needed. If the company requires two signatures on a contract, one certificate does not satisfy that. Two people sign, with two certificates, or the document waits.

The certificate belongs to the person, not to the post. When the signer leaves, the certificate leaves with them, so plan a successor before the next renewal round.

Keep the signed file, the verification record and the timestamp together. A PDF on its own, without the record that shows the signature checked out, is harder to rely on later. Store the contract where the numbers it sets are used; a rate agreement that only exists in one manager's inbox is not a record, it is a memory. Name one folder or system as the final copy, and say in the signing rule that anything else is a draft. On keeping contracted rates and the contract that sets them in one system, see the hotel operating system page.

What to do next#

Write the one-page signing rule this week: list the document types your sales office signs most often, mark each with the method you accept, and take the Article 5 exclusions to a legal adviser before you change any practice. The pieces fit in one order: know which of the four things you are sending, know what the law gives that kind, know what stays outside it, and know who may sign and where the final copy lives.