Offline booking

A reservation your property management system holds but could not fully process through the channel it came from.

The usual cause is payment. If a card does not clear, or the channel cannot complete payment processing in the background, the booking lands in an offline state rather than confirming normally.

Offline bookings are easy to overlook because they look like ordinary reservations in your calendar. They do not behave like them.

What typically breaks:

• Messaging. Channel messaging often is not supported for an offline reservation. Messages you send look sent and never arrive. The guest hears nothing until they turn up.
• Payment status. The money may not be collected, so the reservation shows a balance that will not resolve on its own.
• Cancellation handling. Freeing the dates can mean cancelling it yourself, which some channels record as a host-initiated cancellation, with a penalty and a fee attached.

What to do: contact the guest directly by email rather than through the inbox, and resolve the payment before arrival. Where a payment has clearly failed for good, check whether your PMS offers a specific payment-failure cancellation reason. Using it instead of a generic cancellation can keep the cancellation off your record and avoid the fee.

Related: [[Request to book]]