Managing Direct Bookings
Where direct bookings show up in the PMS, what the guest can do for themselves, how cancellations and changes work, and what the property has to handle by hand.
A booking made on your storefront is an ordinary reservation. It takes inventory, opens a folio, pushes availability to your OTAs and moves through the same statuses as one typed in at the front desk. The only differences are how it arrived — Direct — and that the guest holds a private link to their own booking.
Where direct bookings appear
They appear everywhere reservations do:
- Bookings in the sidebar — one row per reservation, with a violet Direct badge in the source column.
- Calendar — the reservation's bar is labelled Dir and edged in violet.
- Front Desk — in today's arrivals like any other confirmed booking.
- The reservation detail sheet — click a row or a bar to open it. The Booking panel carries the Direct badge, and the Guest details tab holds the name, email, phone and country the guest entered, plus their estimated arrival time and anything they wrote in "Anything we should know?", which lands as the reservation's special requests.
Filtering by Direct — coming soon
The Source filter on the Bookings page currently offers only All sources, PMS and Channel. Until Direct is added, type direct into the search box — the search matches the source label, so it narrows the list to direct bookings.
The guest's confirmation code is not shown yet
The eight-character code on the guest's confirmation page and email is stored on the reservation but is not yet displayed in the PMS: for a direct booking the Booking panel shows Reservation number — Innvera's internal reference — instead, and the Bookings search does not match the guest's code. Find the booking by guest name, room type or arrival date for now.
What the guest can do
The link in the confirmation email is the guest's only way back to their booking. There is no account and no password. With it they can:
- View the booking — stay, guests, priced lines, total payable at the property, and the cancellation terms as they stand right now.
- Add it to their calendar.
- Cancel it, while your policy still allows it.
They cannot change dates, room, rate or occupancy. There is no self-service modification flow — a guest who wants a change has to contact you, and you make it in the PMS.
Treat the link as a credential
Anyone holding that link can cancel the booking, which is why the email tells the guest not to forward it. If a guest has lost the email, do not try to reissue the link — the token is created once and never re-issued. Look the booking up in the PMS and handle the change yourself.
Guest cancellations
Cancelling from the storefront is policy-aware, and the policy is the one you maintain under Policies → Check-in & Cancellation → Cancellation Policies. Nothing about it is specific to the booking engine — see Policies.
Whether the guest can cancel online. Only until the arrival moment, which is the arrival date at your check-in time, in your property's timezone. After that the button is gone and the page reads "This booking can no longer be cancelled online — please contact the hotel directly." A booking that is already cancelled, or already marked no-show, is likewise closed to self-service.
What it costs. The tier whose window the guest is still inside decides the figure, recomputed every time the page is opened so it is never stale:
| Tier charge | What the guest is quoted |
|---|---|
| No charge | Nothing |
| 1 night charge | One night's room charge, averaged across the stay |
| % charge | That percentage of the stay total |
| Full charge | The whole stay total |
Past every window you have declared, the strictest tier applies. If you have declared no cancellation tiers at all, cancelling is free — the property has not said otherwise.
Cancellation charges are quoted, not collected
Because the storefront is pay-at-property, a cancellation fee is told to the guest — on the confirmation page, in the email, and in the confirmation dialog — but nothing is charged and nothing is posted. If you intend to collect it, post the charge to the folio yourself. See Charges and postings.
What happens in the PMS. A guest cancellation runs the same path staff use: the reservation moves to Cancelled, the nights are released back to inventory, and the freed availability is queued to your OTAs. The guest's page confirms "Booking cancelled" and the reservation shows the new status at once. It cannot be reversed — see Cancellations and no-shows.
Cancellation emails — coming soon
Only the booking confirmation is emailed. A guest who cancels sees the outcome on the page but does not receive a cancellation email, and no notice is sent to the property. Keep an eye on the Bookings list, or watch for the availability change on your channels.
Modifications
Change a direct booking exactly as you would any other reservation: open it, change the dates, room, rate or occupancy, and the folio and channel pushes follow. See Modifying reservations.
Two things to remember:
- The guest is not told. There is no automatic email on a change. Tell them yourself.
- Their link keeps working and will show the booking as it stands after your change, including a recalculated cancellation position.
Money
Direct bookings are pay-at-property. The folio opens when the booking is made, with the stay's room charges and taxes already posted from the server's own pricing, and the guest settles at check-out like any walk-in or OTA guest. Deposits and prepayment are not part of the storefront, so anything you take before arrival is a posting you make by hand.
Duplicates and retries
A guest who double-clicks Confirm booking, or whose connection drops mid-submit, cannot create two reservations — the retry returns the booking that already exists. If you do find two genuine bookings for the same guest and dates, they were two separate attempts, minutes apart, and should be treated as a normal duplicate.
Promo codes — coming soon
The storefront has no promotional-code field, and there is nothing to configure for one in the PMS. To offer a direct-only price, create a rate plan and select it under Settings → Booking Engine → Rooms & rates without mapping it to any OTA.
Tips
- Check arrivals for Direct bookings the day before. Special requests and estimated arrival times arrive with the booking and are easy to miss if nobody looks.
- Keep your cancellation tiers honest. They are what the guest is shown, what they agree to at checkout, and what the front desk will be quoted back at them.
- Note the change on the reservation. Since no email goes out on a modification or cancellation, a reservation note is what tells the next shift the guest was already called.