rePUSHTI studied a year of booking mismatches to find out why they actually happen. Some of the most common reasons, from the State of Re-verification report.
A booking mismatch means money lost and reputation at risk. Travellers rely on their travel agent to get it right, and a booking error at the hotel undoes that trust in one visit — often for good, given how many other options a customer has.
A lot of mismatches happen for reasons that are genuinely out of either the agent's or the hotel's control. The best defence is understanding how they happen in the first place, which is what rePUSHTI set out to document in its State of Re-verification report.
Why booking mismatches happen
Among the most common reasons the report found:
- Booking not found (4.7% of errors) — the hotel never received the booking from the supplier, or it hadn't been processed at their end yet
- Property closed (2.8% of errors) — temporarily, for renovation, or permanently, with the agent unaware when the booking was made
- Cancelled (3.6% of errors) — by the guest or the supplier directly, sometimes for technical reasons on either side
Understanding which of these is actually behind a given error is what re-verification is for — catching it before the guest does.
