09 Jun
Booking mismatches are more common than you think and are one of the biggest issues plaguing the travel and tourism industry. A booking mismatch can be defined as the mismatch or incompatibility between what the customer has placed an order for and what they receive. In a hotel booking, it can mean a long list of things.
Customers often ask for facilities or have specific demands for their hotel stay. When these requests are not met despite being specified, customers become disgruntled. A booking mismatch is not just limited to what the customer gets, it also includes all types of booking errors. Anything that is missing from the parameter of the booking can count as a booking mismatch.
Let’s say for example if the hotel has advertised that it has a pool and but on arrival, the customer finds that the pool is closed/under renovation, it’s counted as a booking mismatch. All of this serves to sour a customer’s experience. This will reflect poorly on the travel agent who sets up the booking.
To avoid booking mismatches, it is essential to understand them. There are different reasons for mismatches to occur and any of these can easily ruin your brand reputation and cause monetary losses. Preventing booking mismatches starts with understanding the reasons for booking mismatches.
Reasons For Booking Mismatch
A recent report by rePUSHTI throws light upon the primary reasons for booking mismatch. A sample size of 7149 was shortlisted for re-verification. Of this, 1627 bookings (22.76%) were flagged as booking errors during the re-verification process.
Here are the 6 primary reasons for mismatches based on this report.
Booking Not Found
It was found that out of all the booking errors, 4.7% of the total booking errors were about booking not reflected or being available in the hotel’s system. This usually happens when the hotel has not received the booking from the supplier or bookings have not been processed at the hotel.
Property Closed
Of the total errors, 2.8% of the booking errors were about the property being closed. There can be many reasons for this. The property could be temporarily or permanently closed for various reasons. However, travel agents and companies often book hotels without realizing that the hotel is closed.
Cancelled
Bookings are sometimes cancelled. There could be various reasons why this happens. Of all the booking errors, 3.6% were due to a booking being cancelled. Cancellations can happen due to various reasons. Supplier or Guest can also directly cancel the booking at the hotel.
Payment Issues
1.2% of the total booking errors were due to payment issues. Payment issues occur when the traveler has paid the travel agent but the reconciliation of payment between the supplier through whom the travel agent has booked the hotel hasn’t happened. Issues like VCC not authorized, lack of agent response, or partial payment are all considered payment issues.
Booking Confirmed With Mismatch
12% of the total booking errors are the booking that was reverified. Such bookings have one or more parameters that do not match with details provided during the booking.
Other Reasons For Booking Error
1% of the total booking mismatches happen for various reasons. Causes can vary, hotels may refuse to re-verify bookings with a third party or the hotel had the booking but cannot confirm it, etc many more reasons.
Here are some booking mismatch scenarios and how they are bad for your travel agency!
This data has been extracted from the ‘State of re-verification report published by rePUSHTI. In the last one-year rePUSHTI, re-verified booking from 50+ different suppliers in 14 languages, across 40+ different countries. We have consolidated all of the learning about booking re-verification and the challenges faced by travel agencies in this report along with the solution to tackle these challenges in this report.
If you are a travel business that wants to do booking re-verification and avoid booking mismatches, get this report to have a deeper understanding of how booking re-verification works and what it can do for your business! Click here to get this report for FREE!
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