Can I let my customer pay the hotel directly at check out instead of paying me the whole amount upfront?

Yes, in many cases you can, but only where the supplier behind that room offers it. Hotel inventory usually arrives in two forms. Some rates are prepaid, which means the money has to be collected at the time of booking. Others are pay at hotel, where the guest settles with the property at check out and you are only holding the room. Our hotel booking API passes through whichever of those the supplier gives us for that particular room and date, so the choice is really made by the hotel and the supplier rather than by us.

When a pay at hotel rate is available, the API tells you so before you confirm, and you can show it to your customer as an option alongside the prepaid ones. Most pay at hotel bookings still need a card as a guarantee, because the property wants something to hold the room against and to charge if the guest does not arrive. You can decide whether to take your customer's card for that purpose or use your own company card, and it is worth settling that internally before you start selling these rates.

The part agents often miss is commission. If the guest pays the hotel directly, your markup is not collected through the booking at all, so you have to decide how you actually earn on it. Some agents charge a separate service fee at the time of booking, and others choose to offer prepaid rates only for exactly this reason. The software can record what is owed to you either way, but it cannot collect money that was never routed through you.

Have a look at what mix of prepaid and pay at hotel rates shows up in your searches for the destinations you sell most, then tell us how you want service fees handled so we can set that up for your account.