Can I see the cancellation deadline for a hotel room before I confirm the booking so I can tell my customer?

Yes, in most cases you can see the cancellation terms before you confirm, because the supplier sends them along with the room rate during the search and the booking step. So your staff can read the deadline on screen, repeat it back to the customer, and only then take payment.

How clear those terms are depends on the supplier. Some send a tidy deadline date and time, plus what would be charged if the customer cancels after it, and we show that on the room. Others send the terms as a paragraph of text written by the hotel, which reads less neatly but still tells you what you need to know. Rooms that cannot be cancelled at all are normally marked as non refundable, and those are usually the cheaper rates, so it is worth checking before you sell on price alone.

Two things to keep in mind. The deadline is almost always in the local time of the hotel, not your own time zone, so a booking that looks safe until the evening may already be past the cutoff where the hotel is. And the terms belong to the supplier and the hotel, not to us, so we pass them through exactly as received rather than rewording them. If a supplier changes its policy on a rate, the new terms come through on the next search rather than on a booking you already made.

Before you confirm anything, read the cancellation box on the room you have chosen and copy that wording into the confirmation you send your customer, so there is no argument later. If a particular supplier keeps sending terms that are too vague to work with, tell our support team and we will look at what that connection is actually returning.