Can I stop my travel agency software from selling a hotel room when the rate has gone up since my customer searched?

Yes, in most cases you can. Travel agency software usually has a setting that compares the price shown in the search results with the price returned at the final confirmation step. If the two no longer match, the system can stop the booking and show the customer the new price instead of quietly going ahead at a rate that would leave you out of pocket. This matters because hotel rates and availability can change in the minutes between a search and a payment, especially during busy periods or for the last remaining rooms.

How strict you want to be is normally your choice. Some agencies prefer to block every booking where the price has moved at all, so there is never a surprise. Others allow a small tolerance upwards, because stopping a sale over a tiny difference loses business, and they absorb the gap out of their markup. You can often set this once and have it apply across the portal, and you can usually ask for the customer to be shown a clear message asking them to accept the new price before continuing.

Be aware that this depends on the supplier behind the room. Some hotel suppliers return a firm price at the confirmation step, which makes the check reliable. Others only reveal a change at the moment of booking, so the software can catch it but cannot warn the customer any earlier. If you work with several suppliers, the behaviour may not be identical across all of them, and what is available to you can also depend on your plan.

It is worth asking our support team to review how the price check is currently set on your portal and what tolerance, if any, is in place, so you know exactly what your customers will see when a rate moves.