Can my customers pay the hotel directly on arrival instead of paying me upfront when I book through your hotel booking API?

Yes, in many cases, but only where the supplier behind that room is offering a pay on arrival rate, and plenty of hotels do not.

Hotel rates usually come through in one of two forms. Prepaid rates are settled at the time of booking, so you take the money from your customer, the supplier collects from you, and the voucher tells the hotel the room is already paid. Pay on arrival rates, sometimes called book now pay later, let the guest settle the room cost at the front desk themselves. Where a supplier marks a room that way, that information comes through the API, and it can be shown in your search results and on the booking screen so your staff can see which kind of rate they are confirming before they commit.

There are real limits here. Whether a room is offered on a pay on arrival basis is decided by the hotel and the supplier, not by us, and the same hotel can show a prepaid rate from one supplier and a pay later rate from another, so the choice is not always there. The hotel will normally still want a valid card at the time of booking to hold the room, and that card can be charged if the guest does not turn up or cancels late. Your own markup needs thinking about too, because if the guest pays the hotel directly you are not handling that money, so your margin usually has to be collected from the customer separately or recovered from the supplier afterwards, depending on how your account is arranged.

Before you promise this to a customer, read the rate conditions shown on the exact room you are about to book, and check with us how your markup should be collected on pay on arrival bookings under your plan.