If my customer cancels their hotel booking, can I cancel it myself on the portal or do I have to contact the supplier?

Yes, in most cases you can cancel a hotel booking yourself from the portal without contacting anyone, as long as the supplier behind that booking supports cancellation through the API. You would open the booking in your booking list, choose the cancel option, and the request goes straight to the supplier. If the supplier accepts it, the booking status updates and you get a cancellation reference you can pass on to your customer.

Whether cancellation is even allowed depends entirely on the rate your customer booked. Some hotel rates are fully refundable up to a deadline, some become non refundable after that deadline passes, and some are non refundable from the moment they are confirmed. The portal shows you the cancellation terms and the deadline before you confirm, and again on the booking itself, so you can check where you stand before you promise your customer anything. If the rate is non refundable, the cancel option will either be unavailable or will warn you that no money comes back.

The refund is a separate matter from the cancellation. Cancelling tells the supplier to release the room and stop charging you. Getting money back to your customer depends on how they paid and which payment setup you use, and it usually takes a few working days to clear through the card network. Some suppliers also hold back a fee even on refundable rates, so the amount returned to you may not match what you originally paid.

Before your customer books, check the cancellation deadline shown on the rate, and after any cancellation, keep the reference from the supplier in case there is a dispute later.