What should I do if my customer arrives at the hotel and the front desk says it has no record of the booking?

Yes, this can almost always be sorted out, and the first thing to know is that the property usually does hold the reservation even when the front desk cannot see it straight away. When a booking is confirmed through the portal, the supplier passes it to the hotel and returns a confirmation reference. That reference is printed on the voucher your customer carries, and it is the single most useful thing they can hand over at check in.

Most of these moments turn out to be a search problem rather than a missing booking. Hotels often file a reservation under the supplier or the wholesale account rather than the guest, or the guest name has been entered in a different order or spelling from the passport. Asking the desk to look up the confirmation reference on the voucher, instead of the guest name, clears up a great many of them within a minute or two.

If the room genuinely is not there, because the hotel has sold out or has closed a floor, the supplier support team is the one that handles it, and they will normally arrange a comparable room at another property nearby. How quickly that happens, and what the customer is entitled to, does depend on the supplier and on the type of rate that was booked, so it is honest to say that you will get it fixed rather than to promise a particular outcome on the spot.

Make sure every voucher you send goes out with the confirmation reference clearly on it, and keep a note of how to reach supplier support out of hours, so you are not searching for it while a tired customer stands at a desk.