Why does the hotel need credit card details when booking? Reservation booking-hotel asks for a card from me

Many people around the world go on new journeys every day. Someone is going to a neighboring city for a simple walk, a meeting of classmates or a concert of their favorite band, while others go abroad for an independent vacation or for work. It does not matter for what reason a person enters a new city, but if he does not have acquaintances or relatives there, then it becomes necessary to find suitable housing.

It is the search for a place to live that becomes the most difficult task for people who are faced with a new culture. After all, many hotels do not provide sites in Russian, and those who do not know the language can immediately forget about a telephone conversation. When renting a house, you need to understand exactly where the hotel is located. In order not to stay overnight on the street, you can use the wonderful accommodation selection system - Booking.com.

What is Booking

This service is very popular all over the world. Its main feature is that here you can find a cheap roof over your head in a matter of minutes. Many filters allow you to navigate by:

• price per night;
• the availability of rooms;
• additional services;
• location, etc.

Important! According to the statistics provided by the site staff, 300,000 rooms are booked per day from Anapa to Paris.

Booking scam

Tourist looking for accommodation

New users often wonder if hotels can cheat on Booking. An interesting feature is the constant alerts about which country they just booked a room in the selected hotel from. So you can understand how popular this place is with domestic and foreign tourists.

A huge selection of placements makes you use this particular resource. Regardless of where you plan to vacation, you can always find a lot of options, the only exceptions are North Korea and a few other countries. In total, users of the site have more than 200,000 hotels, inns and hostels from 164 countries at their disposal.

Note! The company always guarantees the possibility of booking a hotel without additional charges. Various promotions are also constantly held, which lure visitors to certain hotels at a reduced price.

Therefore, when answering the question of how best to book a hotel through Booking or directly, you can confidently choose the first option.

The service itself does not receive a cent from the client. Due to this, the possibility of fraud on Booking is completely excluded, the remuneration for found visitors comes from the hotels themselves.

How secure is Booking

Many people visiting the site for the first time talk about doubts about whether it is safe to book on Booking.com. This is a well-founded reaction, because when booking a room, Booking requires you to enter a CVC / CVV code, a number bank card and indicate the expiration date of the card.

Any person will begin to worry when he is forced to provide such data. At the same time, fears disappear if you figure out why Booking is requesting card data.

Entering card data

The subtleties of working with Booking

It must be understood that direct payment for housing occurs directly at the time of settlement, the site does not write off money. At Booking they ask you to enter the card number b cvc code to guarantee the reservation. The only measure for the hotel is to conduct a direct pre-authorization. This feature allows the hotel staff to freeze the required amount for the payment of the stay, having received proof that the guest will check in.

Once you have checked in at the hotel, you should check to see if frozen funds are available. If they have not been unlocked, immediately after entering, you should ask the administrator to do this.

Important! Sometimes banks can delay the release of finances up to 30 days, so you need to be prepared for this and take enough funds.

Sometimes attentive website visitors can find several different price offers for one room and think about whether it is safe to book a hotel on Booking.com. Such situations do happen, and there is nothing surprising in this.

A reduced rate room may have some restrictions, the most popular of which are:

• the inability to cancel the reservation;
• food is not provided;
• The discount is only valid on certain dates.

Therefore, you should carefully check each offer on the site. Seeing good price, many tourists reach for the "Book now" button and then get frustrated when they do not receive breakfast or a wi-fi password.

Do not book until a visa has been obtained. Having booked a room through booking.com and providing confirmation from the site to the consul at the interview, he will not take it into account. In this regard, it is better to first obtain a visa, and then go to the site to find a suitable place to stay.

It also attracts the opportunity to completely free of charge cancel the reservation 1 day before arrival. This is very convenient if the trip suddenly breaks down or is postponed. Thanks to this opportunity, the client does not risk absolutely nothing and will not lose funds, as in the case of prepayment.

Important! Some hotels are tightening the rules and allow you to cancel your reservation 3-7 days before check-in. You should re-read the booking rules if there is an emergency and you need to cancel the trip.

How data is protected

To make sure that the Booking.com website can be trusted, you should understand how exactly data is protected. This service would not become so popular if it did not have a good security system. The peculiarity of Booking is that the data is sent to the hotel by fax. It seems that this method is outdated, but in fact it is the most reliable, because it cannot be hacked. Archival records with all personal data of clients are destroyed by the hotel staff within a week from the date of eviction of the guests.

Note! There have been cases when unscrupulous hotel employees illegally deducted funds from customer cards. But this happens extremely rarely and only in little-known hotels.

Booking cares about its reputation, in the event of such a violation of the law, the hotel is disconnected from the system, due to which it incurs significant losses. In addition, the client can always ask what to do in such a situation by contacting law enforcement agencies.

money theft

In the event of a leak of funds from the guest's bank card, the hotel will be punished. Upon receipt of personal data of guests, the hotel undertakes to ensure their safety. If she does not do this, then she violates the law and the terms of the contract, which causes significant reputational losses, because now no one wants to stay in a hotel where funds from the card can be stolen.

Important! Despite this, it is still worth being safe from fraud. You can set a limit for withdrawing funds through Internet banking.

The advantage of the site is that it does not take any funds from users. His competence ends only with the transfer of data, and then the hotel makes a request for transactions. Due to this, when withdrawing excess funds, you can always challenge the operation.

Therefore, each client knows who to ask, to whose address to write a statement to the police or sue. It also allows us to say that scammers do not sit on Booking. Therefore, the question of whether guests are being deceived at Booking can be considered closed.

Comparison with other services

On the Internet, there are often similar services that provide services on more favorable terms. In such situations, it is necessary to understand how much the Booking analogue can be trusted. Sometimes they may voice a request for an upfront payment, or allow data leaks. In this case, it is better to refuse to use this resource. This site uses the most modern security system, which allows you to answer the question of whether it is possible to enter the card number on Booking without hesitation, in the affirmative.

Data protection

Booking.com provides services on excellent terms, and it also ensures the safety of the finances of its users. A huge number of visitors are the most important confirmation of the safety of the service and the fact that there are no scams on Booking. Not a single year thousands of travelers around the world use it, and cases of data leakage are rare. That is why Booking was able to take a leading position among such companies, and its settlement system with hotels is called trust.

06.02.18 95 263 0

Who at the hotel knows your card details

Six months ago, I traveled around the USA and booked the last hotel with a friend's American card.

Irina Nikolaeva

travels a lot

The hotel found it suspicious that one person booked the room and another paid for it. To confirm that everything is in order, we had to indicate in a special form all the card details, up to the CVV code.

I was sure that only scammers asked for CVV, so I called the hotel. The conversation with the hotel operator dragged on, she was tired of explaining and said in her hearts: “Well, in short, enter the numbers 578 in this field.” It was the CVV of a bank card, which we entered at Booking an hour ago.

That's how I found out that Booking transfers all bank card details to hotels. I’ll tell you what else I found out about booking hotels and how I now protect my money.

The best protection for money is an additional card

In any incomprehensible situation, pay and indicate the details of the additional card. Issue it to the main account, set a limit and relax.

Set the limit as much as you are willing to spend on a hotel. When the card is not needed, set a limit of 10 R.

If scammers get your card details and try to cash out, they will not be able to withdraw anything, and you will receive an SMS.

The additional card is free. Issued in Internet Banking.

How Booking works

Most of the client's booking activities take place on the Booking website. Therefore, clients sometimes believe that they “booked a hotel from Booking”, “paid Booking”. This is wrong. On Booking, two independent entities meet - the hotel and the client.

The hotel sets the cost and other conditions of accommodation, is responsible for the correctness and relevance of these data and receives booking information from Booking. It is the hotel, and not Booking, that confirms the reservation, communicates with the client about the conditions, transfers or cancels the stay and accepts payment. Booking only provides a platform and tools for interaction between the hotel and the client.

Why does the hotel need your card

If you do not want to pay immediately, the concept of "booking guarantee" comes into play. The hotel promises to provide you with a room in exchange for your promise to pay for the room.

The hotel's guarantee is backed up by its business reputation and the Booking booking system. The honest word of the client, unfortunately, is not enough for a guarantee.

If the client changes their mind and forgets to report the cancellation, the room will remain empty and the hotel will not receive any profit. Therefore, hoteliers want to receive a financial guarantee: if the client cancels the reservation after the specified date, he will have to pay a fine.

To be able to charge a fine, the hotel needs your bank card details. Booking provides this data to the hotelier immediately at the time of booking.

Who knows your details

When you enter card details on the site, Booking transmits them using an encrypted protocol - if an attacker intercepts them, he will not be able to read them. The vulnerability occurs when your data is received by the hotel.

Booking provides two-factor authentication for access to Personal Area hotel: only an authorized employee of the hotel can see the client's data. Theoretically, he should only withdraw or freeze the amount stipulated by the booking conditions and cannot use the card data for other purposes. As a result, the fate of the money on your card depends only on the decency and responsibility of this employee.

In the agreement between the hotel and Booking, the hotel undertakes to process card data in accordance with the data security standard of the payment card industry. However, the contract does not spell out any verification methods or sanctions for violating the safety standard.

If the hotel carelessly stores printed bookings, for example, leaving them at the front desk, then the card data can become the property of not only hotel employees, but also other guests. If, a couple of months after your trip, someone in China buys a bike with your card, you won’t even immediately understand where the attacker got your data from.

At the moment when the hotelier saves your data on his computer or prints it out, Booking disclaims responsibility.

How to safely book a hotel

If you do not want to transfer your card details to the hotel, you can do without it. Let me tell you about a few methods I have tried.

Self-advance payment to the hotel. There are ads on Booking that say "You can make a booking without a credit card." To find them, select the filter "Booking without a credit card" in the menu on the left.

To guarantee your reservation, the hotel will offer to make a bank transfer, transfer via PayPal or to a bank card. The booking will only be confirmed upon receipt of such prepayment.

The advantage of this method is that the hotel will not recognize your card details.

Personal agreement. In some cases, in correspondence with the hotel, it is possible to save the reservation without financial guarantees. Two guest houses in the Seychelles, after my letter, agreed to keep a room for me without preliminary transfers and freezing money.

Such a concession is a right, not an obligation of the hotel. If the hotelier has already encountered dishonorable or unnecessary guests, he may refuse to book a room for another tourist without prepayment.

Separate card for booking. I chose this method because this way I don’t have to do unnecessary actions and enter into correspondence with hotels every time. At the same time, I am completely confident in the safety of money on the main card.

Before booking a room, I transfer the necessary amount to a separate bank card and make sure that after the trip there is no money left on it. Even if an attacker gets my data, the savings will remain safe. I only use this card for hotel bookings.

The main thing in 30 seconds

Immediately after booking, Booking transfers to the hotel all the bank card details you entered. Even CVV if you specified it.

This happens regardless of the terms of payment and cancellation. Even if the hotel does not withdraw or block your money, all your card details immediately appear at its disposal.

Authorized hotel employees have access to the card data. If they neglect security rules, an attacker can find out the details of the card.

It is possible to book a hotel without a card, but this does not work with every hotel and will require more movements than paying with a card.

A rational way to protect your money is to use a separate card for booking.

This article discusses in detail the various ways how to book hotels without prepayment and a card. Describes the reasons why the hotel administrator can block Money on your credit card and how to avoid it. Given step by step instructions with screenshots for booking hotels without payment and credit card.

Why does the hotel need your card details

In most cases, to complete a hotel reservation, the online system requires you to enter information on a bank card. This is not surprising if the tourist plans to immediately make an advance payment for accommodation. But Why do we need credit card information if it happens hotel reservation without payment?

The fact is that hotels set fines in case of no-show or late cancellation. This information can be found on the website of the online system in the description of the hotel rooms. As a rule, without penalties, you can cancel the reservation a day or three before the expected arrival. At the time of booking the hotel without prepayment, the tourist accepts the terms of cancellation of the reservation in accordance with the policy of the hotel.

In turn, the hotel has the right to have guarantees that in case of no-show, the tourist will pay the cost of the fine. This guarantee can be obtained by saving the details of the bank card (credit or debit) of the tourist.

If you are not yet strong in hotel reservations, I recommend that you first read the general article: .

Who can benefit from hotels without prepayment

A few examples of when it may be necessary to book hotels without prepayment:

• Visa. Many consulates require you to provide a hotel voucher. In this case, it is advisable to make a hotel reservation without paying for a visa.
• Fuzzy plans. There is a desire to go on vacation, but there is no certainty that the boss will let go.
• Lack of funds. There are situations when you urgently need to book a hotel room while there is a good choice, and the salary is not soon.

If you intend to make a hotel reservation without payment through popular specialized platforms such as booking.com, agoda.com, roomguru.ru, hotellook.ru and others, you need to choose hotels with the following characteristics: "Free cancellation, pay later" or similar. Hotels without prepayment make up the majority of the list proposed by the online system. In this case, without monetary charges, the cancellation of the reservation can be made within 24-72 hours (there are other requirements, you must first read the conditions for canceling the reservation). That is, before the onset of this period, you should not worry.

What happens when free cancellation is no longer possible:

• Withdrawal of money from the card is not carried out, you need to pay at the hotel after the fact.
• There is a payment for one day or for the entire period of the proposed stay.

It all depends on the hotel and the booking system. For example, Booking is inclined towards the first option, and Agoda towards the second. Incidentally, the latter takes only credit cards.

How to book a hotel without prepayment:

1. We pass to one of the booking systems or a search engine. Let's say on agoda.com =>>
2. In the search window, fill in the destination, dates, number of guests.

1. We sort the output using the horizontal menu, and also set the necessary characteristics using the filters in the left column.

1. We look at the generated list. We are looking for hotels by the phrase "Free cancellation, pay later." The "free cancellation" filter is available only for the hotellook.ru search engine. On other platforms, the selection occurs visually.

1. We select a hotel and proceed to booking. Once again we are convinced that we are satisfied cancellation terms And payment period.

1. Fill in the required fields and enter your bank card details. After we complete the booking, an email with a voucher will be sent to the specified email box.

⚠ Important to know! Unfortunately, this way to book a hotel without prepayment does not give a full guarantee that no action will occur with your bank card. To check the solvency of a future guest, some hotels may block money on the map. This procedure is called pre-authorization (or Hold). The amounts are different: the dollar, and the price of one night, and the entire cost of the reservation. At the same time, money is not physically written off, but it will be impossible to use it before unlocking. In turn, the banking system is arranged in such a way that lock is automatically released in about 30 days(depending on the bank). Credit card holders may not experience this discomfort as potentially borrowed funds are blocked, and this process does not incur interest because there is no actual write-off. But debit cardholders can find themselves in a quandary when they block an amount they thought they would use on their trip. Blocked funds cannot be paid even at the hotel, because of which all the “cheese-boron” began.

For example, a tourist booked a hotel without prepayment in Nice for two weeks for 1000€. The hotel administrator checked his debit card by pre-authorizing the entire amount. The bank, in turn, did not manually remove the blocking, and automatic cancellation will occur only after a month. Suppose a tourist leaves for a vacation in a week, and checks out of the hotel after another two. But the money he planned to pay is still blocked, as only 21 days have passed. It is good if the vacationer has a sufficient cash reserve. And if he is not found at the end of the vacation?

One good thing is that such cases do not happen often. But you need to be aware of them and be prepared for such a situation. Booking hotels without prepayment guaranteed can only give hotel reservation option without a bank card.

When it may be useful to book hotels without a card

Some examples of reasons why it may be necessary to book a hotel without a card:

• 100% no blocking . If necessary, unconditionally receive a hotel reservation without payment and blocking a bank card (credit or debit).
• Card expires . If your credit card expires at the time of check-out, your booking may be denied.
• Card type does not match . Sometimes the simplest (not embossed) Visa Electron, MasterCard Maestro cards are not suitable for booking.
• no map at all .

I found 3 ways to book a hotel without a credit card. Let's dwell on each of them in detail.

Booking a hotel without a credit card throughbooking. com

Unfortunately, everyone's favorite booking did not provide special filters to automatically select hotels without paying by credit card. However, this can be done in other ways:

• Manual override.
• In a cunning way.

Manual way

1. Go to booking.com =>>
2. Fill out the form: city, dates, number of guests.

1. Sort and filter the output according to the required parameters.

1. Scrolling through the issue, visually look for the phrase "You can make a hotel reservation without a credit card."

1. Having decided on the hotel, choose a room and start booking.

1. Fill in the required information. Be sure to check the box next to the item "Ability to change the booking online." Click "Continue".

1. Fill in the latest information: country of residence and phone number. No credit card details are required to book a hotel.

1. Within a few minutes, the voucher will be sent to your email. It must be presented on paper or in electronic format when checking into a hotel.

tricky way

1. We repeat points 1-2 of the previous section.
2. We go to any hotel from the proposed list and simulate a reservation (p. 5-6).
3. When you need information about a credit or debit card, click on the "No card?" icon.

1. A pop-up window displays information about why you need a bank card when booking a hotel, and at the bottom there are options for hotels that can be booked without a credit card. The absence of such a list means that in this area you cannot book hotels without a card through booking. Then the methods described below will come in handy (they are much simpler).

1. We go to the proposed hotels, make a choice and complete the booking, as described in the previous paragraphs 5-8.

Easy way. Update as of July 25, 2016

Recently, Booking has expanded its functionality, now it has filters for booking rooms without cards and prepayments.

Hotel reservation without card payment through domestic online booking sites

One of the most convenient options is to use domestic systems online booking: hotels.ru, oktogo.ru, ostrovok.ru. The search on these sites is identical, so let's look at booking a hotel without a credit card and prepayment using one of them as an example.

1. Go to the site hotels.ru =>>
2. As usual, fill in the direction, dates of arrival/departure, number of residents, click "Find Hotels".

1. A column with various filters will appear on the left. We find the "Payment" filter and select the "Do not require a bank card" option. In our example (Haapsalu, Estonia) there were 19 out of 34 hotels that do not require a card to book.

1. We select a hotel and proceed to registration, be sure to fill in the name, surname, e-mail, phone number, country and city of residence. Additionally, you can enter the name of the second guest (if any). This may be required if you need to provide a voucher for a visa.

1. When you confirm the booking (the “order” button), an email with a voucher will be sent to your email. It can be printed for the visa. For a hotel, it is not necessary to provide a printed form, an electronic file is quite suitable (the main thing is not to forget to save it to a mobile device).

You can change or cancel your reservation at Hotels Ru through your personal account => section "My bookings" => tab "Orders".

Find the required booking and click on the "Reservation Details" button. A window will open where you can cancel or make changes.

More than 877 thousand hotels in 225 countries of the world are represented on hotels.ru (own database, as well as the database of the Expedia system). A good help to Booking, which has slightly lower numbers: 855 thousand hotels in 223 countries.

Make a hotel reservation without a card through the h metasearch engineotellook.ru

Now I will tell you about the most universal way to book hotels without a card - search through the hotellook aggregator.

1. Go to the site hotellook.ru =>>
2. In the search form, fill in the direction, dates of arrival and departure, the number of people. By the way, you can fill in here.

1. In the upper horizontal menu above the issue, we find the item "additional" and select the option "no card".

1. Using the sorting of the second horizontal menu, we select hotels.

Do you know why I like this way of booking a hotel without a card the most? Because the hotellook search engine displays the results of both oktogo, and ostrovok, and booking, as well as other online booking systems (except for hotels.ru, which we considered before). It defines the option “booking a hotel without a card” for any of the above hotel platforms.

Example. Let's say a hotelX" onisland can be booked without a card, but onbookingAndoktogo- No. At the same time, the hotelY” on Booking is displayed with the status “card not required”, while other platforms do not have such a function for this hotel. Hotellook will show you the hotel "X", and the hotel"Y”, at the same time displaying prices for other online booking systems.

It turns out that the search engine finds the maximum number of possible offers for booking hotels without a card. It remains only to choose a hotel from the proposed list and go directly from Hotellook to the selected option on any platform.

If you know other ways to book a hotel without a credit card and prepayment, share them in the comments - this information may be useful to other users. Your experience with blocking money on the card by the hotel will also be interesting.

We were looking for a hotel reservation without a card and payment

Marina and Konstantin Samorosenko

Useful and interesting articles:

85 comments

As it became known to the Banki.ru portal, since the new year, the popular Booking.com website has ceased in most cases to request a CVC code from its customers and transfer it to hotels for booking. Most likely, the company was prompted by the dissatisfaction of its users, who since August have been actively complaining about the unsafe storage of their card details in hotels. and attempted unauthorized charges after paying for services on Booking.com.

Back in August last year, the fact that Booking.com transmits credit card data by fax to the hotel for booking a room was brought up for discussion by the general public and that it is not at all difficult for third parties to obtain this data. In particular, the media highlighted the story of Facebook user Roman Mamonov, who published on his page on the social network a scan of a fax received by his acquaintance from the Turkish hotel The Marions Suite.

The fact is that a friend wanted to check his hotel reservation. As a confirmation of the reservation, a fax came from the hotel, which, among other things, contained all the card details that the acquaintance entered on Booking.com.

“Everyone! Everyone! To everyone who uses Booking.com: if your credit card is suddenly cleared, don't be surprised, Roman Mamonov wrote. - We accidentally found out that this wonderful site sends hotels a form in which all the card details are indicated: ALL 16 digits, expiration date and, most importantly, the CVC code. And if this piece of paper falls into the hands of a thief, your money will cry. In our case, we had to block the card.”

The Facebook post of another person, the girl Ekaterina Rubtsova, gained particular popularity. She said that, while vacationing recently in Spain with her husband, she spotted a receptionist at the hotel who “ran around with a piece of paper - a printout of our reservation, on which there was a card number and CVC.” “Where he put this piece of paper later, no one knows, but any janitor who found this piece of paper could easily understand what was happening,” the girl draws attention. - After the trip, my husband immediately reissued the card, and I teased him that he had persecution mania. But now, six months later, he received a call from the bank and was told that transactions were being carried out on the Internet using this already closed card.

UniCredit Bank, with the card of which Ekaterina's husband paid, noted that in such cases, the credit institution offers immediate free of charge and initiates claim work in order to return the funds to the holder. “We recommend that cardholders carefully and timely check statements on their cards, and in case of disagreement with transactions, submit an application to the bank,” the press service said. - In addition, when choosing an issuing bank, it is better to give preference to those banks that are certified and support 3D-Secure verification for online transactions. But in any case, it should be remembered that, as a product, it carries certain risks, so it is extremely difficult to completely eliminate the occurrence of such situations.

I am not me and the card is not mine

Contacting Booking.com did nothing - Ekaterina was only reminded that when booking a hotel room, her husband agreed to the terms of the company, the fifth paragraph of which reads: “To guarantee your booking, the hotel requires you to provide credit card information, so all information about her will be sent directly to the hotel you have booked. In the event that your credit card has been used by third parties illegally or for other purposes, most banks and credit card companies will cover and pay for all losses caused by this illegal use of a credit card (sometimes minus 50 euros or the equivalent in local currency). If your bank or credit card company withholds this amount due to fraudulent use of your credit card as a result of a booking on our website, we will refund you the amount withheld up to EUR 50 (or the equivalent in your local currency).”

In addition, Booking.com representatives did not forget to mention that the company is not responsible for the illegal actions of employees of the hotels presented on the site, since they are not employees of Booking.com. “If there is concrete evidence of illegal actions with credit cards from the side of the hotel, we ask you to contact a specific hotel with a claim, ”this is how the letter ended in Booking.com.

Meanwhile, several other people reported to Banki.ru about attempts of unauthorized write-offs on cards after they were “exposed” on this resource. Alexandra planned and paid for her vacation in Dubai through Booking.com in December. A few days after paying with her card, there were attempts to make several unauthorized debits. The girl was saved by the fact that there was no money on the card at that time.

“I myself work in a hotel and now I have specially picked up old and new booking sheets from booking.com. And for sure - in the old sheets sent before the new year, absolutely all the details of plastic cards are indicated! Julia shares. - Take it and use it! But in the sheets that came this month, only the card number and the owner's surname have already remained! So they nevertheless drew conclusions ... But the fact itself .... ”

As it turns out, Booking.com actually revised its policy on requesting and forwarding a CVC code in 2013. So, in the company's support service, Banki.ru's browser was told: “We no longer transmit CVC codes through our system. 95% of hotels do not request this information through our system due to security issues. Most hotels have told us that they don't need this code to complete the transaction. We are slowly moving towards not transmitting the CVC code to any hotel.”

Erroneous indiscretion

The head of the expert group of banking technologies at SB Bank, Maxim Volkov, points out that it is strictly forbidden to store the card number and CVC code together, as well as other card data. “The CVC code can be transmitted over the Internet, but it cannot be recorded in the computer memory longer than it is necessary to complete the operation on the card, and even more so, it cannot be stored on paper,” the expert draws attention. - If the card is compromised due to non-compliance with these rules, the blame will mainly lie with Booking.com. This company, if it is a merchant (service provider), is obliged to ensure compliance with PCI DSS requirements, which, in particular, prohibit the things I have mentioned above. The hotel, participating in such a process, also allows violations of the rules of payment systems. But since the hotel is definitely a merchant, then the fault of the acquiring bank from which it is serviced follows. The bank is obliged to check the compliance of the merchant’s work procedures with the requirements of the rules of payment systems and demand to put things in order if it finds violations.”

According to Volkov, when Booking.com cooperated with hotels, the first provided them with complete data on the cards of their customers so that hotels could write off a deposit for booking rooms from their accounts. “It can be assumed that in the Booking.com plus hotel scheme, voice authorization of the card was carried out in cases where the physical presence of the card is required,” the banker says. - In fact, having all the data on the card, a hotel employee can write off the amount necessary for payment at any time - before the client arrives, and during, and even after. Here immediately there is a danger that unscrupulous employees will be found in the hotel. Data provided by Booking. com hotels are enough to easily pay in the AppStore and Skype, not to mention online casinos and other less picky merchants. For this, in many cases, even the name of the cardholder does not need to be known. Particularly pragmatic hotel employees can sell card data to scammers, and here already the amount of withdrawals from the card account can be large.”

Volkov advises everyone who has seen their card details at the hotel on a fax from Booking.com to first replace the card in their issuing bank with another one with a different number. “People who saw printouts of their own card data at the hotel have the right to demand from Booking.com at least a certain amount of moral compensation, because they were not aware that information about them was transferred in full to third parties,” the expert comments. - As evidence, you must ask the hotel employee to provide you with an official copy of the fax with the forwarded card data and an explanatory note about from whom and when he received this data. With these documents, you can go to court.

And Denis Vlasov, Senior Vice President for Development of Banking Products and Marketing at Renaissance Credit Bank, advises opening a special separate card for paying for goods and services via the Internet and keeping on it strictly the amount that will be needed in the near future. According to the banker, it is better not to use a salary card for Internet transactions at all.

Also, bankers strongly recommend choosing cards for which the client can independently set a daily limit on the amount of transactions through the Internet bank or call center operator. Some banks also offer blocking card transactions in a specific country.

Do you already know how to choose a hotel on the map?

start tracking cheap tickets in advance - that is right now!

It would be great not to tell the hotel about yourself any data, but to say briefly: "My name is Vasya, I will arrive on April 1, let me have a room on the 3rd floor overlooking the courtyard." However, at the moment when you said: "I will arrive on April 1," the hotel began to wait for you.

It is logical that hotels, like you and me, have a planning process. You plan your stay at a particular hotel, and this hotel plans to host you for the night. What if your plan changes and you don't arrive at the hotel? The hotel's plans have not changed, and it continues to wait for you. At the same time, the hotel refuses other guests, because it is waiting for you. As a result, the night passed, you did not arrive, other guests were denied accommodation for the night.

You forgot about your promise, and the hotel incurs losses, because the hotel did not accommodate another tourist, as he promised to accommodate you. And you didn't come. Here, in order to prevent such situations from happening, in the practice of hotel business all over the world, it is customary not only to inform "I will arrive then," but also to back up your promise with bank card data.

It makes perfect sense that all hotels around the world want to avoid the losses associated with the changing plans of their potential guests. And it is the hotels that want this, not the booking platforms! IN different countries This issue is regulated by law in different ways.

Most European countries (but not all!) have adopted the following scheme for confirming your intentions to book a hotel:

• 1. payment for services is made only after the provision of these services, which is why hotels in Europe generally do not take prepayment (however, there are special rates with full prepayment, which are clearly indicated in the room description).
• 2. You can refuse to book a hotel room without paying any fines almost until the last day. Moreover, this period when you can refuse to book a hotel varies from country to country. Now we will omit these details, focus on the general case - as a rule, you can cancel your reservation 24-48 hours before your arrival. Accurate information on this matter is always indicated in the booking conditions of that particular room.
• 3. If you do not cancel your booking in time, the hotel is legally entitled to charge you the cost of 1 night (usually the first night or in some cases another amount of compensation).

What is the basis for such a right? And the fact that when booking a hotel, you undertake the obligation to come to this hotel and use its services. And if you change your plans, then you must refuse this obligation according to the accepted scheme, that is, inform the hotel about the change in plans within the prescribed period. Not reported? The hotel has the right to charge you the cost of at least one night, as if this service had been provided.

That is exactly why in the world practice of hotel business it is accepted that the client provides the details of his bank card at the time of booking the hotel. Because without such a guarantee, the hotel does not agree to book a room for a guest. This is how the scheme of financial obligations between the hotel and the guest as a whole, adopted all over the world, looks like. It is useless to argue, you just need to understand and accept this scheme, because. You, having decided to become an independent traveler, voluntarily accept the established traditions of the tourist services market.