Self-Service Online Cancellations

This feature is available for anyone using at least one of our guest-facing products, GuestStay or DBM.

It allows guests to cancel a booking online in case they booked via DBM or the reservation was directly created in the PMS (OTAs and other IBEs are not supported) . You have full control over this feature and can disable it completely in Ini settings (read more under "How to get started").

This is the experience from a guest point of view:

1. Guest goes to the Guest Portal - see below how to share a link to the portal with a guest
2. Guest sees an option to cancel the booking following the booking's cancellation policy
3. Guest hits and confirms cancellation
4. Guest & hotel receive an email confirming the cancellation

1. Review your cancellation policies:
   Ensure that your rate plans are assigned to the correct cancellation policies from the PMS under System or CRS Module -> Rates -> Rate Plans. Without the right policy assigned, your guests won't be able to cancel their reservations online.
   

2. Activate the self-service cancellations:
   Navigate to PMS -> Ini Settings -> Reservations -> Enabled Functionality -> Self-Service Cancellations and activate the new functionality.
   
   

3. Share the link with your guests:
   Update your booking confirmation emails to include a link to this new functionality for any new bookings.

   • If you use the PMS templates, you can use the new tag called "GuestStay - Manage booking" for that.

   • Otherwise, if you use a 3^rd party provider, use the link https://guest.eu.guestline.app/{YOUR_SITE_ID}
     
     

4. Check any cancellations made by your guests:
   ​​​​​​​Check regularly the new page called "Guests Self-Service" in the PMS to monitor which guests have cancelled online and act on those reservations that require your attention (especially for manual deposit refunds).

There are different ways for a guest to get access to the guest portal:

• Any email including a link to GuestStay - either via Rezlynx templates or the automated email sent by GuestStay
• The DBM booking confirmation emails which include a button "Manage my booking"
• Any Rezlynx templates including a new tag called "GuestStay - Manage my booking", which we highly recommend to add as part of confirmation emails

A booking is cancellable if:

1. The rate booked has a cancellation policy
2. The policy allows cancellation at the time the guest is try to cancel
3. The person, either lead guest or booker, accessing the Guest Portal has a profile attached and an email address

If any of these conditions is not met, then the cancel button will not show up.

If the cancellation is succesful an email will be sent to your email inbox.

Apart from that, there's also a new page called "Guests Self-Service" in the PMS that shows the status of all bookings that have been requested to be cancelled, you can find this page under Guest Journey -> Reservations -> Guests Self-Service. In case of any issues, that page shows what's left to do in order to complete the cancellation. This is also the place where you will find bookings that need to be refunded.

Last but not least, you will find a real-time in-tool notification on the top right part of the PMS indicating when any of those cancellations requires an action.

As part of this functionality, cancellation policies are no longer created and assigned in Distribution (Roomlynx), they have been moved to the PMS (Rezlynx), where cancellation policies can be assigned a rate plan. 

• Rate plans in the PMS have now a new field to assign a cancellation policy
• Cancellation policies can be created and manage in the PMS under System -> Rates -> Cancellation Policies