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Help: Charge booking at time of reservation

Help: Charge booking at time of reservation

Old Aug 31, 2016, 2:36 am
  #1  
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Join Date: Jul 2016
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Help: Charge booking at time of reservation

Hi,

Firstly, my apologies if this has been asked already somewhere on the forums, and I did not manage to find the thread.

I am planning a trip for December this year, and would be booking Hilton hotels throughout. That would be 2 rooms for about 3 weeks across various properties.

I would like to make the reservations this week, and would like the room fees/costs charged to my credit card immediately, as if this is only charged on check-out, I would be losing out due to bad forex rates, considering the decline of the ZAR to the USD.

Earlier this year, on a trip to DXB, I had booked around March, for stays in May, and the CC was only charged on checkout, initiating the cost of the rooms to be much higher than expected, purely due to the volatility of the exchange rates.

Does anyone have any idea on the reasoning behind this? And if possible, what should I do to ensure that the CC is charged immediately?

Thank you
Sminty is offline  
Old Aug 31, 2016, 2:43 am
  #2  
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For advance purchase rates, the hotel 'should' charge immediately on booking, but often dont.

If I were you, I would call the property (not the call centre) to explain and see if you can get them to charge your card manually.
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Old Aug 31, 2016, 1:18 pm
  #3  
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
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The charging of credit cards is something handled by each individual hotel. In theory, most hotels wouldn't mind charging you now...even on rates that are not advance purchase. They'd get your money 4 months early and pre-paid bookings are less likely to cancel.

That said, some properties may opt out of it can be a hassle to refund the money if the reservation is canceled. In one hotel where I worked, our Accounting Manager didn't like charging cards ahead of the stay because the hotel would lose money if canceled and refunded. (There's a very small cost to process the charge and another to process the refund.) I always chocked that up as the cost of doing business. But, she cared. So, that's one reason why hotels might not pre-charge credit cards.

As OriginalName writes, you'll need to contact each hotel individually during their normal business hours. That can be a hassle.

Another option would be the use the Contact Us feature on the Hilton website. Create a separate message for each hotel and put "Please Forward this to Hotel" at the beginning of the message. The message will get sent via Hilton's internal communication system. Each message is tracked and hotels will have a pre-determined time to respond. Hotels can't say they didn't get the request, like they could with email.

Link to Contact Us Page: https://secure.hilton.com/en/hi/feedback/index.jhtml
writerguyfl is offline  
Old Sep 1, 2016, 5:06 am
  #4  
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Join Date: Jul 2016
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To OriginalName and writerguyfl, thank you very much for the informative posts. I really appreciate the help and guidance here on FT.

I will contact the individual hotels, and will post back here in a couple of days, to give feedback on my progress in getting this sorted out.
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