OTAs & Invoicing

OTA stands for online travel agencies (e.g. Booking.com, Travelocity, Airbnb, etc.)

Invoicing refers to how we collect customer payments.

OTAs & VCC

Definitions

Online Travel Agent (OTA): Online platforms that recruits guests and books stay with us.

Virtual Credit card (VCC): A virtual credit card is a credit card issued by an OTA for a stay of a guest. A VCC is issued when the guest prepaid their stay. Hence, instead of charging the guest’s personal cards, we charge the virtual credit card. However, we still need to ask for the personal credit card upon check-in for any additional service.

Gross rate : The amount of money a guest is paying for a night at the hotel

Net rate : The amount of money the hotel is receiving for a night

Commission : The amount of money the OTA is keeping for booking a stay of a guest: gross rate less net rate.

Payment method:

Hotel collect refers to a payment that will be charged by Ambrose - either on a VCC or a personal CC.

Agent collect refers to a payment that is collected by the OTA, who will then send us the net rate.

Invoicing

Here are the details about every payment method for every OTA. These details are important to ensure we bill the guest correctly.

**All bookings need to be charged 1 day prior to check-in date, or during guests' stay with us. This way we can address any payment issue (e.g. card declines, extra charges, etc) with the guest in person.

Booking.com

Hotel collect
VCC or personal CC
OTA will invoice Ambrose for a monthly commission amoun

Direct booking through ambrosehouse.ca

Hotel collect
Personal CC mandatory
No commission. Payment processing fee paid to the payment processing system, Stripe.

Expedia

Hotel collect
Personal CC
OTA will invoice Ambrose for a monthly commission amount

Airbnb

Agent collect
Personal CC needed only for addtional services - money requests and reimbursement can be done through Airbnb account
Agent will pay Ambrose net amount periodically (Paypal)

Agoda

Agent collect
Personal CC needed only for addtional services
Agent will pay Ambrose net amount periodically (direct deposit TD)