Amending/ Cancelling a GDS reservation:
The only party capable of amending or cancelling a reservation made on the GDS, is the travel agent who makes the reservation. All requests for cancellation must be made directly to the travel agent.
If a reservation is not correctly cancelled by the travel agent, prior to the cancellation policy deadline that applied at the time of booking, it will still be liable for the GDS transaction fee (regardless of whether the guest shows or not).
Best Practice for Managing GDS Reservations
For the above reason, we advise the following 3 steps as best practice:
STEP 1: VERIFY INFORMATION
Always verify the details of a GDS reservation, in advance of both the cancellation policy deadline & the due arrival date of the guest. 'Details' includes:
Credit Card number
CVC/CVV details
Guest Contact details
The Credit Card information is retrievable on both The Channel Manager and your PMS (if integrated).
The Channel Manager: The credit card details are retrievable on your Channel Manager. They are masked, for PCI compliance, so that only authorised users can view these details. Only 'Admin' users or 'General' users, with payment permissions, can view the full payment card number.
Property Management System (PMS): The credit card information is sent via XML to your PMS. It is masked from our (SiteMinder) visibility, for PCI compliance, but it should be retrievable from your PMS by all authorised users. Please check with your PMS provider if there are any limitations to visibility or special user permissions that must be assigned for you or your staff to view the unmasked details.
The CVC/CVV details (if provided) are retrievable on the GDS by SiteMinder extranet under Manage > Reservations > Search Reservations > Reservation Details:
IMPORTANT NOTES ON CVC/ CVV DETAILS
CVC/CVV details are not a mandatory field on the GDS, and cannot be made so.
Only travel agents using Amadeus or Galileo GDSs will have the opportunity to input CVC/CVV details while making a reservation (if they decide to).
There is no field to input CVC/CVV details on either Sabre or Worldspan GDSs.
If CVC/CVV details are provided, they will be visible on the extranet, as shown above, under Manage > Reservations > Reservation Details.
CVC/CVV details will be retrievable only once (the first time they are viewed) or up to 24 hours after reservation is booked, whichever comes first.
The guest contact details are retrievable in:
The Channel Manager (and your PMS, if integrated),
the reservation notification email,
on the GDS by SiteMinder extranet (see below for further instructions).
IMPORTANT NOTE ON GUEST CONTACT DETAILS
In most cases, travel agents will not provide guest contact details other than the guest name. This is because the guest has engaged the agent to act on their behalf; the travel agent, as the travel booker, should be the first point of contact for hotel communications.
STEP 2: CONTACT TRAVEL AGENCY
If any of the above information is necessary and missing, the first point of contact should always be the travel agent.
How to find Travel Agency contact details:
You can find the contact details for the travel agent on:
the reservation notification email.
the GDS by SiteMinder extranet by navigating to:
Manage > Reservation > Search Reservation
NOTE:
You may find an IATA number, instead of the agency name or contact details, in the travel agency field. Verify whether this is a valid IATA number or not, by using the following link: https://customer-portal-iata.force.com/iec/ieccacfree
STEP 3: CONTACT GDS BY SITEMINDER TEAM FOR ASSISTANCE
If you are unable to successfully retrieve your required, missing reservation details because either:
there were no valid contact details found via Step 2 above,
orthe Travel Agent have not responded to contact,
please take the following action:
Raise a support case, by emailing your regional GDS Team:
Asia Pacific (APAC): gds.apac@siteminder.com
Americas (AMERS): gds.amers@siteminder.com
Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA): gds.emea@siteminder.com
IMPORTANT NOTE ON RAISING A CASE
To avoid any delays with the investigation, please:
confirm in your email that you have already taken the above two steps, and also
raise the issue in valid time.
If the reservation is due to breach the applicable cancellation policy deadline within the next few days, it is unlikely that there will be enough time for the GDS Team to act and for the reservation to be successfully un-confirmed.
If the check in date has already passed, there is then nothing the team can do to assist.
Actions that will be taken:
Your regional GDS by SiteMinder team will arrange for a notification to be sent via the relevant GDS, requesting that the travel agency either update the reservation to contain the missing information requested, or cancel the reservation.
The travel agency will be given a deadline to take respond/take action (it is mandatory to allow a minimum of 24hours for them to respond).
If adequate action is not taken by this deadline, your regional GDS by SiteMinder team will request that the GDS ‘un-confirm’ the reservation.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON UN-CONFIRMATION STATUS
An ‘un-confirmation’ does not cancel the transaction on the GDS (as previously stated, the travel agency are the only party capable of doing so), it only communicates to the travel agency that you will not be honouring the reservation.
If the travel agency does not respond by cancelling the reservation themselves, this reservation is still liable for a transaction charge.
However, ‘un-confirming’ a reservation does usually result in the agency then cancelling it. In the event that the agency does successfully cancel the reservation, the transaction fee will not be charged.
Summary of when a transaction fee applies
GENERAL RULE:
For a transaction fee to not apply, the reservation status on GDS by SiteMinder must read as ‘cancelled’.
(NOTE: This rule is not valid if the property has attempted to manually edit the status on the GDS by SiteMinder extranet themselves - something which we will be able to view from the change logs.)
POSSIBLE SITUATIONS:
Travel Agency has 'cancelled' a reservation, but it did not update your reservation:
In almost all cases where a travel agency claims to have ‘cancelled’ the reservation, but the status was not updated on GDS by SiteMinder, it is because it was not validly cancelled on the GDS as it was outside of the reservation’s cancellation policy deadline.
Property agrees to waive a cancellation penalty fee:
If you, the property, agree with a guest or agency to waive the cancellation penalty for a reservation that was not validly cancelled or amended on the GDS in time, please be aware that the normal transaction fee will still be invoiced by SiteMinder to your property; this is because SiteMinder still incurs the transaction cost from the GDS. (This is the reason we usually recommend that your configured penalty fee, at a minimum, covers the transaction fee).