False bookings, and why the house writes them down

A false booking is a specific thing, and the house defines it narrowly so that no honest guest is ever caught by it.

The four criteria

A booking is false if any one of the following is true:

• it was placed under a name that does not belong to the client;
• it came from a phone number or a profile owned by someone else;
• it was sent as a joke;
• a no-show followed one of the three above.

What is not a false booking

A guest who booked honestly and then did not open the door has not made a false booking. That is an ordinary cancellation, handled on the notice scale like any other. A flight that landed late, a guest who fell asleep, a meeting that ran over: none of these is false. They are the everyday reasons bookings change, and they are dealt with under cancellation and refunds.

Why it matters at the airport

An airport booking involves a journey agreed in advance and an evening held for one guest. A false booking takes that evening from a therapist for nothing and, often, from another guest who wanted the same hour. The criteria exist to protect that time.

The note

Where a booking meets one of the criteria, or a visit is closed because a limit was pressed, the house writes a short internal note: the date, what happened, and the name and number the booking came from. It is kept for twelve months, is seen by nobody outside the house, and decides only whether a further booking from that name is taken. The privacy page explains how to object to a note or have it corrected or removed. If the facts suggest a crime, the house may take them to the police.