This functionality is available across all GuestStay Plans.
Enable pre-arrival payments so guests can pay outstanding balances before arriving at your property, reducing check-in time and allowing upsell purchases to be included in a single transaction.
Pre-arrival payments help improve the guest experience and operational efficiency.
Key benefits include:
Earlier payment collection: Collect outstanding balances before arrival to improve cash flow and reduce payment collection during check-in.
Faster check-in: Reduce front desk transactions and help guests complete their arrival process more quickly.
Combined upsell payments: Allow guests to pay for selected upsells and outstanding balances in a single transaction.
Secure card capture: Support VCC and hide-rate reservations by securely capturing and tokenising card details without charging the guest before arrival.
Enable pre-arrival payments
â ïļImportant: Before you enable this feature, review the information below to understand its impact on your system and payment processes:
Pre-arrival payments can only be processed using GuestPay with Trust Payments or GuestPay with Adyen. Other payment providers are not supported.
Pre-arrival payments are not taken for:
Virtual Credit Card (VCC) or
Hide-rate reservations
These follow a card check process instead.
You can enable pre-arrival payments in a few simple steps:
Within Guestline PMS, select Menu, then select GuestStay.
Click Configuration, then click Functionality.
Scroll down to the Before/During Check-in section.
Turn on the Pre-arrival payments toggle. The system saves your changes automatically.
Pre-arrival payments are now available within the GuestStay pre-arrival journey for all guests.
Understand when the payment step appears
Once pre-arrival payments are enabled, guests see the payment step at the end of their pre-arrival journey after:
Digital registration.
Upsell selection, if upsells are enabled.
Pre-arrival payment request is displayed when all of the following conditions are met:
Pre-arrival payments are enabled.
The reservation is not a Virtual Credit Card (VCC) reservation.
The reservation is not a hide-rate reservation.
An outstanding balance greater than zero exists.
Payment calculations follow the same logic used by the kiosk payment flow.
If guests select upsells, GuestStay combines the outstanding balance and upsell charges into a single transaction.
Guests can also bypass the pre-payment step, by selecting Skip.
After a successful payment:
Guests see the message: 'Your payment was successful'.
A payment confirmation email is sent automatically.
VCC and hide-rate reservation behaviour
Virtual Credit Card (VCC) and hide-rate reservations follow a different process.
Instead of a payment step, guests are prompted to add their card details to complete a card check.
The card information is:
Securely tokenised.
Stored for use during the guest's stay.
Guests can also bypass the pre-payment step, by selecting Skip.
Handle incomplete payments
If a guest does not complete payment during the pre-arrival journey, they can still settle the balance later.
Depending on your propertiesâ configuration, guests can:
Pay at a kiosk.
Pay at the front desk.