Payments & billing

Three different things guests constantly confuse — and you must not: a guarantee holds the booking against a card but charges nothing; a deposit is money actually taken in advance; a pre-authorisation blocks an amount on the card (for extras or incidentals) without taking it, and releases after checkout. Explain a pre-auth before you run it — 'this is a temporary hold, not a charge' — because the guest who discovers a blocked €100 alone at their banking app is tomorrow's angry phone call.

In Italy almost every municipality charges a tassa di soggiorno — a per-person, per-night city tax, usually payable at the hotel and often excluded from the online booking price. Announce it at check-in, not check-out: 'there's also the city tax, two euros per person per night, collected here'. On any bill dispute, the rule is show, don't argue: walk through the itemised bill line by line, and if the hotel made the error, fix it immediately and apologise once, cleanly.