What Is a No-Show? Non-Arrivals and Overbooking Explained

The room is reserved, the bed is made, and the guest does not come. For a hotel, a no-show is doubly annoying: the room stays empty, and other enquiries may well have been turned away.

What a no-show is

A no-show is a guest with a confirmed booking who neither arrives nor cancels in time. It is different from a cancellation, where the guest calls off the stay, and from a late arrival, where the guest comes later than planned.

What the hotel may charge in Germany

In Germany, key rules of tenancy law apply to the hotel accommodation contract. Under Section 537 of the German Civil Code, a tenant is not released from paying rent if they do not use the property for personal reasons. The landlord must, however, offset the value of expenses saved and whatever they gain from letting it otherwise.¹ For the hotel, this means it can in principle charge the agreed price, minus what it saves because the guest did not arrive, such as breakfast and cleaning, and minus the income if the room was sold after all.

In practice, hotels set this out in cancellation terms and flat-rate charges in their terms and conditions. How high such charges may be depends on the individual case and on how the terms are drafted. This entry is not legal advice.

How hotels protect themselves

Guarantee: a credit card is stored at booking and can be charged if the guest does not arrive.

Prepayment: with non-refundable rates, the guest pays in advance.

Clear cancellation deadlines: the booking confirmation states clearly until when cancellation is free.

Reminders: a message a few days before arrival reduces the risk of a booking being forgotten.

Overbooking: a calculated risk

Some hotels, especially city and airport hotels with many business travellers, deliberately accept more bookings than they have rooms. They expect some guests not to turn up. If the calculation does not work out, a guest with a valid booking is left without a room. It is then customary to arrange an equivalent room at another hotel, including transfer, at the hotel’s expense. For small properties with few rooms, overbooking is usually too risky.

What hoteliers should look for

More in the magazine

How one hotel deals with short-notice bookings and flexible terms is shown in our article "Last-minute bookings make staff planning hard for ANDERS Hotel Walsrode". How hotels steer rates and conditions according to demand is explained in the glossary entry on revenue management.