False bookings at hotels, and what follows

Picture the evening from the other side of the door. A therapist crosses a lobby she has never seen, rides to the sixth floor and knocks on a room that turns out to belong to a sleeping family, or on a door that stays shut. That is a false booking, and it is handled apart from an ordinary cancellation.

What counts

• A reservation made under a name other than the guest's own.
• A reservation made from a phone number or a profile that belongs to someone else.
• A reservation made as a joke or a dare.
• A no-show that follows any of the three above.

A guest who simply misses his hour, or whose plans genuinely changed, is not in this category. A missed appointment is a cancellation, handled under the cancellation policy.

What follows

The house writes a brief internal note holding the date, what happened, and the name and number used to book. The same kind of note follows a visit that ended because a therapist's limits or her safety were not respected. It is kept for twelve months, it never leaves the house, and it is consulted for one purpose only: deciding whether to accept a later booking from the same person. If what happened may amount to a criminal offence, a booking made in bad faith may be reported to the police. The privacy page explains how to object to a note or have it removed.

Who it protects

Forty-five women make these journeys, frequently alone and frequently late, into buildings whose layouts they learn on the way up. A false reservation costs one of them an evening at the least, and the note is there so that the same name does not reach a hotel corridor twice.

A guest who books under his own name, gives the right room and answers the knock never meets any of this and has no reason to think about it. The WhatsApp booking entry explains how a request is written, and other questions are taken up in the FAQ.