Cash in hospitality moves in short, sharp bursts. A chain can open the day with mostly empty folios and end it with thousands of micro-authorizations, split tenders at the bar and spa, and a stack of OTA virtual cards queued for settlement. Finance’s job is to absorb that volatility without creating friction at the front desk or surprises in the owner report. That means a treasury model that respects local currencies and banking cut-offs, pre-authorization rules that do not strand guest funds, and no-show/cancellation mechanics that survive disputes. Get those three right and RevPAR translates into banked cash at predictable cost.
Multi-property treasury starts with where balances live. Centralize where possible, localize where required. A workable baseline is a hub-and-spoke design: each property runs one operating account in its local currency for daily spend and deposits, plus a safeguarded collection account for guest funds when regulation requires separation. The corporate center holds multi-currency wallets for FX netting and owner distributions. Sweep policies are calendar-aware (weekends, bank holidays) and denominated: small daily sweeps to keep property balances inside guardrails, larger end-of-period sweeps to consolidate surplus. Cash pooling only helps if the ledger preserves origin—store source property, currency, and rate lock on every internal transfer so owner P&Ls remain defensible.
Seasonality and channel mix make forecasting non-negotiable. Properties with high leisure share swing differently from airport hotels. Put a demand calendar next to the cash calendar: expected prepaids from direct web, virtual cards from OTA merchant model, agency-model stays that pay on checkout, corporate accounts on monthly invoice. Forecast by corridor and method, then tie buffer targets to the slowest rail serving that corridor. A beachfront property with 40% international guests should not run with the same EUR buffer as an urban hotel fed by domestic instant rails. When cash gets stuck in a currency you cannot easily repatriate, pre-plan local uses—rent, utilities, payroll—to turn trapped cash into natural hedges.
Rate presentation is not a treasury footnote. Quote in the guest’s browsing currency to raise conversion, but pin a currency of account for the property and document the rate-lock moment. The least painful pattern is indicative at browse, hard-locked at deposit or at check-in pre-auth, and reused for same-stay adjustments and post-stay credits within a short window. Round to human numbers per currency (no JPY with decimals; no CHF 199.07). For tax, show tax-inclusive totals to leisure guests where that is the norm, but split taxable components in the folio so audit lines and city tax filings match.
Pre-authorizations decide whether front desk feels like finance or hospitality. The operational aim is simple: reserve enough to cover room, taxes, and incidentals without over-blocking, and release holds quickly and predictably. Structure your pre-auth table by length of stay and risk: one night rate + taxes + a fixed incidental buffer for short stays; initial hold plus nightly incremental auths for longer stays. If a guest extends, use incremental auths rather than void-and-re-auth; it preserves cardholder trust and scheme ratios. Teach the PMS to expire or release holds on checkout posting automatically and to reverse unused incidentals within hours, not days. If your acquirer supports partial reversal messages, use them; if not, surface the expected release window clearly at check-in to reduce disputes and prevent “my bank froze my money” reviews.
No-show and late cancellation policy is a revenue tool and a dispute magnet. Define cut-offs by rate plan and channel; prepaid non-refundable behaves differently from flexible corporate. Store the acceptance moment (IP, timestamp, offer version) and the cancellation window parameters in the booking record, then snapshot them again at pre-auth. When you charge a no-show, your evidence pack should be automatic: signed T&Cs or click-wrap acceptance, rate plan details, messages sent, and the lack of check-in signal (no keycard issuance, no device log-in to Wi-Fi). Overbooking policies belong in the same playbook—document walk procedures, partner hotel arrangements, and compensation rules so refunds or rate differences post cleanly and the chargeback desk has a coherent narrative.
Payment methods matter because hospitality is one of the few consumer verticals where card-present, card-not-present, and account-to-account all meet on the same folio. Cards remain the backbone—lean on network tokens for profiles, account updater for repeat guests, and BIN-aware routing to improve approval rates. Layer in local account-to-account rails where they cut cost and friction for deposits and refunds: SEPA Instant in the euro area, Faster Payments in the UK, Pix in Brazil, UPI-linked flows for India-facing corridors. When you accept A2A for prepaid rates, wire the PMS to show funds-received in near real time so reservations doesn’t cancel on a timeout. For on-property spend (bar, spa), keep a simple split-tender routine—many guests want to settle room charges with a corporate card and extras with a personal instrument; the ledger should keep both with their own rate locks and tax bases.
OTAs are a separate cash engine with their own traps. In the merchant model, you will receive virtual cards at check-in or check-out; treat the VCC like a controlled, single-use instrument—no tips, no extra incidentals, and no currency switching unless the OTA contract says so. In the agency model, you will charge the guest on arrival; have the original authorization trail ready to defeat “card not present” style disputes. Map each OTA to a virtual account or virtual IBAN per property or per brand cluster; it makes remittance advice and auto-match close to trivial and surfaces commission deltas immediately. Reconcile OTA taxes and city levies separately; otherwise, you will spend month-end arguing with auditors about why your tax payable does not equal the folio totals.
Corporate and group business require different controls. For MICE and tour series, milestone-based deposits are better than single large prepaids: 20% at contract, 30% at sixty days, balance at seven days, each with its own currency and rate lock. Attrition and cancellation clauses need to be computable, not literary. Model “pick-up” curves in finance so sales can re-sell safely without promising inventory twice. For corporate house accounts and bill-to arrangements, assign limits, refresh cycles, and dunning cadences; keep them out of the consumer chargeback stream by billing monthly and collecting by local bank rail with remittance references that the AR clerk does not have to guess.
Disputes in hospitality are rarely about stolen cards; they are about expectations. Your best win rate comes from telemetry you already own: door lock access logs tied to the guest profile, Wi-Fi authentication records after the charge, POS signatures or gratuity slips for restaurant checks posted to room, and staff notes on guest-initiated moves (room change, late checkout). Automate evidence assembly at dispute intake. Refund to the original instrument when service recovery is warranted; do not let agents invent alternate payout destinations. Friendly fraud falls when descriptors are clear (brand + property name + city) and when pre-stay communications reaffirm cancellation windows and deposit terms in plain language.
Reconciliation is where margin leaks or tightens. A property has many subsystems—PMS, POS, spa, parking, minibar—and every one of them wants to be the source of truth. Finance needs a canonical ledger that ingests folio postings as journaled events and matches them to payments with line-item identity. Money should be stored as integer minor units with ISO currency, every monetary event tagged with rate, rate source, and timestamp, and every external call made idempotent. Bank statements in ISO 20022 format and virtual accounts per property allow auto-match rates above ninety-eight percent by count and well above ninety-five by value; the remainder should fall into a variance queue that classifies the issue—FX drift, fee mismatch, delayed tip adjustment, OTA commission timing—so month-end does not turn into archaeology.
FX management is pragmatic, not heroic. Collect and spend in the same currency whenever you can—payroll, utilities, local vendors—and hedge the rest with short-dated forwards tied to predictable exposure (owner distributions, management fees). Keep small currency buffers in high-velocity wallets to absorb authorization-to-clearing moves and weekend cut-offs. Publish coverage ratios and policy exceptions so owners see discipline rather than guesswork; explain FX cost in basis points of property-level revenue to keep debates factual.
Controls and resilience rounds it out. Screen sanctions on owners, large groups, and high-value refunds. Enforce dual control on changes to beneficiary accounts for owner distributions and supplier payments. Operate at least two acquirers in your top corridors and test failover. For instant bank rails, mitigate push-payment risk with name-matching, velocity caps on refunds, and cool-offs for first-time payees. Segment data by region if residency rules apply; mirror that segmentation in the reporting layer so cross-border extracts do not leak personal data.
A compact 90-day plan helps a chain turn principle into practice. First month: codify pre-auth ladders by length of stay, wire automatic release, and standardize descriptors. Stand up virtual IBANs per property and per OTA to clean up receivables. Second month: pilot instant bank refunds in one euro-area market and one non-EU corridor; add BIN-aware routing and network tokens across direct channels; ship evidence auto-builder for disputes. Third month: set currency buffer targets by property archetype, start rolling forwards on owner distribution exposure, and publish a finance dashboard that shows authorization rate, refund latency, chargeback ratio, DSO by channel, FX cost in basis points, auto-match rate, and manual minutes per thousand folio lines.
There are moments when a payment intermediary accelerates outcomes. If you need multi-currency accounts per property, virtual IBAN segmentation by OTA and channel, and local rails for rapid refunds and owner distributions—without constructing a dozen bilateral bank integrations—short-list a specialist such as Collect&Pay. The evaluation lens should weight corridor coverage, uptime, dispute handling, and line-level fee/FX transparency more heavily than headline processing fees; opaque reporting will cost more than a few basis points saved.