Edinburgh business travel · NovaBid
How we verify the hotels
Every property that can send you an offer has been checked by a person before it was let in, and the standard is written down here rather than implied by a badge. It is a short standard, honestly described, including the things we do not check.
Hands-on Edinburgh service opens 12 October 2026. The self-serve platform follows. See the launch plan.
How does NovaBid verify the hotels on its platform?
Every property is checked by hand before it can send an offer. We confirm it is a real trading business at the address it claims, that it is independently owned rather than part of a chain or an international group, that its public guest reviews are consistent with what it says about itself, and that a named person at the property has signed our partner agreement. Properties that fail the independence test are declined regardless of quality, and nobody can buy their way onto the platform or into a better position on it.
The booking pattern we hear about
A listing on a large booking site means the property paid to be there, not that anyone looked at it. The badge economy on those platforms measures commercial relationship, not standards.
Duty of care sits with the employer. If you send colleagues somewhere, you are the one answering for it, and "it was on a website" is not an answer.
Independent does not automatically mean good, and we would rather say what we actually checked than let a badge imply more than it means.
How NovaBid fixes it
01
The independence rule comes first
NovaBid takes independent hotels and independently owned groups. Never a chain, never an international group, never a franchise of one. This is not a preference, it is the point of the platform: a chain already has distribution and does not need us, and an independent has a price it can offer and no way to reach the company that wants it. A property that fails this test is declined however good it is.
02
The property is checked by a person
We confirm the business exists and trades at the address it gives, that the person signing has authority to sign, and that the public record of the property, its own site and its guest reviews, matches what it tells us. Founding partners are limited to ten properties and no more than two from any one group, so no group can quietly become the platform.
03
The agreement, then the badge
Before it can send an offer, the property signs our partner agreement, which covers how offers are made and honoured, the commission and how it is paid, and its obligations to guests. The verified badge on the Partners page means those steps are complete. It is not decorative and it is not purchasable.
Pricing
Free for SMBs. Hotels pay commission only on a paid booking: 10% founding, 12% standard.
No markup on the rate. No subscription. No per-booker fee. The hotel covers everything as the cost of winning your business.
Frequently asked
What does "verified partner" actually mean?
That a person confirmed the property is a real, independently owned business trading where it says it does, that its public reputation matches its own account of itself, and that a named person with authority has signed our partner agreement. Nothing on NovaBid is verified automatically and nothing is verified by the property itself.
Can a hotel pay to be listed, or to appear first?
No. There is no listing fee, no subscription and no paid placement of any kind. A hotel cannot buy its way onto the platform, into your results, or above another property. There is nothing to sell, which is the simplest guarantee we can give you.
Why independents only?
Because that is where the value is on both sides. An independent hotel can price a specific business trip by hand and has no cheap way to reach the company that needs it. A chain has a corporate sales team and a booking engine already. Adding chains would make us a worse version of a booking site.
Do you inspect the properties in person?
Not every one, and we will not claim otherwise. We are an Edinburgh company and the founder has worked in this city's hotels, so a good number of the founding properties are known to us directly. What every property has passed is the check described above. If in-person inspection becomes part of the standard, this page will say so.
What do you not check?
We do not audit a hotel's fire, food safety or licensing compliance, which are matters for the regulators that already oversee them, and we do not grade properties with a star rating of our own. The agreement requires a property to hold the licences and insurance its business needs and to comply with the law that applies to it. If you have a specific duty-of-care requirement, tell us in the trip brief and we will put it to the properties directly.
What happens if a hotel does not honour an offer?
Tell us. An offer that has been accepted is a paid booking and the property is bound by it. A property that failed to honour a booking would be removed from the platform, and we would refund you and work to place your people somewhere comparable. We would rather lose a partner than have you doubt what an accepted offer is worth.
Are serviced apartment operators held to the same rule?
Yes, and to one more. The independence test is identical, and an apartment operator must also run its units as a professional operation rather than as a private host: licensed or operating as an aparthotel, invoicing properly, and reachable out of hours. We do not take individual short-term-let hosts.
Written by Thomas Mellot, founder of NovaBid. He trained as a chef in France and worked front of house in Edinburgh hotels, as Chef de Rang at the Caledonian and the Balmoral. He built NovaBid after watching independents lose business travel to platforms that never set foot in the building. More about NovaBid.
Last reviewed 8 September 2026. We correct these pages when the facts change; tell us if something here is wrong.
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