Everything Edinburgh hoteliers want to know about NovaBid

The booking value belongs to the hotel. NovaBid remits it less commission: the transfer is initiated at booking, held in your own Stripe account, and paid to your bank once your free-cancellation window closes. The worked example above shows the whole thing. You'll see expected and actual payouts inside your Hotel Settings → Payout tab, and you have direct access to your Stripe Express dashboard from there for full visibility into incoming transfers, tax forms, and bank-account changes.

You choose your own free-cancellation window in your property settings: 48 hours, 7 days, 14 days, or any number of days from 2 to 30 before check-in. It is shown on every offer before the business pays, so the business always knows where it stands. - Before the window closes: the business cancels for a full refund, and no commission is charged. - After it closes: the payment stands and you are paid in full for holding the room. Commission applies as normal. - No-show: treated exactly like a cancellation after the window closes. You keep the booking value, less commission. A change to your window applies to offers you send from then on. Offers already sent and bookings already made keep the window they were sent with.

12%, or 10% for founding partners, plus VAT where applicable, only on a paid booking. There is no commission on the Edinburgh visitor levy: when your offer says the levy is included, commission is on the price less the levy and the VAT on it. For away days and team offsites the commission is agreed in writing with each venue before the event is confirmed.

No. There is no rate parity clause in our hotel agreement. You set every offer yourself, at whatever rate makes sense for the corporate demand in front of you, and offers are private to the business that asked, so nothing you quote here touches your public rates. You are NOT exclusive to NovaBid. Run us alongside whatever else you already use.

About 15 minutes a week, after a one-time 20-minute setup. - Setup (one time): create your hotel profile, complete Stripe onboarding, confirm your amenities (cancellation is one platform rule, nothing to set). ~20 minutes. - Per request: when an SMB request matches your city, you get an email + in-app notification. Click in, set room type + price + amenities, hit submit. ~2 minutes per offer. - We are early, so we will be straight with you: expect a handful of relevant requests a month at first, growing as more businesses post trips. Bid on the ones that fit, ignore the rest.

Stripe automatically generates VAT-compliant payout statements you can download from your Express dashboard. NovaBid issues a monthly commission statement for your records; the commission has already been deducted from your payouts, so there is nothing further to pay. The SMB invoice for the booking comes from us, with your hotel listed as the underlying service provider, this is standard marketplace VAT treatment in the UK and meets HMRC's documentation requirements. Your accountant will recognise the format.

Yes, guest name, email, phone, check-in time (if specified), and any special requests come through the moment booking is confirmed. You also get a confirmation code (e.g. NB-7KQ4MX) that the guest will reference at check-in. If you need to contact the guest before arrival (room ready early, parking instructions, etc.) you can email them directly. We don't sit between you.

If you are on Mews, yes: the booking is created in your Mews for you, one reservation per room, with a note for the front desk, and a cancellation made through NovaBid is cancelled in Mews too. The details are at novabid.co.uk/works-with/mews. On any other system, the booking arrives by email in a format the front desk can key in in under a minute, with a line for each room. Other systems will be added when the connection works, not before.

The strongest protection is structural: the business pays in full by card through Stripe before a booking is confirmed. No booking reaches you unpaid, so there is nothing to invoice and nothing to chase. We are early and deliberately small, so every account on the platform is reviewed by hand rather than waved through. If a guest no-shows or causes damage, we hold the booking company's details and act as your first line of dispute support.

Three steps, ~20 minutes total: 1. Request an invitation at novabid.co.uk/founding-partners. We check ownership at Companies House, then send you a private signup link. 2. Get verified, we manually review every hotel within 24 hours to make sure NovaBid SMBs only see legitimate accommodation. (We're tightly hand-picked at launch in Edinburgh.) 3. Complete Stripe Connect onboarding inside your dashboard's Settings → Payout tab. This takes ~10 minutes (ID verification + bank details, all handled by Stripe directly, we never touch your bank info). Once all three are done you'll start seeing SMB trip requests for Edinburgh in your dashboard. You can submit your first offer the same day.