A guest damaged something in your B&B: what do you do, and how do you charge for it correctly?

You open the room after check-out and you spot it straight away. A scorch mark on the wooden bedside table. A crack in the washbasin. Or the classic every host goes through sooner or later: a mattress that no wash cycle will ever save. The guest has left, said nothing at goodbye, and you are standing there with a repair worth a few hundred euros and a room that is sold again tonight.

What you do now, and in which order, largely decides whether you see that money back. This article is not legal advice; it is practice as it works for a small B&B in the Benelux, with the pitfalls we have learned about ourselves.

First: damage or wear and tear?

Not every defect is damage. A wine ring on a table that has served for ten years, a curtain ring that came loose, a lamp that gave up: that is use. The guest already pays for that through the room rate, and a claim for such things costs you a review and yields nothing.

Real damage is what a normal, careful guest does not cause: a burn hole, a broken window, a mattress that needs replacing, a wall that needs repainting, a key that never comes back. Rule of thumb: if you could explain it to a friend without feeling awkward, it is damage. If in doubt, let it go but do note it, because a pattern with the same guest is a different story.

The first ten minutes: evidence, evidence, evidence

Before you touch, clean or move anything: photos. Several, close up and from a distance, with something in the frame that proves the date (a newspaper, your phone showing the date, or simply the photo's own metadata). A short video in which you walk around the room and point out the damage is even stronger.

Also record immediately:

• Who stayed in the room, with the booking number, the channel and the exact check-out time. In your PMS that is one screen; from a paper diary you have to reconstruct it.
• The condition before arrival. This is the step most hosts miss. Without a "before" photo, every claim is your word against the guest's. A fixed habit helps: a few standard photos of the room at every clean, always from the same angles. It takes twenty seconds and it is the only thing that settles an argument.
• What the repair costs. A quote or invoice from a tradesperson, or for smaller items proof of the purchase price of a replacement. No platform accepts a figure plucked from the air.

Only then do you prepare the room for the next guest. If you can, hold off on the final repair until the guest has responded, but don't let rentals stall for it. The photos and the quote are enough.

Approaching the guest: factual, fast, no blame

Get in touch within 24 hours. The longer you wait, the more it looks as if you are making something up. Send a short, businesslike message through the channel the booking came from (that matters for the next step):

"Dear [name], thank you for your stay. While preparing the room we found that [the bedside table has a scorch mark / the washbasin is cracked]. Photos attached. According to the quote, the repair costs € [amount]. We'd like to hear from you how this happened and how we can settle it."

No accusation, no threats about reviews or the police, no emotion. Most guests know exactly what you are talking about, and the majority pay without argument when you approach it this way. Someone who honestly admits the damage deserves a small gesture; a guest who behaves decently after an accident is not your enemy.

If the guest does not respond or denies it, you move to the channel's procedure. That is why it helps that your first message already went through that channel: it now sits in their system, with a timestamp.

Per channel: how to report the damage officially

Direct booking. Here you hold most of the cards. If you took a deposit or a pre-authorisation at booking, you can withhold the amount from it, sending the guest the photos and the quote as substantiation. Without a deposit you send an invoice or a payment request. Make sure your terms and conditions state that the guest is liable for damage they cause; most hosts have that in there, but check.

Booking.com. Booking.com runs a damage programme for accommodations. The essence: you report the damage through the extranet, within a limited period after check-out (in practice a few days to two weeks; check the current deadline in your extranet), with photos and proof of the cost. The guest gets a chance to respond. If the claim is accepted, the amount is settled through the platform. Important: the deadline is hard. Anyone who first waits two weeks for the guest to reply and only then notifies the platform is too late. So do it in parallel: message to the guest and report in the extranet, the same day.

Airbnb. Airbnb works through the Resolution Center. You submit a request to the guest with photos and an amount, and the guest has a number of days to pay or decline. If the guest declines or does not respond, you can ask Airbnb to mediate, and the platform's host protection may step in. Here too there is a deadline (in practice: submit before the next guest checks in or within two weeks of check-out, whichever comes first) and here too before-and-after evidence counts.

Other channels (Expedia, smaller platforms) usually have no damage programme. There you are on your own, as with a direct booking, with the difference that you often don't hold the guest's payment details. One more reason to take a pre-authorisation at arrival for OTA guests too if your furnishings are valuable.

A detail that saves a lot of money: platforms compensate on the basis of an invoice or quote, not on the replacement-as-new price of something that was ten years old. Be realistic in what you ask. A claim that comes across as an attempt to renovate the room at the guest's expense gets rejected, and it costs you credibility on the next, legitimate claim.

Processing the amount correctly

This is where the admin often goes wrong. Damage compensation is not a sale. You are not providing a service to the guest; you are being compensated for a loss. In Belgium and the Netherlands, pure damage compensation therefore falls outside VAT in principle: no VAT on the compensation, and a separate line in your books. If, on the other hand, you charge an "extra cleaning" or "linen replacement" as a service, that is a taxable supply with VAT. The difference lies in the description and in what actually happened, so describe it honestly and ask your accountant how they want it recorded. Never list damage as an "extra night" or "surcharge" on the invoice to keep things simple: that is wrong for tax purposes and it weakens your claim with the platform.

Practically, in your PMS: add the damage as a separate item on the booking, with a clear description and a reference to the photos and the quote, and link the payment to it as soon as it arrives. In BedFlow PMS you add such an item to the booking folio without altering the original stay invoice; the guest history later shows exactly what happened. If the amount is paid out through Booking.com or Airbnb, it arrives with that channel's payout and must remain separately identifiable from your room revenue.

What not to do

• Charging a credit card yourself without an agreement. If you hold card details from a booking but no deposit or pre-authorisation was agreed, a unilateral charge is worth a chargeback and a complaint. Ask first.
• Threatening a bad review or a police report in your first message. It backfires, and it sits in black and white in the platform's system.
• Blocking the guest before the claim is settled. Then you can no longer reach them, and it looks as if you are avoiding the conversation.
• Waiting. Every day that passes makes the story weaker and the platform's deadline shorter.
• Pulling the current stay away from the platform. This is about compensation, not about revising the booking.

It gets easier when you make it structural

One damage case a year is an incident. Three is a sign your process is off. What makes the difference in practice:

1. Standard photos at every clean, always the same angles, stored by date. Twenty seconds per room.
2. A deposit or pre-authorisation for direct bookings, especially for whole houses, groups and longer stays.
3. A fixed clause in your house rules and your terms about liability for damage, which the guest accepts at booking.
4. One place where everything comes together: the booking, the guest details, the messages and the extra item for the damage. Whoever has to piece that together from four tabs and a photo folder on their phone gives up sooner.

In short

• Distinguish damage from wear and tear; claim only what a careful guest would not cause.
• Photos before you touch anything, plus "before" photos at every clean.
• A factual message to the guest within 24 hours, through the booking channel.
• Report to Booking.com or Airbnb the same day, because the deadlines are hard.
• Damage compensation is not a sale: process it separately, in principle without VAT, and never disguise it as a surcharge.

Want to see at a glance who stayed, through which channel, which payments were made, and add a separate damage item without breaking the stay invoice? Try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days, no card details required. Rates are on the pricing page.