Are hotel chains doing a good job with regards to chargeback disputes?
Hotel chains have been around for long. From the point of view of guests, legacy may be part of the charm of the actual hotel property. However, legacy is a disadvantage when it’s about technology and it tends to come with a cost, as when chargebacks are managed with legacy manual practices.
According to Ethoca’s 2025 state of chargebacks report the average chargeback value for travel and hospitality is $120, and chargeback rates are increasing. The $120 number is influenced by lower value chargebacks in travel, but in the case of hotels, average chargebacks are typically in the $200 range.
For many hotel chains chargebacks are a black hole. The reason is simple: evidence collection for the chargeback dispute process is handled at the property level. This means that when a chargeback happens, property-level staff, from general managers to finance directors, are expected to deliver the evidence required for the chargeback, manually and using complex systems. But they don’t actually do that: they were too consumed with the day-to-day demands of hospitality to bother with disputing chargebacks. As a result, for many hotel chains we encountered, we saw win rates that hovered between 0% and 11%. Even worse, most disputes simply timed out.
“We didn’t even know what we were missing” one of the directors at a hotel chain told us. “Chargebacks were just happening in the background—and we were losing.”
The problem with hotel and hospitality chargebacks
Industry pundits say that hotel chargebacks started with COVID-19, and are increasing ever since. Yet large hotel operators let each hotel handle its disputes individually, with a medley of legacy systems, some of which were on-premises.
This meant that when a chargeback happened, it was routed to a hotel, where the expectation was that hotel staff would find the time to deal with it, with little training and little understanding of why it was important to enrich data (that only existed at the hotel property itself, in some cases in those legacy systems used to manage the hotel) for a successful chargeback dispute. And as mentioned above, hotel staff failed to do that. Additionally, formats and documents differed by hotel, making the process even more cumbersome.
What was worse is that hotel chains lacked the central data and insights that come from collecting chargeback data – some of the insights can lead to changes in operational practices (such as billing descriptors, terms and conditions and customer service). Additionally, hotel chains couldn’t answer basic questions about recovery rates and sums and the real financial impact of chargebacks on the business was obfuscated.
Solving hotel chargeback disputes with automation
Most chargeback tools were built for ecommerce, assuming centralized operations and dedicated fraud teams. Hospitality needed something different:
- Built for distributed teams
- No training required
- Adaptive to multiple PSPs
- Light-touch but high-impact
- Solving for hotel property staff – making it easy for them to act
When we sought to change how hotels deal with chargebacks, the pitch was simple. Just plug our chargeback automation system into your PSP and we’ll do the rest.
On top of the integration with the PSPs, which pulled all chargeback data into Justt’s platform, there remained the issue of the work required from hotel staff – providing the data that will be pulled into the chargeback.
To do this, we focused on hotel-property-friendly workflows. We introduced a dead-simple way for properties to submit folios for chargebacks: drag-and-drop PDFs into the Justt Hub. No logins, tagging, or formatting. We handled the data extraction. Hotel staff stayed focused on guests. The result was an automated flow so that all the hotel property had to do is pass just one PDF (Folio) to Justt. On top of this we incorporated smart data extraction through LLM, thus streamlining hotel operations and increasing recovery rates.
Additionally, we streamlined the communication with each individual hotel by sending clear requests for simple actions they need to take in relation to their chargebacks (e.g reply by email and attach an invoice or a folio)
This no-effort integration resonated deeply. For corporate, it meant finding revenue without internal investment. For properties, it was one less distraction.
Getting the right reporting for hotel chain management
Another benefit of handling all chargebacks at corporate and not having properties deal with the process was reporting and insights, turning chargeback data from a black hole into something that can be insightful and drive action.
Once properties are covered, the bigger picture emerges. The Portfolio View let corporate finance teams monitor chargebacks across all locations—identifying problem areas, spotting trends, and benchmarking improvements from a single screen.
Using modern chargeback management turns chargebacks from an invisible revenue leak into a measurable, manageable process for hotel chains. With no tech lift, immediate ROI, and property-friendly workflows, Justt didn’t just fit the hospitality space—it changed the game.
Results of chargeback automation with Justt for hotel chains
Getting a modern chargeback automation platform into hotel chains drives a big difference:
- Dramatically higher win rates
- Zero operational burden
- Greater property engagement
- For the first time: transparency and control over chargebacks
Want to see the real results – here they are (anonymized)
| Entity | Reason Group | pre-Justt win rates | post-Justt win rates |
| Hotel chain A | Fraud | 7% | 38% |
| Service | 31% | 62% | |
| Hotel chain B | Fraud | 2% | 12% |
| Service | 5% | 42% | |
| Hotel chain C | Fraud | 35% | 49% |
| Service | 43% | 63% | |
| Hotel chain D | Fraud | 15% | 30% |
| Service | 47% | 59% |
