Problem
Between January 1st and January 5th, 2026, cancellation fees for reservations in the Netherlands and Finland were calculated using the 2025 tax rates instead of the updated 2026 tax rates.
The collection of funds by hotels was correct, this issue only impacted how the tax was reported on invoices.
Action
Once we identified the issue on January 5th, we took the following steps:
- Deployed an immediate fix – We updated the tax configuration in our system and deployed the fix to production the same day, preventing any further reservations from being affected.
- Corrected open reservations – We ran a job to automatically correct all open reservations, ensuring the correct 2026 tax rates were applied to cancellation fees.
- Prepared documentation for closed reservations – For the closed reservations, we created documentation identifying all affected hotel-reservations. Hotels will need to rebate these invoices manually, and we are providing guidance materials to support them through this process.
Causes
When we updated the tax rates for the Netherlands and Finland on January 1st, 2026, we used a special daily migration process due to the size of these markets and the timing of the change. During this process, we overlooked updating the tax rate applied to cancellation fees, which was configured separately from the nightly rates.
Solutions
To prevent this from happening again, we are:
- Implementing future tax support. We are developing functionality to pre-configure future tax rates in our system. This will eliminate the need for manual migrations and ensure all tax-related components (including cancellation fees) update consistently and automatically.
- Improving our migration checklist. We are updating our tax migration procedures to explicitly include verification of all tax-related components, not just nightly rates.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and remain committed to ensuring accurate tax reporting for all our customers.