Booking.com no longer sends guest phone numbers to your PMS. Here's how to fix the link.

Since 28 September 2026, Booking.com no longer sends guest phone numbers to your PMS or channel manager. The number still exists. It sits in the Booking.com Extranet, and getting it into your own systems is now your hotel's job. That is a new layer of friction between Booking.com and your PMS, and it lands on every hotel that talks to its guests on WhatsApp.

The good news: once the number is back in your PMS, nothing else has to change. AskWhisper keeps working exactly as before for every guest whose number is there. This article covers what changed, the reason Booking.com gives, why we think there is more to it, and how to close the gap.

Booking.com reservations now reach your PMS without a phone number

Booking.com told partners in an email on 22 September 2026 that guest phone numbers would no longer be sent automatically through connectivity channels. A Booking.com reservation now arrives in your PMS with the guest's name, the dates, a masked email address ending in @guest.booking.com, and an empty phone field.

You can still see the number yourself: in the Extranet (Reservations, open the booking, click Show phone number) or in the Pulse app under Bookings. Properties without a PMS or channel manager connected to Booking.com see no change.

Here is what that field was doing. In the 90 days before the change (27 June to 25 September 2026, cancellations excluded), across the 80,000+ arrivals at the hotels we work with:

• 32% came through Booking.com
• 70.5% of those Booking.com guests received a WhatsApp before arrival, and 1 in 3 Booking.com guests wrote back
• Fewer than 2 in 100 were reached by email, and under 1 in 100 through Booking.com's own messaging

On a single property: a hotel with 200 arrivals a month has, at those averages, 64 Booking.com arrivals. Around 45 of them would have received a WhatsApp before arriving, and around 21 would have replied: a question about parking, a breakfast booked, a late arrival flagged.

The empty phone field isn't a security setting. It's one guest in three who stops hearing from you before they arrive.

Booking.com says the reason is fraud

Booking.com's stated reason is a rise in fraudulent messages to guests. The pattern is well known in the industry: criminals phish hotel staff, take over their Extranet login, and message guests on WhatsApp with real reservation details and a fake payment link. In April 2026, Booking.com confirmed that reservation data including phone numbers had been accessed, most likely through compromised partner accounts. Fewer systems holding the number, the reasoning goes, means fewer places to steal it from.

The fraud is real, and hotels have been on the receiving end of it. But look at what the change actually does. The number is still in the Extranet, behind the same login the scammers were phishing. The door they used hasn't moved. And hotels that want to keep talking to their guests will copy the number into the same PMS it used to arrive in, only now by hand.

What protects your guests is that login: two-factor authentication on the Extranet does more for them than an empty field in your PMS.

The number was never the weak point. The login was.

We think this is also about who owns the guest

This is our view, not Booking.com's.

Look at the direction of travel. Masked email addresses. Messaging on Booking.com's terms, with a window that closes seven days after checkout. And now the phone number. Each step has its own reason. Together, they make Booking.com's platform the default route between a hotel and its own guest.

That makes sense from Booking.com's side. A guest who only ever hears from your hotel through Booking.com has little reason to book anywhere else next time. The commission you paid on the first stay becomes the commission you pay on the second.

Both things can be true. Booking.com can be protecting travellers, and the result can still be that your hotel holds less of its own guest. For a hotel, the second part is the one to act on.

It is also the reason AskWhisper exists. We believe a hotel should own the relationship with its guest, from the first look at the website to the thank-you after checkout, without asking a platform for permission.

A booking platform can change how you reach your guest overnight. It can't change a relationship the guest started with you.

How to fix the link between Booking.com and your PMS

The fix is simple to describe: get the phone number from Booking.com into your PMS. Once it's there, your guest journey runs as before. (If your PMS already struggles to pass data to your other tools, the PMS integration gap explains why.)

1. Copy the number in for upcoming arrivals. Each morning, open the coming days' Booking.com arrivals in the Extranet, click Show phone number, and paste it into the reservation in your PMS. Prioritise the guests whose pre-arrival message is due soonest.
2. Check what your PMS puts in the empty field. Some PMSs won't accept a reservation without a phone number. Connectivity provider NextPax has told its customers it fills the field with Booking.com's Customer Service number. If your messaging runs off that field, make sure it isn't welcoming Booking.com's call centre.
3. Protect the login. Turn on two-factor authentication for the Extranet and your PMS, and enable the messaging AllowList in the Extranet so unapproved links can't be sent from your account.
4. Keep every other channel open. For guests you haven't copied yet, nothing goes silent in AskWhisper: Booking.com messages land in your AskWhisper inbox and your reply reaches the guest inside Booking.com, and emails go to the guest's masked Booking.com address.

Once the number is in your PMS, the rest of your guest journey doesn't need to know anything changed.

We're working on making the copy step faster

Copying numbers by hand works. At 400 arrivals a month, it's also a job nobody wants. We're working on making that step faster, so the number gets from Booking.com into your PMS with as few clicks as possible, and your Booking.com guests keep getting their WhatsApp without anyone on the desk thinking about it.