A booking placed under a name that is not the client's, from someone else's number or profile, or as a joke. An internal note follows it for a year.
Night work carries one risk that daytime work does not, and it is not the one people assume. It is the door that was never meant to be answered: an address typed by someone who has no intention of being behind it, sent at an hour when the street outside is empty.
A booking is false if it was placed under a name that does not belong to the client, if it came from a phone number or a profile owned by someone else, if it was sent as a joke, or if a no-show followed any of those three. That list is complete and nothing else joins it.
A client who booked honestly and then failed to answer the door has not made a false booking. That is a missed appointment, handled on the ordinary notice scale like any other cancellation, and the cancellation entry covers what it costs.
A short internal note, holding the date, what happened, and the name and number the booking arrived from. The note stays on file for twelve months and then goes. It is never passed to another business or to anyone else, and it answers exactly one question: whether to accept a further booking from the same person. The route for objecting to a note, or asking for it to be corrected or removed, is on the privacy page. Where the facts suggest a criminal offence, the house may report the matter to the police.
Forty-five therapists make these journeys, often alone, often at an hour when a building's reception is one person or nobody. A false booking costs one of them a night. The note is there so that the same name does not go on to cost another one hers. A guest who books under their own name and is in the room when she knocks will never meet any part of this.
Two lines settle it: where the room is, and what time you want someone at the door. The answer comes back with a name, an arrival window and the whole figure, whatever the clock says.