FAQ
Everything you’d want to ask.
Getting started
Who is Noren for?
Independent hotels, B&Bs and guesthouses where the people who run the house also run the desk. Noren puts the booking engine, the channels, the payments and your day in one system, so there is one place to look instead of five.
What does Noren actually replace?
Your booking engine, your channel manager, your front-desk system and the guest registration you do by hand. One subscription covers all four, working from the same bookings and the same guest records.
How long does setup take?
For a seven-room house, about an afternoon. You add room types, set rates and policies and paste one snippet on your website, at your own pace; there's no onboarding call to book. Your channels we connect together with you, because a channel wants someone from our side for that.
Do I need technical skills?
No. If you can paste a block of text into a page of your website (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or a custom site), you can install the booking engine. Everything else happens in Noren itself.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, 14 days with every feature and no card needed. If you don't continue, you pay nothing. Your account stays, but your house does not go live; come back later and you carry on where you left off.
Moving over
Can I bring my bookings from another system?
Yes. Export a CSV from your current system and drop it into the import screen. You get a report of what will be created before anything happens. Past stays count in your figures and guest history; future stays go through the same availability check as a new booking.
Can I try an import before it's real?
Yes. Every import starts as a dry run: you see which bookings would be created, which differ and why, before a single one exists. Prices per night and your own fields come along.
What if the import goes wrong?
Every import can be undone with one click, completely. Nothing from it stays behind.
Can I run Noren next to my old system for a while?
Yes. Connect Noren to your channels with a calendar link first and let your old system keep the rates. After a week you can see whether availability matches, and then you switch the booking engine on your website.
Money & pricing
What does it cost?
A monthly price set by your room count: Starter €39 up to 5 rooms, Standard €59 up to 15, Plus €99 up to 30. On top of that, 0.4% on direct bookings paid through your payment provider via Noren. Prices exclude VAT.
Do you charge on Booking.com or Airbnb bookings?
No. Bookings from an OTA carry no Noren fee at all; you already pay the OTA's commission.
Is there a setup fee or a required annual contract?
Neither. You pay per month and cancel with one month's notice. If you would rather pay yearly, you get 12 months for the price of 10, invoiced in advance; you then cancel with effect from the end of the year, with one month's notice.
Does guest money go through Noren?
Never. Your guest pays directly into your own payment account. Noren never holds guest money and never sits between you and your payout. Our 0.4% fee is invoiced separately each month.
Which payment methods can guests use?
Whatever your payment provider supports: cards, iDEAL, Bancontact, SEPA and more. The checkout puts the method that costs you least for that guest at the top: on a €600 booking a credit card costs about €11.05, iDEAL about €0.29. Payments go live with the first house.
What if I use my own bank terminal?
Common in Spain. You can run payments through your bank's own payment terminal instead. Then there's no platform fee, and your subscription is €10.00 a month higher.
What if my house closes for the season?
After 2 months without stays, Noren suggests pause mode at 30% of your price. Your data, calendar and history keep working, and the booking engine still takes bookings for later dates, without payment up front. What stops is what costs money every month: channels, automatic messages and payment processing. Back to active is one button.
Is there a referral scheme?
Yes. Share your code with another house: they get 50% off their first 2 invoices, and you get 30% of what they pay in their first year, taken off your own subscription.
What happens when I add rooms?
Your plan follows your room count from the next month. Go over your plan's limit and you move up; drop below it and you move down. There's nothing to request.
Channels
Which channels do you connect to?
Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia, with rates and availability syncing in both directions. Other platforms that offer a calendar link can be connected for availability. The channel connection goes live with the first house.
How do I know the channels are right?
Every night at four, Noren compares the next thirty nights with each channel. Where a rate or availability drifted, it resends the correct value, or asks you first, depending on your automation settings. The channel connection goes live with the first house.
Can a room be double-booked?
Rarely. Noren updates every channel the moment a booking arrives, and the nightly check catches anything that slipped. If it does happen, it lands on your Today screen with the booking.
Guests & compliance
Where do guest messages go?
Into one inbox with a single thread per guest, with the booking right next to it. Whoever has waited longest is on top, and Noren can draft a reply from the booking. Email and channel messages join with the first house.
How does online check-in work?
A week before arrival each guest gets a link in the language they booked in. Every traveller fills in their own details on their phone, scans their ID and signs. You see progress per booking on your Today screen.
Do you issue guest invoices?
Outside Spain, yes. In Spain not yet: invoicing under Verifactu is being built for the legal deadline, 1 January 2027 for companies and 1 July 2027 for everyone else. Until it's ready, Noren issues no invoices for Spanish properties, and your guest bill stays internal. A half-finished invoice would be worse than none.
Do you handle Spain's guest registration?
Soon: filing goes live with the first house in Spain. Under RD 933/2021 every stay must be reported to SES.HOSPEDAJES. Noren files the report from the check-in data, including the payment details the law requires. If a report is rejected, you see the authority's reason and a one-click fix.
What about other countries?
Spain's registration comes first. The same guest record is built to carry into other European registrations; tell us your country and we'll say when.
In which languages can guests book?
Dutch, English, Spanish and German. Their confirmation, reminders and check-in form all follow the language they booked in.
Automation
What does Noren do on its own?
It watches for things like dirty rooms before an arrival, prices that didn't reach a channel, guests who haven't checked in and open balances. For each kind, you choose: ask, do it, or off.
How do I know what it did?
Every action is in the history of the booking or the room, marked as done by Noren. Once a month you see one total: what Noren did for you, and how much was booked on the nights it helped.
Can Noren make decisions about money?
No. Anything involving a decision (a payment request, a room move, relaxing a minimum stay) is prepared by Noren and waits for your approval. Only routine fixes, like resending a rate, can run on their own.
Data & security
Where is my data stored?
In the European Union. From the moment the first house goes live, we back up every night to separate European storage and test restoring it.
Who can see my guests' data?
You and the users you add. We only look in when you ask for help, and that happens with a recorded reason. What Noren may do with guest data is set out in the data processing agreement you accept at sign-up; we don't sell or share it.
Can my team use it?
Yes. Add people with one of five role presets, or fine-tune rights per module. Owners and managers sign in with two-factor, and every change records who made it.
Is there an app for housekeeping?
Noren installs on any phone as an app, with the cleaning board, tasks and notifications. It keeps working without signal: changes wait on the phone and sync once it's back.
What happens if something breaks?
You see it on your Today screen with the reason in plain words. Whether Noren itself is running is shown on the public status page.
Leaving
What if I want to stop?
Cancel in Settings; your plan then runs for one more month, the notice period in the terms. Within thirty days you receive a complete export of bookings, guests, rates and invoices in a readable format, free of charge.
Does the booking engine stay on my site?
Once your account closes the snippet shows a short notice instead of the calendar, so guests aren't left with a broken page. Remove it whenever suits you.
Can't find your question?
Email us your question, in your own words. We reply in Dutch, English or Spanish.
hallo@norenrooms.com