Will I be charged if the hotel cancelled the booking (on booking.com)?

Question

What happens if the hotel cancels my booking (booking.com) because I failed to make pre-payment in time? Will they still charge my bank card as if I had made the cancellation?

I didn’t get the hotel’s email with the payment instructions in time (it got in my spam folder) and now I’ve received a message that the hotel has cancelled the booking. I’m on holiday and I can’t check my balance but it’d be good to know if I’ll still pay the full price (as it would be the case if I cancelled the room). Thanks for any info.

Edit (after being asked in comment: What did your booking T&C say about cancellation/prepayment etc?):

It says "This is a non-refundable reservation. If you choose to cancel you will not be refunded. Changing the dates of your stay is not possible." And also "The property requires prepayment via PayPal. Guests will receive a direct email from the property within 24 hours of booking with the PayPal link. To confirm the reservation, payment must be made within 48 hours once email is received."

This is what I did not do in time and the booking was cancelled by the hotel.

Answer 1

A court in your location might or might not find that you have made a binding promise to pay by requesting the booking.

(I would expect most sane jurisdictions to interpret the prepayment condition to mean that the hotel explicit wanted there to be no contract between you until you have sent the prepayment -- but IANAL and your jurisdiction may fail to live up to my concept of sanity).

However, in practice this is irrelevant. The reason why they're demanding prepayment in the first place is that they don't want to spend time and effort to chase down no-shows after the fact to collect payment through legal means. Likewise, they won't trouble themselves to go after you; they'll be happy enough to have the opportunity to let someone else book the room.