Cancellations and declines can hurt your listing’s performance. Take these steps to help prevent avoidable cancellations and deliver a great booking experience.
How to avoid cancellations and declines
Declines and cancellations can have a big effect on your revenue. When you cancel a booking, your position on the search results and overall visibility to travellers are negatively affected. Cancelling too frequently may also result in being removed from our platform, as detailed in the Marketplace Standards.
If you know for certain that you cannot accept a booking, cancel as quickly as possible. Note that auto-declining after 24 hours can create unnecessary work and wait time for travellers, which can also lead to poor reviews.
Create a clear cancellation policy
Setting clear cancellation windows can encourage travellers to plan their holidays carefully, while protecting yourself from last-minute cancellations. Just as you should be consistent with your house rules, you should also follow your own cancellation policy and treat every traveller equally.
Update your cancellation policy under ‘property’, and ‘rules and polices’
Keep your calendar updated
Keeping your calendar up to date is key to avoiding unnecessary cancellations. If guests try to book a property that looks available but actually isn’t, travellers can become frustrated and disappointed — and nobody wants that.
We understand that managing multiple bookings across several different booking sites can be a challenge. The good news is you can easily avoid double bookings and reduce cancellations by syncing your calendars. This will automatically update your calendar on our platform with all other calendars.
Pro tip: always double-check that your calendar shows the correct blocked and unblocked dates.
Add custom rates for peak travel times
Sometimes a traveller will book your property during a peak travel time before you've had a chance to update your pricing. To avoid having to cancel any bookings, be sure to keep popular or busy travel periods updated.
Many partners make the most of popular travel times by charging travellers more during holidays and peak seasons. You can add custom rates for busy seasons, holidays or special events in your area to make sure you get what your holiday rental property is worth.
Set your minimum stay requirement
If you have a minimum stay requirement for your holiday rental property, please make sure to set it. This will prevent travellers from being able to book your property for fewer nights, which can lead to unnecessary declines and cancellations.
Set up your house rules
Set up your house rules so travellers know what is and isn’t allowed at your property. Be clear about your restrictions on pets, age requirements for the primary renter, smoking policies and more. If travellers don’t agree to your house rules, they can’t continue with the booking.
From your dashboard, visit ‘rules and policies’ then ‘house rules’ .
Avoid the majority of declines
Need to decline that booking? Maybe not! By staying open and flexible and communicating with travellers, you can avoid declines, raise bookings and protect your performance. Many options are available for adjusting a booking — even after it’s been requested. Here’s what to do when you receive a booking request that you can’t accommodate:
Consider changing the dates
If you’re flexible with dates, offer the travellers a different time that you both can agree on. You can always change the booking date and avoid the need to decline altogether.
Adjust the quoted amount
If you can’t accept a booking because the quoted amount is off, simply edit the quote and adjust the payment amounts. You don’t need to decline the booking and create a brand-new booking based on your updates.
Open a dialogue with travellers
If you’ve received a booking request but need more information from your traveller, go ahead and communicate with them via our secure platform to find out what you need.
Go ahead and accept the booking
If the traveller doesn’t respond to your request for more information within the 24-hour window, consider accepting the booking before the request expires.
Then, if the traveller doesn’t agree to your house rules, you can let the traveller know that you won’t be able to honour the booking and ask them to initiate the cancellation process for a refund.
Get a waiver for cancellations beyond your control
Sometimes situations beyond our control happen. In some extenuating circumstances, we provide our partners cancellation waivers. Cancellation waivers prevent cancellations from hurting your rank in the marketplace and will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Types of scenarios that could qualify include:
- Natural disasters
- Property damage
- House rule violations
- Unpaid balance from traveller
Learn more about cancellations that qualify for a waiver and how to submit a claim.
