Cancellation Policy

Hey hosts,

I feel we could do with some more time on the cancellation options. At the moment we have 3 options:

Flexible - Full refund 1 day prior to arrival
Moderate - Full refund 5 Days prior to arrival
Strict - 50% refund 7 days prior to arrival

In my opinion 7 days is cutting it extremely fine to find a new booking. If you look at AirBnB price tips they would agree, the rate drops significantly for available dates within 7 days.

I’d be more than happy to provide a full refund for cancellations up to 28 days prior to bookings. Gives me enough time to get a replacement booking. I don’t want guests to be put off making large bookings because they’re worried about only getting 50% refunds. Having said that, at least the guests that book with us are certain of their travel plans. We’ve only had one cancellation in 2 years and it was a same day booking - they got their locations muddled up and we were able to give them a full refund.

Does anyone use the flexible or moderate? The flexible option is madness to me!

@rupe30
There is a fairly active thread already going which is discussing the cancellation policies.

Might make sense for you to join into that discussion.

Yes, I use the flexible cancellation policy. I never have a problem rebooking.

Hi @rupe30,

I use Moderate, mostly because I imagine Airbnb rates Strict lower in searches. And given that Airbnb overrides cancellation policies whenever it feels like it, it doesn’t mean all that much anyway.

And I have had a substantial number of cancellations. Though virtually always by people who were already in India. People who are flying in from outside India usually aren’t going to cancel their trip because they would lose a lot of money on the plane fare.

Though some of the time I’ve got replacements for at least part of the time.

And yes, I agree that even 7 days is a very short amount of time to get a new booking, unless you have an extremely busy listing with lots of last minute bookings. And “find” isn’t really an accurate word. You don’t have any control over whether people inquire or book.

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A canny guest can get around whatever your policy is so I agree more variations are pretty meaningless.

I think it depends. My price doesn’t go down massively off peak. I have accepted three cancellations in a situation where I could have kept all the money within a week and have always got another booking.

I think if you want different booking terms you could look at other listing sites and also set up your own website to drive traffic to a listing where you set your own terms.

I think it’s highly unlikely Airbnb will ever do what you want as they have been making cancellation terms easier and easier for guests, rather than stricter.