Booking.com Refund Policy: What You Need to Know as a Host
Although guests often plan their trips in advance, travel plans can change, and they may have to cancel their bookings. So how does Booking.com handle cancellations and refunds? Keep reading to learn about the Booking.com refund policy.
Being one of the largest OTA platforms, Booking.com boasts more than 28 million accommodation listings, with 6.6 million being private homes, apartments, and unique places to stay.
Booking.com is popular among travelers looking to book accommodations worldwide, so listing your Vrbo or Airbnb property there can be a smart move if you want to reach a wider audience. If you get creative with marketing your vacation rental property and create a stunning Booking.com listing, you’ll be able to attract more guests and get more bookings.
But, although guests often plan their trips in advance, travel plans can change, and they may have to cancel their bookings. So how does Booking.com handle cancellations and refunds? Keep reading to learn about the Booking.com refund policy.
You may also want to check out our Booking.com host guide for beginners to find answers to other common questions.
Booking.com Refund Policy
No matter how much travelers plan their trips, unexpected events can alter their plans, and they may need to cancel their bookings or change their check-in dates. Naturally, guests expect to get a refund, but for hosts, cancellations can result in missing out on revenue.
To make cancellations less painful for both parties, Booking.com recommends hosts set clear cancellation policies. Regarding the Booking.com refund policy, guests can get refunds when they have to cancel their bookings, depend on the policies hosts have set for their properties. Some bookings can’t be canceled for free, while others can only be canceled for free before a specific deadline.
You should set up clear cancellation policies for your listings. Then, travelers will know what to expect if they cancel or change their booking. This way, you can prevent unpleasant surprises for your guests that can harm their experience. Clearly stated policies can also help protect you as a host from a potential loss of income.
Sometimes, hosts must cancel a reservation due to unforeseen issues at their properties. If that happens, you must report this to customer service, and they will support you with the cancellation request and help relocate the guest.
Hosts are also allowed to cancel a reservation if the property is overbooked. It’s costly and time-consuming because you’ll have to find your guest a new place to stay and ensure that it offers the same standard. Booking.com will also refund the guest immediately.
The good news is that you can prevent double bookings using reliable short-term rental management software, such as Hospitable. Moreover, with Hospitable, you can take advantage of our built-in Dynamic Pricing solution, automate almost all routine tasks, and run your short-term rental business on autopilot.
Our STR super app has native API connections with major OTA platforms, including Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. Hospitable is a Booking.com Premier Connectivity Provider, which means we maintain a high-quality connection for a reliable and bug-free experience, and offer the most advanced systems and a wealth of features. Booking.com recommends Hospitable as a channel manager and as a property management system.
If you don’t list your property on Booking.com but have an existing Airbnb listing connected to Hospitable, you can easily create and publish a Booking.com listing directly from your Hospitable account. You won’t need to set up everything manually in Booking.com’s Extranet. Check out our help article for more details.
What Policies Are Available?
Booking.com recommends setting up cancellation, deposit, and prepayment policies that are most suitable for your business, ensuring that guests know when and how much they are charged. You can easily do it on the Booking Extranet. The options you can choose from cover all the main cancellation and payment scenarios. To create your policies, answer a few key questions.
You can set your policies by clicking the Property tab and selecting Policies. You can choose between a fully flexible or a customized policy, or apply different cancellation policies to different room types.
With a fully flexible policy, your guests will only pay when they stay at your vacation rental property and can cancel free of charge during a time frame of your choice before check-in. Remember that guests prefer flexibility and are more likely to choose properties that offer free cancellations. Therefore, if you opt for a fully flexible policy, it can help you attract more guests.
Short-term rental guests often have numerous questions, and your role as a host is to provide them with prompt and accurate answers. This way, you can make your guests happy with their stay, and happy guests are more likely to leave positive reviews that can help you win more bookings.
Answering your guests’ questions will be easier if you use Hospitable. You can use the Suggest with AI and Improve with AI tools available in your Inbox to draft and correct detailed, personalized responses when you message guests manually. We allow you to upload your guidebooks to the Knowledge Hub, enabling our AI to learn about your properties and policies, and helping it write more accurate messages. Train our AI to draft responses for you, and once you feel confident, you can opt for a fully automated AI Inbox.
If you don’t think a fully flexible policy suits your STR business, you can create a customized policy. With a customized policy, you can choose how long before check-in guests can cancel for free and how much they’ll be charged if they cancel after that point, receiving a partial refund.
Booking.com recommends allowing your guests to cancel for free until one or two days before check-in. However, Booking.com also enables you to select a non-refundable policy, where guests will not receive a refund if they cancel, and you’ll receive a guaranteed payment.
Additionally, you can set up a prepayment for a part of the reservation. Guests must pay it before check-in (for partially refundable and non-refundable bookings). Define how and when you’d like to receive that payment. If the guest cancels, they wonʼt get that amount back. Setting a prepayment can help reduce cancellations because guests are less likely to cancel if they know they’ve already paid for their stay.
You can also configure a deposit, which guests must pay upfront, usually by bank transfer. Guests will receive a refund if they cancel within the free (flexible) cancellation period. However, if they cancel after this period, they will not receive a refund of their deposit. If the guest stays at your property, you can either refund them the money afterward or deduct it from the overall price.
Final Thought
How flexible should you be when creating the cancellation and refund policy for your Booking.com listing? There is no correct answer. With a fully flexible policy, you can attract more bookings. On the other hand, setting a non-refundable rate for your property can help reduce cancellations because guests are less likely to cancel if they know they can lose money. Such a policy will also allow you to secure guaranteed payment for reservations.
Booking.com allows hosts to change their policies at any time, so you can experiment with different cancellation policies and test them to find one that best suits your business.
You may also want to check out our blog article to learn more about Booking.com payment options.
