Flexible seasonal cancellation policies?

[Carole]

Hello all,

I hope everyone is staying healthy and hanging in there.

We are trying our best, alas with half our places in a country Americans cannot travel to, it is a challenge. That said, we still have Chicago A few months ago I tried to recover the lost year by going from our no refunds on any bookings policy (which worked for us for a very, very long time) to a moderate policy which offers 100% refunds up to 30 days and 50% up to 14 days. I have gotten a few bookings this way, most all were within or close to the 14 days prior to arrival.

I figured that would be how most bookings come in during the next few months - but now I have some New Years inquiries and I just got a booking for Memorial Day weekend. I am concerned about the Memorial Day weekend booking cancelling 30 days prior because in normal times I would not have been able to rebook. This got me thinking about the option to have seasonal cancellation terms and I asked my VRBO support person and she said they are working on this feature and this:

1 – whichever future holiday you are most concerned about right now, make a note to yourself to change the policy about 2 months before that date occurs. So, as an example, if July 4 2020 is the holiday you are concerned with, then in mid April I would change the policy.

2 - contact your software and ask your contact if they have a project in queue to build out the flexible cancellation policy option. VRBO is working on this as a new rollout but it will be useless to partners if their software company doesn’t offer the variable model.

Has anyone gone back and forth with changing cancellation policies? Is it a hassle to manage?

And for the MyVR folks, re: #2 - do you have this in your queue?

Thanks

Carole

[Carole]

@Tristan-Brotherton @Kevin-Poglitsch or anyone else on the MyVR team - I’m circling back to see if you have anything in the queue related to flexibility with seasonal cancellation policies.

[Lindsay Barrett]

Hi Carole,

Thank you for sharing these ideas and suggestions! When HomeAway releases their new flexible cancellation policies, MyVR can work on a feature to integrate with these settings.

[Joseph Sennish]

When we spoke with our AirBnb Account Manager last month, she told us they are seeing 80% of bookings occur 8 to 30 days in advance.

We had noticed this as well in June.

So, when someone who booked months ago cancels, we raise the rates before we process the cancellation. $770,000 in Cancellations this year, but we’re still likely to hit our revenue goal.