Cancellations at your holiday home
We hope that as your rent out your property you will have plenty of booked weeks and an easy turnover of guests coming to stay. However, it is inevitable that from time to time a holidaymaker may have to cancel for any number of reasons. If you decide on a plan of action in advance you will be in a much better position to tackle cancellations as and when they arise.
If someone is cancelling their booking, do ask them why. They will almost certainly have a good reason, and if it turns out to be a personal matter – such as an illness or a death in the family you will obviously wish to handle that with consideration and discretion. Once you have established the reason your guests are cancelling, you may wish to offer them a booking for another week where this is appropriate. For instance if parents discover that their child has an important event or exam on a date they had planned to be away they may be happy to change the booking to a different date. If this is not possible and the only option is to cancel the booking completely then do be as reasonable as you can without leaving yourself out of pocket.
It’s a good idea to have a time scale for refunds which you state in your contract. For example:
| A cancellation | 29 – 56 days before arrival date – 50% | of rental refunded |
| 15 to 28 days before arrival date – 25% | |
| 0 to 14 days before arrival date – 10 % | |
Refer your guests to your booking contract, and refund what you can. Then try to re-book for that week. If you do get another booking, you could refund more of their payment as a gesture of goodwill but remember to cover the cost of your time in re-booking that week.
Deal with refunds as quickly as you can, and keep people up to date with what you’re doing. Any of the payment methods can be used to make a refund. Ask for a receipt for the refund once the funds are received so you can keep your records up to date.
If you’re trying to fill a last minute vacancy, you might wish to highlight the available dates with a Late Deal advert or get in touch with guests who’ve booked before to see if they would like to come again. Consider dropping the price in order to fill the cancelled dates. It is much better to have those dates filled even at a slightly reduced cost than to have a whole week or two weeks when the property stands empty.
Top Tip
Always double check that a payment has entirely cleared before you consider a refund. With some forms of payment such as foreign cheques, the money seems to clear a long time before it actually does. Check with your bank before you refund anything to your customers to avoid falling victim to a scam.
