Needing to Cancel A Short-Term Rental Booking?

As a host have you ever had to cancel a short-term rental booking?

 We get it. Sometimes there’s things beyond our control so there’s no option.

 Cancellations affect more than one guests’ individual stay - there’s many moving parts in the background of short-term rental platforms like AirBnb that penalise cancellations.

Negative Reviews

• The deciding factor for guests booking short-term rentals may be another guest’s review. Cancellations can cause negative reviews which affects the performance of your short-term rental in the long-term.

Search Rankings

• Even more concerning is the impact that cancellations have on the visibility of your rental. Online short-term rental platforms like AirBnb work similarly to search engines like Google. Their algorithms boost the properties whose hosts are reliable and receive positive reviews, because potential guests are more likely to select those properties. Cancellations and negative reviews lower your search ranking, making your rental less likely to show up as one of the first options for guests.

Financial Cost

• Financial penalties & fees due to a host cancelling do differ across the various platforms. Additionally, when you cancel a booking, the dates of that booking can be automatically blocked. This means that even if your listing attracts new booking requests, those dates remain unavailable, which impacts your potential revenue and the occupancy rate.

Flow on Effects Across Properties

• As an agency, Guest Realty represents a portfolio of property owners. Cancellations not only affect individual listings, but can have flow on effects for the wider portfolio. For instance, to maintain Superhost status on AirBnB, we must have a cancellation rate of 1% or lower. At Guest Realty, we pride ourselves on providing expert property management for owners, and seamless experiences for our guests. In case of cancellations, we communicate with your guests, helping them find alternative accommodation. 

Minimising cancellations means all our property owners benefit from higher search rankings, positive reviews and improve our broader relationship with short-term rental platforms.

 We are always happy to advise on the details and effects of any potential cancellations, and find solutions that work for our property owners and guests.

 Need more info or have some questions? Contact us 👉 anna@guestrealty.co