Nobody wants to see a booking get canceled, but sometimes life happens! Canceling a booking may have many variables that depend on your Cancellation Policy and Cancellation Fees.
Does the guest get back all the money they paid? Sometimes, but sometimes not. Does the guest get back a percentage? Maybe, but it can be complicated. Or maybe you give a refund only if you can rebook the dates, and otherwise, not?
Below we will detail the booking cancellation process.
- Direct Bookings, Vrbo API Connected
- Listing Channels
- Cancellation Within 24 Hours of Booking
- Reactivating Canceled Bookings
- Remote Door Locks
- FAQs
Direct Bookings, Vrbo API Connected
There is no mechanism available for guests to cancel their reservation directly on OwnerRez hosted websites. Guests wishing to cancel their reservation will need to contact you, the host, to initiate the cancellation process manually in OR.
Navigate to the booking to be canceled and click on Cancel.
On the Cancel Booking page, your current Cancellation Policy will appear along with some additional Refund options.
- Users can choose to refund a partial refund percentage by clicking on the Refund drop-down list.
- Or users can choose from the following.
- Guest gets a full refund
- Guest gets no refund
- I'll update the charges manually
- Users can also decide whether to charge a Cancellation Fee by selecting from the following options.
- No fee
- Charge a fee from the Cancellation Fee drop-down list.
- Add New Cancellation Fee.
Scroll down and new charges/refunds and fees will be displayed in bold based on the selections above. Commissions and Expenses, if any, will appear in the right columns.
Below that Refund information is detailed in the blue informational box. In the case below, since the credit card was charged elsewhere so the user will have to manually refund the guest $23.
An alert will be displayed for any Security Deposits scheduled for this booking that will be canceled and users can also select specific Cancellation notification alerts. Click on Cancel this booking.
Users also have the opportunity to attribute the cancellation to guests or themselves and who should be notified.
The Cancellation Notice email editor will open immediately allowing users to notify the guest of the cancellation and refund if any. Notice that the booking banner is now pink with CANCELED appearing in red text at the top. Click on Send Email.
The booking cancellation process is complete and will be removed from the calendar but the guest information will be saved.
Users should note the following.
- Payments made more than 6 months prior to the refund are not able to be processed within the OwnerRez system. Users can work directly with their payment processor to complete the refund.
- Municipalities' policies on how hosts handle canceled booking sales taxes can vary.
Once users have been able to successfully refund the guest via this other method, you'll also want to record the refund in the booking, as processed elsewhere by navigating to the canceled Booking > Transactions > Refunds > Record Refund.
Users should note that if they are Vrbo API connected, and a pre-API connected booking is canceled, there is no automatic notification to or from OwnerRez users from Vrbo.
Users will either have to
- Notice the cancelation themselves in the Vrbo Owner Dashboard
- Or possibly recognize the cancelation when importing Channel Bridge files (which users should continue to do, as there's no other way to update pre-API connected bookings).
Listing Channels
Airbnb / Non-API Vrbo Using iCal+Channel Bridge
- Airbnb
- Cancellations should be managed on Airbnb and allow that cancellation to sync to OR
- Airbnb may charge host penalties so if a host needs to cancel a guest for breaking house rules, OwnerRez recommends that users call Airbnb directly to manage that cancellation to ensure that the cancellation is penalty-free.
- Vrbo Non-API
- The booking must be canceled on Vrbo, preferably by the guest.
- Then, cancel the booking in OwnerRez - even once VRBO has canceled the booking at their end, they do not reliably update the calendar feed to cancel it in OwnerRez, so you should cancel it yourself manually to clear your calendar.
- Vrbo will issue the appropriate refund to the guest within a few days.
- Once the refund is complete, run Channel Bridge and let it try to update the financials for the canceled booking. This should bring in the refund from Vrbo, but it may still not clear out the charges. That is very hard for OwnerRez to detect, and it only happens if we see a completed 100% refund going back.
- In the case of a partial refund, you may need to switch the booking into manual mode, even after doing Channel Bridge, and manually fix the charges to accurately reflect what took place. Note that canceled bookings are visible in OwnerRez, just not on the calendar - you can find them by searching for the ORB booking number or the guest's name.
Houfy, FloridaRentals, HomeToGo API
These API connections create the equivalent of direct bookings in OwnerRez. The booking cannot be canceled on the booking channel by either you or the guest. You must cancel it yourself in OwnerRez. Follow the Direct Booking instructions at the top of the page.
Cancellation Within 24 Hours of Booking
If the cancellation occurs within 24 hours of booking, users can use the Void & Delete option to void the credit card payment. Then cancel or delete the booking. The Void & Delete option will make sure that the credit card transaction does not go through settlement and users will not get hit with any fees from their processor.
Note for Stripe: Stripe doesn't support a void, users can only refund the transaction.
Reactivating Canceled Bookings
In the upper right side of the pink status bar towards the top of the screen for a Canceled Booking, is a link to Reactivate the booking.
âš¡ WARNING:
Do not do this for channel bookings, whether or not they are API bookings - the channels do not support this. Canceled bookings should only be reactivated if they are direct bookings that do not involve a channel.
Remote Door Locks
If you have configured OwnerRez to use automatic remote door lock codes, then when you cancel a booking, any codes associated with that booking will also automatically be canceled if the lock is an online lock. Algorithmic-only locks cannot delete codes.
FAQs
Vrbo is not honoring my cancellation policy and refund amount.
If Vrbo is not honoring your cancellation policy and refund amount, immediately reach out to Vrbo IPM support.
Vrbo treats cancellations very differently depending on whether you are Vrbo API connected or not as IPM cancellation policies are applied differently than regular iCal connected Vrbo platform cancellation policies. Vrbo API connected properties have a distinct advantage with exclusive Vrbo IPM support.