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A number of guests are canceling bookings 5 - 20 minutes after booking (without pre-payments)

Hi all,

I currently accept confirmed bookings without pre-payments (free cancellation at any time). Guests who make bookings at my property, quite often immediately cancel after reserving with us, usually a few minutes to 30 minutes later. This happens with about 30% of the guests. The other 70% of the guests did not immediately cancel their bookings with us and continue to hold their reservations.

Is this a common issue with other properties? What do you guys think? I just afraid I am doing something wrong with the system settings or what. Or is this a normal habit with guests simply just changing minds etc?

- Mark


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newhaus.io 5 years ago

Hello! We highly recommend that hosts require pre-payment for all booking.com reservations. Without it, you'll find yourself quite often in unpleasant scenarios where a guest doesn't show up or the guest doesn't pay in time (and you feel like you're begging for your money).

We help hosts list their rentals with all major channels and we encourage to have one policy across all channels. It makes it easier to manage, and it makes it consistent. Let me know if we can be of any help to you.

s
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Stringybarkhills 5 years ago

Hi Mark,

I to was wondering the same thing as we have had this happen several times in the past weeks. I am assuming that newhaus.io is suggesting that if the had had to pay a deposit at the time of booking this might/would not happen. ??

June

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Markwienands 5 years ago

@June & @newhaus.io

Yeah enabling pre-payments at time of booking will definitely solve that issue. In my case I'm waiting for Omise to activate my payment gateway after submitting the documents. And I can not wait to accept deposits only for confirmed bookings.

However I'm still baffled to as why many guests book + immediately cancel right after. I hope it's not some bug on my front desk PMS or some incorrect settings I applied to the booking.com backend, but then the only way to cancel bookings is directly from guests only, so the issue could not have been mine.

I hope it's just the unexplainable habit of guests.

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newhaus.io 5 years ago

Exactly. If there's no payment - there's no committment.

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Wightgal 5 years ago

It's potential guests holding available rooms whilst they weigh up their options.

I've done it myself when I can't make an immediate decision on a property.

c
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Cameron Alex1965 4 years ago

I was going to ask the same thing,. I have just joined B.com and about 80% of bookings get cancelled almost immediately. I have a 2 week cancellation policy (i.e. they have to pay in full if they cancel within 2 weeks of the booked dates) and I was wondering if people just panic when they see this on their confirmation. It seems to be this whole culture of booking on a whim and absolutely not caring if accommodation providers are left with empy rooms/apartments when guests cancel without fees. I have the same conditions on the AIRB site and never have cancellations, all very odd.