Booking channels that let the host cancel penalty-free

[Mark Miles]

For all that everyone complains about Airbnb, looks like they’re actually more host-friendly than some of these other booking channels.

I was just looking at Booking.com, and once someone books, it looks nearly impossible to cancel their reservation. Even if you start suspecting that it’s underage kids throwing a prom party, it looks like Booking.com makes it really tough to cancel their reservation.

Airbnb on the other hand, for all of its faults, is SUPER host-friendly in this regard. As long as your house rules state “no parties” or “no guests under 21” or whatever, all you have to do is call up Airbnb & say “This reservation violates my house rules” & Airbnb will cancel the rez hassle-free & penalty-free which is awesome.

Most of my experience is on Airbnb, and it’s worked out really well for me. I’m thinking of expanding to other booking channels (vrbo, booking.com, tripadvisor flipkey, etc), but as someone who owns large houses that are quite susceptible to people throwing parties (which is why I have my VAs request ID from every guest who books), it’s really important to me to only use booking channels that will let me cancel any reservation penalty-free & hassle-free if I’m wary of the guests’ intentions (e.g., huge underage prom party).

It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally guests refuse to provide IDs to my VAs (or the IDs show that they’re underage). And Airbnb, for all of its faults, has ALWAYS been AWESOME about letting me cancel these reservations penalty-free.

I’m curious from people who use other booking channels: which ones are host-friendly in the sense that they’ll permit me to verify IDs from my guests and let me cancel hassle-free and penalty-free when the guests refuse to provide IDs or are underage (which is a violation of my stated house rules)?

[Paul Cox]

@Mark Miles,

I'm using AirBnB and VRBO...I pretty much mirror both links and because you can sync the calendars, I'm not worried about double bookings. VRBO seems more geared to families at maybe a bit higher price point. AirBnB always wants me to lower my nightly rate and VRBO seems to always want me to raise my nightly rate. I'm not sure why 99% of my bookings come from AirBnB. I've got the same listing (identical) on both platforms and try to keep the pricing identical as well, yet I've gotten only 5 bookings with VRBO and almost 50 with AirBnB, and that is just since November. Now with the virus issue, those bookings are turning into cancellations. So we hope and pray for a brighter future and are optimistic that our market in the Smokies will turn around sooner than later.

Paul