[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl.
[00:00:16] Hey now Short Term Rental Management.
[00:00:20] I love you. I love you. We're in my Detroit Marathon sweatshirt today. It is the end of the year. Life is good. We did just have a new rollout from Airbnb that I wanted to talk about today.
[00:00:34] Date Specific Cancellation Policies all right, I'm going to read the policy to you and then we can discuss how this can or cannot help.
[00:00:43] You can edit or remove a short term stay cancellation policy for a specific date anytime in your calendar or via the API.
[00:00:54] Choose your desired dates on the calendar. Select any available cancellation policy.
[00:01:01] The chosen cancellation policy will be applied based on the guest check in date.
[00:01:08] If the booking spans two different policies, the policy associated with the check in date will apply. In other words, whatever is on the day of check in.
[00:01:20] Changes in the check in date may alter the cancellation policy that applies. If a guest sends an alteration request, you still need to approve the alteration.
[00:01:31] Each new change overrides the last one for those dates.
[00:01:35] Existing bookings keep the policy in effect when they were made.
[00:01:43] How to set Short Term Stay Cancellation Policies for specific Dates the cancellation policy will be displayed to guests searching for homes based on the check in date. Set your calendar how to set your cancellation policy on a desktop Go to your calendar, select the dates you want to adjust, click Custom Settings, click Cancellation Policy, click Save then Done now they did mention the word API which means that we will probably sooner than later be able to do this on our management softwares. I did check with my management software. They didn't even know about it yet. At least their AI didn't know about it yet, but I'm sure that it will be coming momentarily. Some key points to remember Dynamic policies are optional and you can make changes anytime to unbook dates.
[00:02:29] Number two Any changes you make to your cancellation policy will only apply to future reservations and won't affect any pending or confirmed reservations.
[00:02:40] The cancellation policy that was set when you received a reservation will still apply to that reservation. And lastly, removing a dynamic policy reverts those dates to your short term stay listing cancellation policy. Which would make sense. All very cut and dry stuff here, so we've been waiting for this for a while.
[00:03:00] What does this mean? This means again, Airbnb only. At this point I'm sure that VRBO will follow suit, but it'll probably take them two years.
[00:03:10] You can now have a different cancellation policy for Christmas than the first week of December or 4th of July than the middle of May.
[00:03:26] So, and this makes perfect sense, makes perfect sense why we were running with one cancellation policy for an entire year. Dumb. Not good. I mean, why, why, why should I let my 4th of July guest cancel 14 days in advance?
[00:03:39] You know, so really, this just means that the savvy host will have more options here if they so choose. But you may just stick with the whatever your cancellation policy is and not care.
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[email protected] so really, at the end of the day cancellation policies, your best bet is to go with whatever is going to help your algorithm. So whichever cancellation policy is recommended, that does change. They're always coming out with new names for these cancellation policies, etc.
[00:04:31] So let's talk a little bit about current Airbnb cancellation policies.
[00:04:35] Sorry so much. Airbnb today, it's just kind of how it's happening. But you got flexible, which is one day moderate, full refund, five days before check in. Limited is full refund, 14 days before check in, and then it goes on. You got firm 30 days, super strict firm, no refund at all. Partial refund 30 days, plus super strict 60, which is 60 days.
[00:05:01] So really, no right or wrong answer here. I think you could be fine with limited or moderate. The lower you go, the better chance you have of getting bookings, but then the better chance you have at getting cancellations.
[00:05:12] So, you know, we hear a lot of people talking about, oh, I'm getting a lot of cancellations right now. Well, it's because cancellation policies are probably lighter than they've ever been, and they used to have a little recommended button next to their, you know, recommended cancellation policy. And there was some rumors, of course, that that would get you a better algorithm to have the preferred cancellation policy, but they don't have that right now. These cancellation policies, you know, they change. And then they also have the non refundable option where guests can pay 10% less in exchange for keeping full payment if they happen to, you know, need to cancel, which is an interesting concept, but then you're basically giving everybody 10% off, you know, so NWA, no right or wrong answer on a lot of this stuff. You know, I'm running most of my properties at moderate, which is extremely lenient in my opinion, especially compared to where we used to be years ago.
[00:06:20] But limited would probably be just fine. Again, we're speaking strictly Airbnb here at this point, but I really like that we can change the cancellation policy for certain dates on the calendar. That's great. Now it's more work. Work.
[00:06:33] May not want to do the work, may not need to.
[00:06:38] Depends on how you run your organization. But it is a nice feature to have.
[00:06:42] And right now, being at this holiday time, right now, you know, middle winter, this is a great time to go ahead and get those, you know, maybe a little more strict cancellation policy going on. Maybe.
[00:06:55] Maybe the firm would be a good option on Airbnb for, you know, your major holidays, like the Fourth of July and Christmas, etc.
[00:07:03] So we'll keep an eye on it, see how long it takes VRBO to follow suit here, and then hopefully within the next year or two, we'll be able to do this directly from our management software, rather than having to do it on Airbnb and VRBO and doing it separately and all that kind of thing. Right now, it's Airbnb only.
[00:07:18] Okay.
[00:07:20] Gonna keep it short and simple today.
[00:07:22] We now have the option to change cancellation policies based on periods of. Of time in the year. Pretty cool. Airbnb only. I love you. Cash flow Carl, Luke. Cash flow Carl on Instagram. It's a party.
[00:07:38] Don't overthink it.
