How to avoid cancellations and optimize bookings for vacation rentals

A great guest experience begins with the booking process. Accepting and committing to a booking is the first step to ensuring that booking your property is an easy, positive, and consistent experience for your guests.

As a host, you are always thinking about what actions you can take pre-booking to ensure you’re attracting ideal travelers — but there are also best practices for handling booking requests as they come in. From updated property settings to a flexible booking approach, read on for tips to help set up your listing for a high acceptance rate, along with recommendations for responding to less-than-optimal booking requests so you can avoid declines and cancellations.

Cancelling a traveler’s booking after you accepted it not only puts travelers in a tough spot, it can also impact your ranking in search results and result in a fee. There are steps you can take to help prevent avoidable cancellations and deliver a great booking experience for guests. Establishing a clear vacation rental cancellation policy and creating house rules for your listing are two opportunities to set traveler expectations early.


When creating your cancellation policy, account for traveler preferences: for example, travelers often seek out properties with flexible cancellation policies. Setting a flexible cancellation policy can create more visibility for your vacation rental and increase bookings.

• A more than 30% increase in net booking value per year*
• More than 10% higher booking conversion rate*
• 3x as many listing views*
• 2x as many property page clicks*

For increased flexibility, we offer a variety of cancellation policies for Vrbo hosts. This enables you to offer your preferred date-based policy to adjust for seasonal demand, so you can apply the right cancellation policy at the right time.

Setting clear cancellation windows can also encourage travelers to plan their trips carefully, while protecting you from last-minute cancellations. If you know for certain you can’t accept a booking, cancel as quickly as possible as a courtesy to the guest — acting quickly may help you avoid potential poor reviews.

Update your policy

Setting up house rules and adding them to your listing helps guests understand what is and isn’t allowed at your property — before they book — and it’s an important element to ensure guests are the right match for your vacation rental. Be clear about your age requirements for the primary renter, maximum occupancy, restrictions on pets or children, smoking policies, and more. If travelers don’t agree to your house rules, they can’t continue with the booking, and agreeing to your rules will make it far less likely that you will need to cancel a potential booking down the road. 

Create house rules

We all know that bookings can fluctuate throughout the year. To ensure you’re getting what your property is worth, you should consider adjusting your rates and your minimum stay requirements throughout the year as well.

To help optimize bookings, you can add custom rates for busy seasons, holidays, or special events in your area — such as a sporting event or music festival — and generally charge more during these peak periods. Sometimes a traveler will book your property for a peak travel time before you’ve had a chance to update your pricing. Set a reminder for yourself to set rates 6-12 months in advance if you can manage it. Keeping your rates updated early and often is the best way to get the most out of bookings when demand spikes.

If you find that you can’t accept a booking because the quoted amount is off, simply edit the quote, adjust the payment amount, and communicate these changes swiftly to your guest. No need to decline the booking and create a brand-new booking based on your updates. Make it easy for the traveler.

If you have a minimum stay requirement for your vacation rental property, make sure to set it. This will prevent travelers from being able to book your property for fewer nights than you desire, which can lead to more unnecessary declines and cancellations. Consider highlighting minimum stay details in your listing description as well to help potential guests easily see this information before they check calendar availability.

Adjust rate settings

Keeping your calendar up to date for potential traveler booking requests is another key step to avoiding unnecessary cancellations. If guests try to book a property that seems available but isn’t, they can become frustrated and disappointed. Spending the time to choose a beautiful home only to learn the home isn’t actually available is just a poor traveler experience.

Once your calendar is up to date, you’ll want to double-check that it shows the correct blocked and unbookable dates. This ensures that your listing appears in relevant search results and travelers don’t inquire about or request a reservation for days your property isn’t available. For example, you may need to block dates on your calendar for renovations, personal use of your vacation rental, or other conflicts.

If a guest books your property for a date that’s unavailable, consider reaching out with an alternative set of dates. Offering the guest a different timeframe you both can agree on enables you to change the booking date and avoid declining the booking altogether, while also delivering on traveler expectations.

Block calendar dates

If you aren’t sure if you can accept a booking, go ahead and accept it and explore options for adjusting — even after it’s been requested. Start a conversation with the potential guest to create transparency, establish trust, and get more information. If you reach out to the traveler and they don’t respond to your request for more information within the 24-hour window, consider accepting the booking anyway before the request expires. Then, if the traveler doesn’t agree to your house rules, you can let them know you won’t be able to honor the booking and ask them to initiate the cancellation process for a refund.

Delivering an exceptional travel experience is why we are all here, and it’s core to your business. The booking process is a traveler’s introduction to you as a host and a critical part of the overall travel experience. Booking an amazing vacation rental really does feel like winning, and when travelers win, we all win.