i receive today en email from VRBO/ABRITEL (France)/Homeaway
Management of cancellations due to COVID-19
Hello Adriano,
In the 25 years that Abritel has been in existence, we have never faced the challenges that our vacationers, owners, property managers and teams around the world face today. Abritel is a platform for both vacationers and homeowners. And for every holidaymaker who must now cancel a rental he has reserved, there is an owner who loses this reservation and who must also manage a large number of cancellations.
In this context, the majority of you have taken the lead in offering credits in the form of credit and / or reimbursements to vacationers. Thank you for giving this example of flexibility and hospitality, even if it forces you into financial difficulty.
Here are our emergency measures related to COVID-19, designed to help you overcome these extraordinary circumstances.
On the Abritel side, we reimburse 100% of the service charges to vacationers if they have to cancel a reservation due to COVID-19.
For your part, we ask you to cancel reservations made before March 13, 2020 for stays between March 13 and April 30, 2020, by proceeding in two possible ways (even if these stays do not fall under the as part of your cancellation policy):
Option 1 (by default): you offer holidaymakers who must cancel their stay due to COVID-19 a credit for the amount of the reservation, for dates of stay over the coming year.
Option 2: If a holidaymaker is not willing to accept this credit, we advise you to reimburse it. If you cannot reimburse it in full, we strongly recommend that you reimburse it at least up to 50% of the amount of your reservation.
Our intention is to reward Abritel property owners and managers who will be the most flexible with their vacationers. We will give more visibility to the owners' announcements that are the most generous (a 100% credit or refund will be better rewarded than a 50% refund for example).
Property owners and managers who do not comply with these measures will be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis those who follow our policy. Any attempt to intimidate holidaymakers (such as suggesting that traveling is safer than staying at home or disregarding the severity of this unprecedented crisis) will result in the permanent withdrawal of your advertisement from the Abritel site and from all of the HomeAway and Expedia group sites. Here are also some details on Abritel's policy in this context:
We reimburse 100% of the service charges to holidaymakers if they cancel a reservation due to COVID-19, whether the cancellation is mandated by the government or not, for all reservations made before March 13, 2020 for stays between March 13 and April 30, 2020. Reimbursement will be made automatically in the coming weeks without the vacationer having anything to do.
Automatic reimbursement: our teams are working to simplify the reimbursement and change of reservation dates. All details on these new processes will be communicated to you in the coming days, so in the meantime we thank you for not contacting our customer service. We emphasize that the assets / postponements of stays to later dates will have to be decided between you owners and vacationers, we advise you to indicate all these details to vacationers in writing ideally via our secure internal messaging.
Automatic exemption from any penalty for cancellations: if you have to make a cancellation related to COVID-19, you will be automatically exempt from any penalty for these cancellations, which will not affect your ad's ranking or your status. Premium member. You do not need to contact customer service for this, you just need to select the reason COVID-19 as the reason for cancellation and make at least 50% of the refund to be eligible for this exemption.
The new policy we are implementing may not be perfect, but in this unprecedented period, we believe it offers the best balance to protect vacationers and homeowners. If you have any questions, feel free to visit our help page and / or our Discovery Center, which will be updated every 48 hours.
We have been in contact with thousands of owners over the past few days and I am impressed by your responsiveness in this difficult environment. It is certain that the situation will eventually change and that families will want to go on vacation again. Know that we will be at your side to help you provide them with the best service.
Thank you for your involvement and I express my admiration for your commitment.
Jeff Hurst, President of Abritel HomeAway