If I change my cancellation policy will guests already booked be affected?, will

[Jack-And-Meg0]

During the first omicron surge we changed our cancellation policy from moderate to flexible, wanting to discourage anyone who might be sick, but mildly, from following through on their plans because they couldn’t cancel. We’re thinking of going back to moderate, but wondering how the folks who’ve already booked will be affected if we do. We don’t want to change what we agreed to with those already booked. Will the flexible policy still stand for them?

[Emiel1]

@Jack-And-Meg0 

Changing the cancellation policy will only affect future reservations.

It is also mentioned here:

How-to-change-your-cancellation-policy

[Sam4794]

@Emiel1 

I understand that changes to your cancellation policy are only applied to future reservations and don’t affect any pending or confirmed reservations.

But can the changes be ratified by the pending or confirmed reservations via notifications to them who will then have options to either accept or cancel their reservations? 

Thanks

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sam4794 No this option doesn't exist I am afraid. What are you trying to achieve?

[Sam4794]

@Mike-And-Jane0 ,  Recently there was a reservation for 17 nights that cancelled after 3 night's stay for the reason that they had found a long-term accommodation, based on our flexible cancellation, so we are thinking of some remedies to close the loophole, one of which can be the change of cancellation policy from flexible to moderate, together with notifications to the pending or confirmed reservations. Any tips?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sam4794 Personally we use the Strict cancellation policy as we want to keep a reservation once it has been made. I would hope you have been unlucky and would just change the policy for future guests and hope the existing don't cancel. Notifying won't work and asking people to agree to something that is bad for then won't work either.

[Sam4794]

@Mike-And-Jane0 , thanks for your tips!

May I ask how long you have been using the Strict cancellation policy?

Has it been working well in terms of booking rate, and guests' feedback?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sam4794 Since we started apart from 6 months of Covid. I'm sorry but there is no way of knowing what the booking rate would have been with or without this policy.

With flexible guests can literally wait and see if a. better/cheaper listing is available right up to when they travel. Or if the weather forecast is bad they can cancel. For these reasons alone we won't use flexible - and moderate isn't much better.

[Sam4794]

@Mike-And-Jane0 ， Thank you very much indeed!