Holiday bookings are generally cancelled by either the guest or the property owner.
Bookings cancelled by guests are dealt with according to the cancellation policies contained within the booking Terms and Conditions. Cancellations by guests are therefore pretty straight forward.
However, cancellations of future bookings by owners are a very different matter.
In a nutshell, forward bookings are binding contracts between the property owner and the guest – brokered by the agent. If the booking is made directly with us, we can usually (not always) manage the cancellation with the disappointed and angry guest with minimal difficulty and at a minimal cost to the owner, but if the booking has been made by a third-party agent (eg: Booking.com, AirBnB, HomeAway, Stayz etc) the issue is much more complicated.
Third-party agents manage owner cancellations of guest bookings according to their own global policies – and they all have different policies.
EXAMPLE 1: If an owner cancels a Booking.com reservation, Booking.com will relocate the guest to another similar or better property at the expense of the owner. If this happens to be a luxury home in Mooloolaba or Noosa at a cost thousands of dollars more than the original booking, Booking.com will charge the owner the additional cost and take legal action if necessary to recoup the new booking price from the owner. If the original booking is over peak season, it is highly likely the cancellation will be a very expensive exercise indeed.
EXAMPLE 2: If an owner cancels an AirBnB booking, AirBnB will charge the owner a sizeable percentage of the total cost of the original booking, even though the booking did not go ahead.
Third-party agents do not care about why the booking was cancelled. Owners who believe selling their property, or using the property themselves, or family disasters or major maintenance issues will result in leniency from the third-party sites are mistaken. In their collective minds, if an owner cancels a booking for any reasons, their cancellation policies (penalties) will apply.
To avoid these issues, it is important that owners plan well ahead, keep us informed of your future plans, and whenever possible, avoid ‘spur of the moment’ decisions that will otherwise result in you cancelling future guest bookings.