Clear rules help manage expectations, maintain your property's condition, and ensure the safety and comfort of everyone involved. Effectively communicating your property's rules through rental agreements, guest communication, or house guides is essential to foster a positive guest experience and prevent misunderstandings during a guest's stay.
Before you dive into your Booking Rules options, be sure to read the Property Rules Overview support article first.
However, there will be times when you need to adjust your default property rules for individual bookings, such as mid-to-long-term bookings, blocked-off time for friends and family, etc. Booking rules determine how payments, security deposits, and other billing matters are handled for individual bookings. To be clear, these booking rules only affect individual bookings. If you want to change the default rules for future bookings, do that on the property rules page.
Remember that any booking rules changes that you can make to channel bookings will be limited, but you will have the most booking rules flexibility with direct bookings.
- Change Rules
- Payments
- Pending & Auto Cancellation
- Security Deposits
- Travel Insurance
- Cancellation Policy
Change Rules
You can change Rules for individual bookings by navigating to that specific Booking and selecting Rules > Change Rules.
If you don't like the Rule Changes that you've made to a booking, you can always click on the Reset to Property Rules next to the Change Rules button to revert any booking rule changes that you've made.
Payments
The Booking > Change Rules > Payment section allows you to make payment exceptions for a specific booking. For example, you might want to accept a check or custom payment type for this booking. You can make that change by selecting the Only check/custom (manual/offline) payments option.
The First and Second Payment sections allow you to customize your guest's payments. Below are the default Booking > Payment rules, but you can make changes to both the first and second payments in this section. For example, you can change the first payment to a fixed amount with the balance due 30 days prior to arrival.
In the Second Payment section, there are Payment Collection options. We recommend that if you have the guest's credit card on file, you keep the default selection of "Collect Automatically." Also, select the Guest Reminder that you feel most comfortable with. While "No email reminder..." is the default, if a second payment is set, we recommend that you choose to send an email reminder by choosing "An email reminder will be sent..."
Pending & Auto Cancellation
Once you've accepted payment for a booking, you cannot make any changes in the Pending & Auto Cancellation section. However, if you haven't accepted payment yet, you have some Pending & Auto Cancellation options, including the following.
- Setting the booking in a Pending Status until a specific date. Also, see Manually Change Booking Pending Status.
- Selecting the Guest Notification Email Template.
- Determining what action should be taken if the pending deadline is reached, such as automatic cancellation or sending you a notification so you can deal with it manually.
Security Deposits
One of the most important Booking Rule options is Security Deposits. Below are the default Security Deposit selections, but you can make changes to these for an individual booking. For example, you could remove the security deposit entirely for a booking by selecting the No automatic security deposits (not recommended).
You can also change the type of security deposit by choosing a Hold or Refundable security deposit, the amount of the security deposit, and the days before arrival the security deposit is collected or held.
While the "No email reminder..." selection is the default, if you have a security deposit configured, we recommend that you choose to send an email reminder by choosing "An email reminder will be sent..."
Travel Insurance
If Travel Insurance is still available for the booking, you can disable it by selecting "Disable travel insurance for this booking."
If Travel Insurance is not available for the booking, it will be clearly stated that "Travel Insurance cannot be purchased..." Even if guests cannot purchase travel insurance, you still have the ability to "Disable travel insurance for this booking."
Cancellation Policy
Different options will be available depending on the initial selections you make in the Cancellation Policy section. The default selection is "Select a global policy" that you've already defined in your Property Cancellation Policy, but you can choose to remove your cancellation policy for this booking by selecting None.
When "Define a custom policy" is chosen, several other options appear, allowing you to customize the Cancellation Policy for this individual booking only.
If you don't like the Rule Changes that you've made to a booking, you can always click on the Reset to Property Rules on the lower right to revert any booking rule changes that you've made.