When it comes to booking a reservation or receiving a reservation in Summit County, the last thing you want to happen is for a cancellation to occur. There are a few different ways you can anticipate that a person will cancel and a few ways to prevent it from happening. Your main priority should be making the listings as visually pleasing as possible in order to increase your number of bookings and amplify your occupancy rate.
When someone cancels, not only are you losing out on money (unless you receive full-payment and do not offer money-back for cancellations) but also the time you invested during this process. Moreover, it can be very difficult finding new guests last minute. Cancellations result in a drop in ranking on search engines and different listing sites such as Airbnb.
On top of the aforementioned consequences of a cancellation, your listing will also lose its place in line due. This signifies that you might struggle to find another renter in a timely manner.
Let us take a look at ways to anticipate and prevent vacation rental booking cancellations in Colorado.
Importance of a good reputation
Your reputation means a lot when it comes to vacation rentals and you do not want to see a lot of cancellations or bad reviews.
People generally look at reviews if they are given the option too. Many people avoid booking at a vacation rental if there are too many cancellations with the fear that their host might cancel or something is wrong with the property.
An increased amount of pressure
Another problem with cancellations is the stress that comes along with it. There is a lot of pressure to find new tenants when you find out you have received a cancellation. This creates a lot more work and paperwork to deal with. You need to ensure that you are on top of your availability calendar and that you update it as soon as you find out about a cancellation. This will help increase your chances of finding new guests.
Contacting the renters that canceled
One great way to prevent further booking cancellations is by contacting the renters that were booked to see why they needed to cancel. This will give you some insight on the cancellation and allow you to make changes if possible. Some people cancel due to emergency reasons but the majority of renters book and continue to look for places until they find something they believe is better.
Get feedback after their stay
Do not forget to ask your guests what they liked and maybe didn’t like so much about their experience renting your Summit County property. This will give you the opportunity to implement what your guests are recommending to please future guests. If you notice this is a persisting occurrence, talk to a professional property management company and see if they can give you some advice. It might be your listing needing to be updated or it might be something more complicated. Or, it could also simply come down to competition.
There is so much competition when it comes to booking vacation rentals. You need to make your listing as pleasing and enticing as possible in order to stick out from the other vacation property owners. Take some time to inspect other listings with lots of positive reviews and see what they are doing. Figure out what is different about your listing and how you can change it to compete with the others. Detect the key components of your competition and implement those components into your strategy.
Maybe you need to switch up your target audience and try and target a different audience. Clearly, if you are receiving a high number of cancellations, something is not working. Make sure you experiment with your target audience and switch up your listings to see which ones perform better.
Look out for red flags
If a guest is constantly asking you questions before their arrival, you need to prepare yourself that this person is unsure and could potentially cancel.
If the person is trying to lower the rent, this is another sign that they could cancel. Always look out for red flags.
You can also prevent booking cancellations by restricting your cancellation policy.
The bottom line
You need to make sure that your guests are aware of your cancellation policy and the deadline that you have given them to cancel. Prevent your guests from canceling by taking a non-refundable down payment during the time of your guests’ bookings. You need to ensure that if you are taking a non-refundable down payment that your guests are aware of it. This will avoid disagreements that could arise after someone has booked your property.
If any of this seems daunting to you, don’t hesitate to contact us at Bighorn Rentals! We are here to help make your Summit County, Colorado vacation rental succeed.
