What are booking policies?
Booking policies are the policies that apply to reservation cancellations for reservations booked on your different platforms.
Booking policies control the cancellation policies on your booking platforms.
Booking policies can, therefore, also be understood as "cancellation policies".
These policies are broken down by platforms, giving you the ability to set different policies for different platforms.
Note: Hospitable does not have the ability to set a booking policy for Vrbo!
How booking policies are pulled in from platforms and managed on Hospitable
When you connect a new listing to Hospitable, we pull in the booking policy set on that listing's booking platform and set that as the booking policy on Hospitable.
For example: If you connect a new Airbnb listing to Hospitable, we pull in the booking policy from Airbnb. You will then be able to see that booking policy on the property's Booking Policy page on Hospitable.
What happens if I edit the booking policy on the booking platform?
If you make changes to the booking policy on Airbnb (for example), without having made changes to it on Hospitable, then we will pull in the updated policy from Airbnb and display it on Hospitable.
Until you make a manual edit to the booking policy on Hospitable, Hospitable will keep pulling in updates made to the booking policy on the booking platform.
What happens if I edit the booking policy on Hospitable?
If you edit the booking policy on Hospitable for a particular booking platform, then Hospitable will become the source of truth for that listing. Updates made directly on the booking platform, after making an edit on Hospitable, will be overwritten by Hospitable on the next sync with that listing.
For example: You connect a Booking.com listing to Hospitable. We pull in the booking policy from Booking.com. You can continue to edit the booking policy in Booking.com, and Hospitable will continue to pull in those updates from Booking.com and display them on Hospitable.
If you then go to the Booking Policies page on your property on Hospitable and make an edit to the Booking.com booking policy, we will become the source of truth for the booking policy for Booking.com on that property. We will then override the policy you have set on Booking.com.
If you later make an edit on Booking.com, we will override that edit on our next sync with your Booking.com listing.
How to set a booking policy on Hospitable
To add or edit a booking policy for your listings:
Go to Hospitable > Properties
Select the property you want to edit
Click on the Booking Policies tab in the left-hand side menu
Click on Configure next to the listing you wish to edit
Select the policy you want to apply > click Continue
Configure non-refundable options, if applicable > click Continue
Review your policy and confirm
Are booking policies set on a per-property basis, or globally?
Booking policies are set on a per-property basis.
Making edits to the booking policy for a Booking.com listing on one property does not change the booking policy for your Booking.com listing on a different Hospitable property.
More on Direct booking policies
You can read more about booking policies specific to Direct bookings here.