A default booking policy is required for Direct so Hospitable knows how you want us to manage your payments and refunds. Configure your terms and associate them to properties using our booking policy manager.

We provide a set of four templates to help get you started: Non-refundable, Strict, Balanced, and Easy. You may select and edit any of those suggested rule sets, or add your own policy from scratch.

Start by setting up your default policy. If some of your properties require different terms, you can individually scope select properties to another policy. Make sure to check whether the jurisdictions you operate in have laws governing your cancellation and refund policies.

Reservations take the policy that is active when the booking is made. If you make changes to your cancellation policy, this will only impact future bookings.

You may choose to offer guests a partial or full refund of their booking if they cancel within 24- or 48-hours of the booking request being accepted by the host.

You can set an additional condition on this rule if you don't want to honor it on last-minute reservations. If you set this value to 0 days, that means you will always honor the rule, even for last-minute bookings. Regardless of any after-booking rule, all cancellation rules expire at the check-in time of the reservation.

You may set multiple rules that offer full and partial refund checkpoints based on the number of days in advance of the check-in. Once the time period for all rules has passed, the reservation becomes non-refundable (ie. you don't need to add a 0% rule).

If a booking is 100% refundable, Hospitable refunds the exact amount the guest paid, including the service fee, at no cost to the host. For Direct Basic hosts, note that Stripe will still debit your account for the payment processing fees on the original reservation, so a 100% refund will end up costing you money. You can avoid losing money on refunds by scheduling your payment terms to only collect funds as they become non-refundable.

For rules that offer a partial refund, Hospitable will regardless refund 100% of any cleaning and linen fees, including taxes. We then apply the applicable refund percentage on the nightly rate, fees included in the nightly rate (resort, management, and community fees), taxes, and our service fees.

Payment terms let you offer guests the option, at no additional cost, to pay in up to three installments. This can help you improve conversions especially on large bookings and long lead times. Read more about how payment terms work.

Guests always have the option to pay in one upfront payment, if they prefer. When they select to make multiple payments, Hospitable will automatically capture the funds according to the payment schedule.

On the booking policy manager, there are three settings to choose from:

We recommend the first option as it saves you the hassle of setting a schedule and it ensures Hospitable collects payments in time to fund the non-refundable portion of your cancellation policy.

An important note: we can only offer guests the option to make multiple payments if you have a cancellation policy with sufficiently spaced refundable checkpoints.

Direct Premium

By default, Direct Premium charges guests a 4% service fee and deducts a 3% host fee from payouts. If you prefer to hide the service fee from guests, Direct Premium hosts can choose a 7% host-only fee.

Most hosts choose to match their markup rates to the host fees on each channel to account for the reduced payout; meaning if you choose a 7% host-only fee, you would
set your Direct markup rate to 7% to make the impact of the fee on your payout neutral.

Sample computation:

Guest service fee = Nightly rate + fees × 4%

Host Service fee = Nightly rate + fees + taxes - GSF x 3%
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Host-only fee = Total amount paid x 7%
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Direct Basic

There are no service fee options for Direct Basic customers.

For newer customers on a Hospitable Professional plan, we charge a 1% host fee on Direct Basic reservations, and for all customers, Stripe will collect approximately 3% for your payment processing costs. The guest will not see these fees on their reservation, but we recommend you account for them in your Direct markup rates by adding 4% to your base price.

All properties must have a booking policy at all times. To change your default policy, set the policy you want to become your new default policy as the default. You can override the default policy by assigning a different policy to individual properties.

See also

Altering or canceling Direct bookings