Covid-19: Processing Cancellations and Refunds
In light of the current Coronavirus situation, and its effect on holiday bookings, the articles and videos below should help you to process refunds and cancellations arising from travel restrictions and other difficulties which guests may be experiencing at present.
Cancelling Bookings and Issuing refunds:
- How do I charge a Cancellation Fee?
- How do I refund a Security Deposit/Refundable Deposit?
- How do I process a refund using HolidayRentPayment?
Cancellation and Refund FAQ:
If Yes, these bookings must be cancelled or have their dates altered in the OTA account/Extranet directly, and that cancellation should then feed through to SuperControl. The simplest way is for the guest to request cancellation directly, although in line with their updated policies, the major OTA's will also allow you to request the cancellation of bookings without penalty if you contact their support teams directly.
For Airbnb, please see their own help article on this subject.
Airbnb, contact their support team through live chat within your Airbnb account.
For Booking.com, Please see their instructions on how to move or cancel a booking in the Extranet.
Booking.com contact number: 0203 564 6725
HomeAway have provided an article on modifying bookings, to be found here.
HomeAway contact number: 0208 827 1971
TripAdvisor have an article on the same subject.
TripAdvisor contact number: 0203 701 5369 extension 3
Expedia's article about modifying bookings.
Expedia Contact number: 0203 788 0445
If date change or cancellation does not happen within a few hours of the cancellation being confirmed by the OTA , please contact SuperControl Support.
OTA Coronavirus Policies
Here are quick links to the current cancellation policies of the channels. These supersede the policy you chose and are subject to change.
Booking.com https://partner.booking.com/en-gb/help/legal-security/important-information-regarding-coronavirus
HomeAway/VRBO https://www.vrbo.com/discoveryhub/a/covid-19-emergency-policy
If yes, then the source booking which was then cross-updated to other bookings would need to be cancelled, in the account in which it originated. This should then feed through to cancel all of the connected cross updated bookings that were placed as a result of the source booking.
If this does not happen within a few hours of the cancellation please contact SuperControl Support.
These bookings need to be cancelled at the source, i.e. in the original third-party calendar in which it was placed. Cancelling an iCal booking in SuperControl will only cancel it temporarily. It will reappear when the calendars next sync unless it is cancelled in the originating calendar.
If you need to remove a property from a booking with multiple properties, please use this guide.
If the guest took out Booking Protect, and now wishes to cancel their reservation, they would need to make a claim with Booking Protect directly, following these guidelines.
You do not need to refund the guest at all, since the refund would be issued to the guest directly by Booking Protect, if covered for their situation. You can therefore just cancel the booking to open up the dates, retaining what the guest has paid, and Booking Protect will do the rest.
Their terms and conditions can be found here, and their updated guidance regarding Coronavirus here.
Note- Booking Protect will not provide a refund where guests are prevented from travelling to the holiday due to an outbreak of a contagious disease and the Government or any agency acting on behalf of the Government has imposed a ban on travel.
There are two ways to do this:
1. If the guest is the same, you can just change the dates of the booking, instructions for doing so are to be found here. This will change the dates of the booking to new dates, but preserve the existing guest information, correspondence history and any payments already received.
2. If you do wish to create a new booking, but record the details of a payment made in a previous booking in it, you should use the 'Custom Payments' line in the customer payments section of the booking. We would recommend entering the booking number for which payment was received in the left hand box.
When you have entered the required information, click 'Save' on the right. This records in the new booking, a payment that was received in a previous booking.
To amend your Terms and Conditions, go to Admin > Terms & Conditions. When you have added your Terms and Conditions ensure to press "Update" at the bottom of the page. This article and video explain how to do this step-by-step.
We have also added a new link on the tick box for accepting terms on the booking form and payment form, so that, when a guest ticks to accept your terms, they also accept the cancellation policy, if you have one in place. If there is no cancellation policy added then the link will just display as it was before.
Note- For those clients who use the Guest Login feature, updating your terms and conditions will result in the updated terms being shown within all guest logins, even those of guests who booked prior to the amendment. We suggest that you upload a document with the previous terms and conditions to the guest login, and title or preface it along the lines of: 'For Bookings placed prior to X, the following Terms and Conditions apply'. This article explains how to upload a document to the Guest Login.
Yes, you have the option to hide the terms & conditions from the guest login, using a check box under Admin- Terms & Conditions.
If you took payment for a booking via Bank transfer, Cash or Cheque, and need to record the refund of that payment, in part or in full within the booking, please follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the booking in question, and go to the 'Customer Payments' section at the bottom. Using the grey 'Custom payments' bar, fill in the type of refund you are recording to the left, the method by which the refund was issued (i.e. Bank Transfer), and then set the right hand box to 'Refund' rather than 'Payment'.
2. A box will appear to ask what sort of refund you are recording. Select the option that applies and then 'Proceed'.
3. Press the green 'Save' button to the right of the Customer Payments area. This will then record the refund in the booking. You would of course have to actually refund the guest their money directly within your online banking, or by sending a cheque by post.
The 1% channel fee will only apply to completed bookings. If the booking is cancelled before the booked dates, the fee will not apply. If the booking is cancelled after the booked dates have passed then the fee will still be payable.
Covid-19 has resulted in SuperControl users needing to do all sorts of things that were never envisaged as being required, and this would fall into that category. It was never envisaged that individual bookings would need individual balance due settings, and therefore this has always been controlled at the level of the property, to apply to all bookings for that property. When a booking is moved to new dates, the date the balance is due therefore also moves to X number of days before the new booking date.
If you do want the guests to pay the balance on the original date, you should set a reminder to send a balance request on the original balance due date. On that date, manually generate the balance due email with booking summary appended. The text of the booking summary, including the balance due date can be edited manually before sending, so you can change the due date in the summary to the original one.. The guest can then pay using the payment link as normal.
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