Why do vacation rentals keep cancelling reservations?
Vacation rental properties and booking platforms frequently reject, mysteriously cancel, or falsely report unauthorized cancellations for confirmed group bookings due to conflicting dates. This leaves travelers constantly worried that their upcoming trips will fall through at the last minute.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Switching to booking hotel rooms, suites, or aparthotels instead of a single house
- 2Getting smaller separate venues near each other
- 3Being completely upfront with hosts about the nature of the trip and group size
- 4Requesting written confirmation regarding availability, permissions, and cancellation policies before booking
- 5Contacting the hostel directly
- 6Contacting the booking platform customer support
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Today I received an email from Hostelworld saying that my reservation had been cancelled. I immediately contacted the hostel and they told me that the cancellation had been requested on my behalf. The problem is that I never requested or authorized the cancellation.”source ↗
“Every time we found one that worked with the dates we needed, we were either rejected or our reservation was cancelled.”source ↗
“After finally finding one and having it reserved for about 3 months, it was just cancelled with a note stating that there were "conflicting dates". This is quite frustrating and I can't help but to worry that this will happen again right before the trip.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 8How to get a refund from a third-party booking site for a canceled hotel
- 22Guests dropping out after RSVPing yes for a wedding
- 2Feeling guilty about cancelling plans at the last minute
- 6Why is it so hard to cancel digital subscriptions?
- 5How to uninvite someone after sending a save the date
- 2Why does software send popups to all users when you cancel?