Let’s talk about Damage Waivers & Damage Protection

we currently use safely for damage protection across all our properties. would be great to have a better option cost wise. possibly an interface directly integrated into the system to mark a claim against the given reservation.

liability protection for direct reservations would be great  

Yes!!! That would be amazing! 

My “oldest” property went nearly 4 years with no damage claims whatsoever, before a couple recent incidents that totaled about $300. So I figure that $75/year per unit is the average damage I can expect. I now have 4 units, so I can expect $300 a year in damage now. 

Each unit hosts about 60 guests per year. Presuming that they all booked on Vrbo (not true, but hypothetically), every one of them would have paid a $59 insurance fee for a Generali policy. 

$59 x 60 = $3,540 per unit, per year, paid by guests for “insurance.” That’s $14,160 in Vrbo & Generali’s pockets each year, to “protect” me from $300 a year in damages. 

SOMEONE is making BANK in this situation, and it ain’t me LOL.

So I’m now keenly interested in self-insuring. I envision being able to charge a $59 “mandatory non-refundable damage waiver” with language stating that guests are forgiven for the first $1,500 (or whatever) of accidental damage. With exceptions in the fine print for vandalism, gross negligence, or intentional damage. 

The OTAs don’t really seem to have placeholders for charging fees related to insurance or damage waivers. Probably because it’s a huge profit center for themselves and they don’t want hosts crowding in on it. 

The damage waiver could therefore probably just be baked into the cleaning fee. It wouldn't matter. Although where supported, it might be nice to see it as a separate line item.

Yes I agree with Tom, I have considered self-insuring.  However I haven’t been as lucky as him with lack of damage.  My largest claims so far were both at one property.  $2200 for a cracked kitchen sink and $1500 for 2 new doors - dog scratched them beyond repair - they were nice heavy expensive doors.  So $3600 there for just that one house in less than 6 months.  I had Waivo for those claims, which paid no problem.  So it has given good piece of mind.  But I agree, some properties have had little to no claims, others have had more.  You also have to be on top of it to report even the smallest of damages to get the best benefit from it.  I now use Safely, which covers $100,000 in liability (slips and falls, medical costs from bed bugs, etc) and $1500-$3000 in contents coverage.  But my Proper home insurance would cover this too - difference being it would just go against my record and eventually hurt my ability to be insured.  So again, good peace of mind.  But eventually, once I manage a critical number of properties, I think $59/stay for insurance would be a good amount to collect to be able to cover up to $1500/year per property.  Easy.  Would be great i Hospitable could somehow help us manage that, hold the money per say for maybe a very small cut.

​@Tim Parry - I’ll book time. We’ve been using Safely for a few years. It’s been 98% solid (but expensive). We try to pass the entire cost along to guests and have a process built out for logging and submitting. 

Ugh - that sounds like a major headache. Obviously it’s not every guest, but it CAN happen. We also use Safely and have been happy with their overall service. They’ve slowed down on turnaround, but that hasn’t impacted our operations. They are integrated with HSPTB already, which is good for sure. 

I’m on the fence if this is something that HSPTB should take on… but TBH insurance companies make BANK - it’s just part of their actuarial business model.

That’s what savings accounts are for :-) And having the money in your own hands lets you move money from the “rainy day” fund (AKA “bad guest” fund LOL) into your “spending money” account once you know you’ve got enough banked to cover anything that might happen. 

I have liability insurance but I was under the impression with direct premium, we are covered up to $5m for certain things.  Are you specifically talking about a contract between us and the guests? 

We use Waivo, which I think is better than Safely in terms of cost. Our guests pay $28 per booking for $1500 in damage protection. Waivo also allows you to set the parameters of which bookings you want to cover - so we cover only non-Airbnb bookings. When I spoke to Safely they required us to cover all bookings. We do rely on AirCover and all but one experience with it has been positive. It was our biggest claim/structural damage that they didn’t cover. 

A big issue we have is that no insurance - Waivo or AirCover - will cover extra hot tub cleaning, i.e. if a guest violates your rules and drops food, debris, or broken glass in the hot tub and you have to do an emergency drain, clean, and refill of it. Even with signs posted and clear rules posted stating the rules and that we charge a flat fee if an emergency refill is needed - there’s no way to enforce it. (This is the same with fees for smoking.) And even with invoices and photos, it does not fall within Waivo or AirCover’s terms. I have thought about having guests sign a hot tub waiver and paying a returnable deposit because these situations are so expensive. (Note: we have orange water so have to order a pool truck to refill it, and we have a salt water tub so proper start up takes a few days, so we balance the water between stays using chemicals instead of drain and refill.. this also saves thousands of gallons of water.)

If the intent here is to get a pulse on possibly extending Hospitable’s current damage protection offerings from Direct Premium to all bookings via an upsell or something of the sort, then sadly the biggest barrier for that would likely be the partnership with Truvi, who seem to be far more stingy about paying out claims while also having the most annoying documentation requirements (submitting Homeowners Insurance docs is a real friction point on properties that are managed for other owners).

If there were an option to turn on and require damage insurance directly through Hospitable (like with some other PMS’s) and it used one of the more highly regarded companies like Waivo or Safely without having to set up relationships with those providers separately it may be of some interest. But if it’s just expanding the Truvi partnership to offer that then probably not as much, would rather deal with the hassle of paying Waivo separately and adding the damage fees manually than have it integrated/1-click with Truvi.

​@Ryan Moyer - great point and I’m in agreement. We’ve been overall pleased with Safely and heard mostly critical comments about Truvi (fka superhog). 

I am very interested in this! I”m currently looking at waivo & truvi  and even better if Hospitable wants to implement something.  I’ve heard good things about both of those companies & the ease with which to get a payout on an incident.

I currently use a third-party for VRBO Generali Global and I Love this company! They have never denied a claim. The Issue for me is neither Airbnb nor Booking.com offer a competent and/or reliable reimbursement product.

AirBnB’s “industry-leading damage protection for Hosts” is a complete joke, in my opinion. The ‘Resolution Center’ teams always favor the Guests’ perspective and then (if you persist) the claim keeps getting pushed on to the next ‘relevant team’ for further review. Overall, it’s the most tedious process and a compound headache every time.

Booking.com allows the Hosts to enter maximum amount a guest could be charged for damages. This amount can be no more than $1,000. In the event of damages and a claim, Booking.com will reach out to the Guest(s) - Thats it! I have lost the most with Booking.com stays.

I would like Hospitable to partner with GENERALI GLOBAL- the Guests pay the damage waiver.

With Safely, the Host must pay the waiver (I think its $12.00 per Day) for all stays. This becomes a very expensive option. I have never used Safely so I don’t know about their processing time which is the most important criteria for me.

Generali Global has my vote.

​@will - thank you for sharing your experience with Generali Global! We hadn’t considered them previously. 

• Do you currently offer damage waivers to guests? Yes, for some of our listings, we still use Happy Guests, which offers guests the option of a damage waiver starting at $37 or a $1500 security hold. For select listings, we are also testing out an in-house damage waiver program.
• If so, do you use a third-party tool or handle it yourself? Both; Happy Guest and in-house.
• What’s working well (or not) with your current setup? Damage waivers through Happy Guest pay out quickly without a lot of back and forth questions or requirements. For our in-house program, sometimes it’s difficult to determine if the damage is really “accidental”, so we’re needing to clarify our term of use policies.
• What would you like to see Hospitable do in this space? Ideally, we’d like to move away from Happy Guest entirely (not due to any reason of their own). So we need Hospitable to offer damage waiver or security hold options to our guests in their place. Like Happy Guest, I would like to see Hospitable pay out for submitted claims. Happy Guest sets their damage waiver at $37, but I can charge more and keep the difference. I would like it to be similar with Hospitable. We currently have it sent to $39. So we profit $2 per booking that picks this option.
• How would you want something like this to work for your guests and your business? In the Guest Portal, I want guests to have the option to pick between a security hold (whatever amount we set in Hospitable) or a damage waiver.

I currently utilize Waivo and have been generally very satisfied with their service. One of the primary advantages is that Waivo provides coverage for both pet-related and intentional damage, whereas Truvi limits coverage to unauthorized pet damage and accidental damage. Additionally, Truvi’s deductible is $500, while Waivo’s deductible is significantly lower—either $25 or $50 (I can’t remember with precision at the moment).

At present, I obtain my Waivo policies through Hostco at a discounted rate. However, the process requires me to manually log in and purchase coverage for each booking, which is not particularly efficient. It would be tremendously helpful if Hospitable were able to offer a similar integration with Waivo as it currently does with Truvi—allowing hosts to select which bookings to cover and then receive a consolidated monthly invoice for the previous month’s coverage. That functionality would streamline operations considerably.

In terms of cost, it would be highly beneficial if Hospitable could negotiate a volume-based discount with Waivo, ideally keeping the per-booking rate within the $20 range and not exceeding $30. I would be happy to discuss privately how the current structure through Hostco is arranged if that would provide useful context.

Gosh - logging in to manually do for each?! No way. Yes, an integration with a bulk rate would be welcomed. 

Bingo. Waivo or safely are the answer here. The problem is Truvi sucks and everyone knows it, so if it’s done through that people won’t want it.

Heck it’s “free” with direct bookings (we mainly pay the 7% on premium for the chargeback protection) and we still buy a waivo policy on those bookings sometimes because we’d rather not have to rely on Truvi.

Hi all,

Thanks for all the feedback you’ve provided so far, 

Just a quick update - we’re now running usability sessions for the new Property Protection experience we’d like to build. Focusing on a unified place within Hospitable to configure protection policies for your properties (Damage protection insurance, Damage waivers, Security deposits, Guest verification).

If you’d like to participate, you can find the details and sign up here:

Glad to have helped share the info we have. I think you’re on the right path (especially for smaller hosts that are locked out of some DW providers due to size)

I reached out to the team not long ago about having Hospitable use Stripe to manage damage waivers (security deposits). It would be a much faster way to roll out across more countries (CAD isn’t available right now), and it’s also fairly straightforward to implement.

In the meantime, I’m built my own Stripe flow to handle waivers for my Booking.com guests. Interestingly, guests who opt into the waiver have actually been better than my Airbnb guests, which makes me wonder whether I should introduce waivers for Airbnb too. That said, I’m not sure it would land well there—most people expect Airbnb’s protections to cover them.

​@Tim Parry ​@pierre-camille ​@Ryan Moyer ​@Abby Grous 
Right now direct bookings with Hospitable are clunky and suck for the host like me, here’s why: 

1. The team added rule sets after months of begging so our rates were not higher on our direct site but instead of applying them the same way Airbnb does they apple based on check-in date. So we are still hosed on using rule sets. I’ve gone into detail on this on posts about it but basically rule sets are meant to drive bookings on certain dates so if it based on the check-in date we are not in control of what dates are discounted. For example, I might want to discount December 23rd to try for a longer booking and not 24/25 due to the holiday's demand. I’m stuck going with the lowest discount I can accept on the 24th/25th because if I were to discount the 23rd 50% for 7 night stay then every date would be discounted 50%. 
2. Those same discounts...they DO NOT show on the first page when a guest enters their dates...they have to click the property and go to the next screen to see the real price. How many carts never even get abandoned because they see the initial price and click away because it is NOT lower than Airbnb. Come on! I can’t use rule sets at all because of that. 
3. I have to have a SUPER strict cancelation policy due to errors in how your automated system applies the refunds. 
4. I already pay Hospitable 1% and stripe 3% so your play for 7% on direct premium doesn’t leave any incentive for me to make anything off of direct bookings since I only mark up 5% to reward guests for booking direct. As a Mogal user I can’t find the value you’re giving for the loss I’m taking.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
5. Charging for security deposits that are never even charged is just scammy. Not even stripe does that for holds. Not to mention when you add that $10 assuming a $500 security deposit to the cost of identity verification and damage protection ($15-40 depending on what service you use) we would be eating into the discount our guest is supposed to be seeing. 
6. So I have to use Charge automation because their fee is just $5 for that same security deposit but your integration with them creates automation issues for me. If someone doesn’t pay the security deposit the entry code is still sent and I can’t get any automated reminders. 
7. Direct booking guests prefer to text. Since you’re not integrated with OpenPhone (now Quo) we lose all automation and benefit from AI and it really sucks. 
8. I’m stuck using Truvi damage protection because unlike other big platforms you don’t have an integration with RentalGuardian (until now for trip insurance, which is AMAZING). Please please please allow us to use RentalGuardian for damage protection!! They have an amazing reputation and you KNOW Truvi has the opposite!!!
9. But wait it gets worse...I can’t even use the Truvi integration you have because I’m not direct premium so I have to manually chase down identity verification, damage waivers, and security deposits. 
10. Emails don’t come from me and my guest never sees them or opens them...so again I’m stuck texting because they don’t reply to the email thread. That means all of my automated messages are not automated because I have to copy paste and text them manually. 
11. Thanks for listening to my feedback I love Hospitable. 

Do damage waivers even work? I would think a security deposit and insurance would be all you need.