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Booking Cancellation Issue - No Option for "Cancel Without Refund"

  • April 27, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 13 views

Akwugo
New Participant
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Hi everyone,

I wanted to see if anyone else has run into this or has found a workaround.

I recently had a direct booking guest who, on day 2 of a 4-night stay, orchestrated a full-on brawl outside the property and streamed it live on social media. Police were called, and this was a clear violation of our rental agreement (no parties, disturbances, etc.).

Because of that, I made the decision to terminate the stay. My cancellation policy is no refunds, especially in cases where house rules are violated.

However, when I went to process the cancellation in Hospitable, I only saw two options:

1. Host cancels → guest receives a refund

2. Guest cancels → no refund

This created a problem because there was no option for a host-initiated cancellation without issuing a refund due to a policy violation.

In situations like this, I would expect there to be a flow where:

-The host can cancel for cause (rule violations, safety issues, etc.)

-The payout follows the host’s cancellation policy

-The guest can dispute it on their end if they choose

 

My questions:

-Has anyone else encountered this limitation with direct bookings?

-Is there a workaround for enforcing a no-refund policy when you need to cancel for cause?

-Does anyone know if Hospitable is working on adding a “cancel for violation” or similar option?

 

Would really appreciate any insight—this feels like a pretty big gap, especially for hosts managing higher-risk bookings.

Thanks in advance!

3 replies

Tom Beerley
Hospitable Hero
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  • Hospitable Hero
  • April 27, 2026

Why not just let the reservation ride itself out? Assuming you’ve removed the guests from the property already, what’s the purpose of cancelling the reservation in Hospitable? You’re keeping their money either way. If it was a longer reservation I can see how you’d want to free up the unused nights so you can double-dip on a rebook… but for a couple nights on no notice I imagine those nights are lost anyway. 

Not saying that Hospitable shouldn’t have a more elegant way of handling mid-stay cancellations with no refund… but for this particular stay you just gotta do what you can. 


Eli Stoughton
Participating Frequently
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  • Participating Frequently
  • April 27, 2026

I wouldn’t expect this to be something you can do. I don’t think any OTA has a process for this and I don’t see why Hospitable would have this. What would make the most sense to me would be simply removing the guest from the property (with the police’s involvement) without cancelling it in the system. This would create a problem of not having those dates open to be booked again. But it would then be up to you to issue a partial refund if you’d like. From both a practical perspective and a legal perspective, what you described isn’t quite a cancellation but rather a termination for cause governed by the rental agreement.


arnaud
Known Participant
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  • Known Participant
  • April 27, 2026

This isn’t really a cancellation case — it’s a termination for breach of contract.

If the guest violated your rules (police involved, disturbance, etc.), the correct approach is:

  • remove the guest from the property
  • do not cancel the reservation in Hospitable
  • rely on your rental agreement (which should clearly state “termination without refund in case of violation”)

If you cancel, you fall back into a “commercial” flow → refund gets triggered.
If you don’t cancel, the reservation simply runs its course and you keep control.

This is actually standard across most channels (Booking, VRBO, direct). Airbnb is one of the few that tries to handle this internally, but even there they often override payouts.

So in short: don’t cancel — treat it as a contract breach, not a cancellation.