How to Cancel a Traveler Reservation on HomeAway

While you may have had nothing but good intentions when you made your vacation booking on HomeAway, things change. Situations evolve and life gets in the way sometimes. If your situation changed since making your reservation, how can you cancel a traveler reservation on HomeAway?

The cancellation process is quite straightforward but the conditions of refund can be a little confusing. The exact refund eligibility is specified by the property owner and should have been outlined in the listing. HomeAway does have guidelines but the specifics of cancelations are in the hands of the vendor.

The mechanics of the cancelation is the easy bit.

Traveler making a cancellation on HomeAway

As a traveler, you can cancel your reservation from within your HomeAway account. You should check the hosts’ terms and conditions to see if you are eligible for a refund and whether that will be in full or in part.

Log into your HomeAway account.
Select My Trips from the menu.
Select the reservation you need to cancel.
Select Manage Your Bookings to see the cancellation policy.
Select Cancel Your Booking on the page.
Verify the refund and any conditions and select Continue With Cancellation to confirm.
Give a reason for cancellation and add an optional message if you want.
Select Cancel Booking.

Once done, you will see a cancellation notice and receive an email confirmation. The refund will be processed and credited back to you.

If you see Request Cancellation instead of Cancel Your Booking, the property owner will need to confirm your cancellation. The process is much the same but the property owner will need to manually confirm and the system will take care of the rest.

Property owner canceling a traveler reservation on HomeAway

While it happens less often, the property owner can also cancel a reservation. There are a myriad of reasons why that might be and many of them are not your, or the hosts’ fault. If they cancel a reservation, you should receive a full refund but you will need to check the terms to make sure.

If you’re a property owner and need to cancel a traveler reservation on HomeAway. This is how to do it.

Log into your HomeAway account.
Select the listing you need to cancel for.
Select Reservation Manager to access all reservations.
Select Reservations List to access upcoming reservations.
Open the reservation you need to cancel.
Select Cancel Reservation.
Provide a reason for the cancellation in the dropdown menu.
Confirm the refund amount.
Select Cancellation Refund.

The booking will be cancelled and the traveler emailed to let them know. The refund will be processed by HomeAway and credited.

If the traveler cancels their booking, your ranking will not be affected. If the property owner cancels the booking, the property ranking will be affected. This seems to be the case regardless of the reason for the cancellation, including whether it was your fault or not.

Cancellation policy options in HomeAway

Property owners set their own refund and cancellation policies but have to adhere to outlines provided by HomeAway. These are a set of conditions property owners can select but must adhere to. Any extra conditions the property owner might add must not seek to take precedence over the existing policy.

They are:

No Refund

No refund offered for any reason or timeframe.

Strict

Bookings cancelled at least 60 days before the start of stay will receive 100% refund

Firm

Bookings cancelled at least 60 days before the start of stay will receive 100% refund
Bookings cancelled at least 30 days before the start of stay will receive a 50% refund

Moderate

Bookings cancelled at least 30 days before the start of stay will receive 100% refund
Bookings cancelled at least 14 days before the start of stay will receive a 50% refund

Relaxed

Bookings cancelled at least 14 days before the start of stay will receive 100% refund
Bookings cancelled at least 7 days before the start of stay will receive a 50% refund

Cancellation policies will be displayed on each property page near the bottom of the listing under house rules and above reviews. As a traveler, you should check the policy before making a booking so you can make an informed decision about whether to stay. As a property owner, you need to make an informed decision about balancing your occupancy with being customer friendly.

HomeAway recommends the Moderate setting, which allows a full refund for bookings cancelled more than 30 days before arrival date and 50% more than 14 days in advance.

HomeAway make cancelling a traveler booking as simple as possible and keep things reasonable in terms of refunds. If you have made a booking and life does get in the way, at least now you know how to cancel and what to expect as a refund. Good luck with it!