Cancellations .... please remind me AGAIN

[Don Draper]

So WHY the heck do I feel so bad about charging him.

i think it's because you are reacting emotionally and personally ... instead of as a business owner. i think it's because you love your guests to love you and wonder if they will still love you if you enforce your policies.
my advice ... no gc. no refund. IF there is a complaint, then you might come to some kind of other arrangement. (i hope not) let it stand.
let me remind you, i think i have shared this here before. a few years back ... i had made a reservation with jet blue to fly from florida to boston. bought and paid for in advance, that's how i got the 'deal' price. some time went by and i got a call that my dad was in the hospital ... but no rush, come back to mass. in a few weeks as planned the family told me. got off the phone and suddenly i knew he was dying even though no one said so and i changed my flight ... moved it up a couple weeks instead of keeping with my original plans. good thing i did because he passed away before i would have been back. and i was able to see him, talk to him, before he died.
long story short ... jet blue would not let me change my flight even though this was an extreme situation to me ... i had to buy the new ticket at a much higher price. after the funeral and all, i contacted them and kept at them (for months) and they finally gave me a $50 dollar voucher towards a future flight which i have yet to use ... but no way would they refund my original ticket price or the difference between the original ticket and the new one. would i stop flying with them? no. i knew the policy when i booked but i was hoping for a break.
i realize that with b&b's it's a small, very personal business that is often the owner's home and it feels so personal to charge for these things, we often develop relationships with our guests ... but i also realize how hard last minute cancellations are on you..

seashanty is right about how badly airlines treat the customer ... not something for a B&B to aspire to. Just saying.
Cancellations are a big dollar and policy problem for all of us. Nearing our second year in the Inn, we have learned to be firm to avoid getting jerked around. But when the policy becomes too hard and too authoritarian, it adds a little more to the small pile of reasons why people don't want to choose B&B. We have to balance. I do the breakfast here. Personally, I'd love to have a 7 night minimum and 6-month cancellation policy; if I did, I'd get to sleep late every morning ...
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But it goes back to the whole "Absence of Proof is not Proof of Absence" thing. We have a 14 night cancellation policy. Some might think that deters people from booking, but what we get are the serious travelers who plan ahead and actually research their trip/stay. They want to specifically stay with us so they plan early. When we had the 7 day cancellation policy we got a lot more cancellations and a lot more people just looking for any old place the week of their trip. That's just not who we prefer to host.
I agree with you on the best part of owning the business is deciding when to stick to the policy. We try to always, but there are always exceptions. Case in point, last fall we had an elderly couple coming from out of state for 4 nights, gift from their kids. On their travel day she got horrible food poisoning and they had to cancel and go back home. It was a prime weekend for us but because it was so last minute we did not rebook any of the dates. I sent them a GC for the 4 nights anyway, because it just seemed like such a true and unfortunate situation. They just rebooked for this coming June, I am happy because they booked weeknights. Will they no show again? We'll see, but I doubt it.

 

[agoodman]

If this was the first time they had done this to me I would have maybe given them a break and only maybe charged one or two nights, but since this is the second time they should have known
I truly snpathize with seashanty's story, there are so many times the airlines have done that and not helped people out but they "stopped" helping because so many people lied about circumstances and it was so easy to get a doc's letter from a friend or your local doc, NOT so easy to "fake" a death certificate but even then by the time one manages to get sone and get it back to them and processed you already needed to be there!
There is ONE big difference between airline refunds and hotels or B&B's, the airline loses ONE seat one ONE day, B&B's often have multinight bookings.
Yes we take our business "personally" and that's why our guests love us .. most of the time .. but at the same time IF I could resell the room at the same rate for any lost days I would maybe give the customer a break on some of the nights
HOWEVER in this case, it was the SECOND time the same customer did same thing and THAT'S where the difference lies.