First, let me start by saying our hearts go out to anyone that has been affected by the coronavirus. Unfortunately, from the sounds of things, it isn’t over, and this will affect many, many more people.

What’s happening around the world right now is absolutely crazy.  I never thought that our world would be disrupted so quickly by a disease.

It’s mind-blowing.

It’s been hard to get an idea of what to expect, and how to appropriately react to everything that’s happening.

As if the actual events aren’t alarming enough, there’s also a lot of misinformation coming at us.

With so many unknowns coming at us all at once, it’s hard to know what to believe and what to do.

I’ll try not to be too alarming in my post, but I also do not want to downplay the severity of what is happening around us.

I’ll cover what we’re doing and expecting. Hopefully, this information will help you figure out what you can do to get through this rough patch.

How Bad Is Coronavirus?

I’ve heard people both inside and outside of the vacation rental industry say that this is like the flu. Some have even said it’s less dangerous than the flu or similar to a cold.

I don’t know where they are getting their information, but this is absolutely not the flu.

Think of it from a logical perspective. Right now there are 5 countries on lockdown, essentially closed for business – China, Italy, Norway, Spain, and now France.

When have you ever heard of that happening – ever – in history?

This has never happened, ever.

It can not possibly be just the flu. These countries all have a lot to lose by doing what they did and yet they still did it.

That should tell you something.

It makes me incredibly nervous knowing that some vacation rental ‘experts’ are telling their followers that this isn’t a big deal.

If you follow that advice, and they’re wrong – you will be in trouble.

However if we were to flip that around – say you think it’s a big deal and plan for it and then nothing happens – there’s no harm no foul.

Which seems smarter to you?

The way we’re looking at it, it’s best to plan for the worst-case scenario. Hopefully, the worst-case scenario doesn’t come true, but if it does we’ll be prepared for it. 

How Long Will Coronavirus Affect Your Vacation Rental

Not all vacation rentals will be affected the same. I think it’s clear that we’re all going to be affected in some way – it just won’t be the same for everyone.

We have two vacation rentals, one is in the Poconos mountains in Pennsylvania and the other is in Kissimmee, next to Disney World.

Neither one had a guest asking about the cancellation policy… until Disney World announced it was closing its doors.

With the announcement, every Disney property booking until the end of the month was asking about our cancellation policy.

So far the Poconos property hasn’t really been affected. That, of course, may change.

 If it becomes difficult or impossible for your guests’ to travel to your property then sadly, your income will dry up.  As of right now, if most of your guests fly to get to your property then it would be reasonable to expect cancellations.

If most of your guests come from an area that is now quarantined or if your property is in a quarantined area, then your out of business until things get back to normal.

Personally, we initially planned on not having bookings for a couple of months in both properties.

We increased it to three months when we realized that China still hadn’t gotten back to normal.

They imposed super strict laws on their people in an effort to slow down the spread of Corona and despite that, they’re two months into it and still haven’t recovered.

In the U.S., we haven’t (and won’t) have anything close to what China did to their people, so there’s a strong chance it’ll take longer for us to recover than China.

We updated our plan to 3 months of no bookings. Again, we hope it won’t be that bad – but if it is, we’re already expecting it.

How We’ve Prepared For Corona

We live in Florida and have gone through a couple of hurricanes. One thing we’ve learned through those experiences is how important it is to prepare. Although this isn’t a hurricane, we’re treating it like it’s hurricane Corona, the big one.

Like I said in the prior section, we planned for a couple of months worth no income.

Our vacation rentals are our main source of income, so it goes without saying that imagining not having any income for a couple of months was a very uncomfortable exercise.

Although it was uncomfortable it was absolutely necessary.

These are the things we’re doing to prepare ourselves.

Cut costs

This is both personally and in our business. Anything that isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be stopped. Save as much as possible, where ever you can.

We like to provide things like a welcome pack and all kinds of perks intended to increase the amount of 5-star review, those have all stopped.

The goal right now isn’t to get reviews, it’s to make it to the other side of this crazy storm.

Figure Out Your Nut

If your property is vacant for two or three months, what are the bare essentials you have to keep paying for? It’s what I like to call the nut.

You need to be able to cover the nut. With us, if a property is vacant for that long we can turn off the cable, stop the pool and hot tub services, turn off the pool heat, HVAC, unplug the refrigerator – reduce the costs where ever we can.

As far as we know, right now the banks will still be expecting their monthly mortgage payment. So if you have a mortgage (which we do) then you should figure out where you’ll get the funds to make the mortgage payments for the next 3 months.

Preparing Personally

We don’t know how the government is going to try and slow down the spread of Corona. What we do know is that testing was the best way to minimized exposure when it was first detected in the country, and we did a really poor job of testing.

Now the only other way to stop it from spreading is by reducing social contact.

There are many levels of reducing social contact. In the states, we’ve already reduced most of the large gatherings, which is good.

Ultimately, at one point or another, we will be required to stay at home for some amount of time. So we have food, water, medicine, and cash.

Our personal plan was similar to our business plan. We prepped with the expectation of staying home for a couple of months – and God we hope it’s not even close to that amount of time.

Be Logical And Be Safe

Those are our thoughts on what is going on with the Coronavirus and our vacation rental business.

I hope this wasn’t too alarming and has helped give you a framework of what you can expect and do to prepare for the crazy times that the Coronavirus has brought our way.

During this uncertain time, it’s important to think things through calmly and logically. We have the advantage of being able to see how things unfold in the countries that have been affected before us to gauge how things progress.

How have you prepared your vacation rental business? Let me know in the comments below.

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With the coronavirus making its impact on vacation rental businesses everywhere, it’s important to find ways to get by. None of us wants our vacation rental business being a casualty of Corona.

With no idea as to how long its affects will be felt, it makes sense to try and keep as much of your money as you can.

In times like this, cash is king.

What The OTAs Are Saying

Each OTA is handling the corona pandemic differently, but the general message is that hosts should return the full amount back to the guest. Check out the post How VRBO and Airbnb Handled Corona Cancelations to find out how the big sites dealt with corona cancellations.

If the corona cancellations you’re getting are not on Airbnb then you’re in luck. You’ll be in control of how your cancellations are handled.

How We Usually Feel About Cancellations

During normal times, we’ve always had a strict cancellation policy. but these are not normal times.

Now we’ve changed our point of view… for now.

We didn’t feel comfortable keeping our guests’ money if they are unable to fly here.

Since the changes of booking the cancelled dates was slim to none, we decided to keep a flexible cancellation policy.

Now, we understand not every host can do this but we are trying to work with our guests.

We plan on keeping our business after this pandemic and during hard times good intentions go a long way.

Keep in mind, what goes around comes around – both good things and bad. We’d much rather the good things come back around to us. 🙂

How We’re Handling VRBO Corona Cancellations

We decided to give the guest the option of rescheduling their stay using the money they have paid as a credit toward their stay or they can cancel their trip. We let them know that we’d really prefer they reschedule their stay.

So far, all the VRBO guests that asked about cancelling have decided to reschedule their stay instead.

It’s not perfect for us, because we still loose the income from the rescheduled dates. But it allows us to keep the money that they have already paid. If we were to cancel the stay, we’d have to return all the money they already paid.

In this type of scenario we want to hold on to any money we can.

Remember cash is king.

Having those payments in our pockets now is far more important to us then the payments for the later dates they reschedule their stay to.

Things To Keep In Mind When Rescheduling

Give Them A Cut Off Date

Don’t leave it open-ended. The cut off can be either when they need to decide on dates by or when they need to use the dates by.

Either, way there needs to be a cut off date.

It Should Be A Credit 

Meaning it’s not a date for date exchange. If they booked off-season dates and choose new dates that are peak season  – they’ll need to pay the difference.

We also told them that we’ll pay them the difference if the new dates are cheaper.

The Details For Moving The Dates

If The Guest Doesn’t Know The New Dates

If your guest doesn’t yet know when they’ll be moving their trip to, you can move the reservation to a date way in the future – like simetime in 2022.

Otherwise

If they already know what dates they want, you can change the reservation dates and everything will work the same as usual. If there’s a difference in pricing you can either give them a refund or send them a payment request for the difference.

I Hope That Helps

It’s not something that everyone will want to do, and it’s not our first choice. But faced with this strange set of circumstances it seemed like the best solution for them not to lose their money and for us to also hold on to existing income.

What’s your take on it? How’re you handling your VRBO Coronavirus cancelations?

Let me know in the comments below!

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It only makes sense that both VRBO and Airbnb would want to protect their business during the most turbulant time our industry has ever had.

The big two OTAs (Airbnb and VRBO) handled the corona situation very differently. Both were definitely pro guest, but one was not sensitive at all to the hosts.

Unfortunately, how well your vacation rental business fairs during the Coronavirus pandemic depends a lot on the source of your bookings.

What Airbnb Did To Handle Corona

Airbnb recently gave all guests the ability to cancel their stay with a 100% refund. 

I tell ya, It’s amazing how generous Airbnb was with the vacation rental owners’ money.

I saw a few vacation rental owners that were trying to get the cancelled guests to change their dates instead of flat out cancelling – but that sounds like an uphill battle.

At this point, if the booking is on Airbnb, you’re at the mercy of the guests’ whim – and whatever new rules Airbnb comes up with… not cool at all.

By taking these drastic steps, Airbnb has shown us that the guest’s are NOT our customers, they’re Airbnb’s customers.

When you list your property on Airbnb, you loose any control you have over your business. In fact with so little control, it hardly feels like it’s your business at all.

Luckily for us, most of the bookings we have in the next couple of months are on VRBO.

How VRBO Handled Coronavirus

VRBO had the opposite approach to Coronavirus. Instead of generously returning your money to the guests, they encouraged owners to be flexible with their cancellation policies in light of COVID-19 and offer full refunds to those who wish to cancel.

VRBO also recently sent a message to all travelers letting them know that VRBO is encouraging owners to be flexible and give 100% refunds.

This was a much nicer approach.

You are the business owner, and the guests are also your customers, not just VRBO’s customers.

This gives you all the control, and some flexibility on how you mitigate your loses by preventing the cancellations and keeping some of the income.

Update: We just had a cancellation on VRBO, it looks like VRBO just updated their cancellation dialogs. It now says you can give a 100% refund and doing so won’t affect your performance standings on the VRBO platform.

How We Handled The VRBO Coronavirus Cancellations

We agreed with VRBO’s recommendation to refund our guests’ money if they really want to cancel.

Although we agree with their recommendation we offered another way for the guest to not lose their money and for us to keep the income through these rough Coronavirus waters.

 I wrote about how we handled our bookings here, Corona & VRBO – How To Avoid Cancellations

What Do You Think?

How did you feel about how Airbnb and VRBO handled the Coronavirus pandemic?

Let me know in the comments below!

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