A guest cancelled the day before. Can you still fill the dates?

The message arrives the afternoon before check-in: the guest has cancelled. Your cleaner is booked, the place is ready, and suddenly you've got nights with nobody in them. Whether you can fill them depends on your area and how fast you move, but there are a few things worth doing straight away.

First, check what you're owed

Your cancellation policy decides how much of the booking you're paid. On stricter policies, a cancellation the day before usually means you keep most or all of the payout. On flexible ones, you might get nothing.

That number changes how hard you should work to refill the dates. If you're being paid for the nights anyway, a new booking is a bonus. If you're not, it's worth more effort.

Make the freed nights easy to book

Short-notice guests are a different crowd. They're often travelling for work, visiting someone at short notice, or deciding where to stay that day. They book fast and don't plan around your rules. To catch them:

• Lower the price for those nights. A last-minute gap is worth less than a night booked weeks ago. A noticeable discount gets you seen.
• Shorten the minimum stay. If you normally need three nights, a two-night or one-night gap won't fill. Our post on minimum stays covers when relaxing it makes sense.
• Turn on Instant Book for those dates if you don't already use it. Many short-notice guests filter for it and won't wait for you to reply. Our post on Instant Book for small hosts weighs up the trade-offs.
• Check your advance notice setting. If you only allow bookings two days ahead, nobody can book tomorrow, however low the price.

Make these changes as soon as you see the cancellation. A day's delay can be the difference between filling the gap and not.

Think about the turnover

Before you lower prices, check you can handle a same-day booking. Is your cleaner available? Is the place already ready from the last turnover? If a new guest could arrive with a few hours' notice, make sure the check-in details are ready to send and the entry works.

If you can't get a cleaner in at short notice and the place isn't ready, it's better not to open the dates than to have a guest arrive to an uncleaned home. A backup cleaner you can call at short notice is worth having for exactly this.

When to leave the dates empty

Sometimes the right answer is to do nothing. If your policy pays you for the nights, and refilling them at a low price means another turnover cost and more wear, the sums may not work. A free night can be useful too:

• Fix the small things guests have mentioned.
• Do a deeper clean of one room.
• Replace worn linens or check the smoke alarms.

Use your payout calculator to see whether a discounted short stay actually adds anything once cleaning and fees are counted.

Reply to the guest kindly

Whatever the reason for the cancellation, a short reply is worth it. "Sorry your plans changed, hope everything's OK. You'd be very welcome another time." Guests who cancel often feel awkward about it. Being gracious costs nothing and sometimes brings them back.

Reset everything afterwards

If you changed prices or rules to fill the gap, put them back once the dates have passed or been booked. It's easy to lower the price for two nights, forget, and find the next month quietly underpriced too. Set a reminder for the day after the gap to check your calendar settings are back to normal.

Look at the pattern

One last-minute cancellation is bad luck. If they keep happening, look at your policy and settings. A very flexible policy attracts more speculative bookings, and that may be costing you more in empty nights than it gains in extra bookings.