What the season costs
The cancellation is not the loss. The loss is the forty-eight hours in which nobody else could buy that slot.
Boat, paddle sports, jet ski and beach categories run on forecasts that change twice a day. A Thursday forecast cancels Saturday, and Saturday is the day that pays for the week.
A cancellation processed on Thursday afternoon that does not put the unit back on sale until somebody edits a spreadsheet on Friday evening has taken your most valuable slot off the market for a day and a half, in the window where late bookings are still possible.
Inside your notice window you have two bad options. Refund a guest you would like back, and lose revenue on a slot you probably cannot re-sell in time. Or keep the money and lose the guest.
Most operators pick differently depending on who is asking and how the day is going, which is the least defensible version of a policy and the one guests talk about in reviews.
Whatever you decide about the money, get the slot back on sale the moment the cancellation is processed. That is the part that is pure loss, and it is the part most operations handle last.
Keep a list of the guests who asked for that unit and that day and could not have it. A cancellation is worth a message to a name on that list, and the message is worth sending inside the hour rather than the next morning.
Publish the notice window and apply it the same way every time. A consistent policy loses fewer guests than a generous one applied unevenly.
An option at checkout lets the guest protect their booking. Taking it puts a protected status on the reservation, which changes what happens when a cancellation lands inside your notice window.
The effect is that the choice above stops being a choice. The guest is looked after, the slot re-opens for sale the moment the cancellation is processed, and a protected cancellation and a re-booking can both happen on the same afternoon.
There is no third-party product to administer and no separate portal for staff to learn.
Guest pays$235.13
Payout$225.00
The fee is added at checkout and paid by your customer, so the payout is your list price.
It is not travel insurance. It does not cover a guest's wider trip, and it is not underwritten by anybody else.
The terms sit with you rather than with an underwriter, which means the wording is yours to write and yours to stand behind.
Revenue retained on cancellations inside the notice window, tracked across a season. Most operators cannot produce it today, and it is the number that tells you whether any of this is working.
Re-open the slot for sale the moment the cancellation is processed, before deciding anything about the money. The unsellable window between the cancellation and the slot going back on the board is the part that is pure loss, and in weather-driven categories it is often the most valuable slot of the week.
Offering protection at checkout removes the choice between refunding a guest you want back and keeping money for a slot you cannot re-sell. It is not travel insurance, and the terms sit with the operator rather than with an underwriter.
No. It softens cancellation losses, it does not cover a guest's wider trip, and the terms sit with you rather than with an underwriter.
Yes, the moment the cancellation is processed, so a cancellation and a re-booking can both happen on the same afternoon.
Revenue retained on cancellations inside your notice window, across a season.
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