Your non-refundable rate can now be canceled. Hopper charges the guest for it.
Aven's booking engine now sells guests a Hopper plan to cancel any rate while the hotel keeps its payment, and neither company says what share of the plan comes back to the hotel
by Markus Busch
Driving the news. On September 30, HTS, the business arm of the travel app Hopper, switched on its Cancel for Any Reason plan inside the booking engine of Aven Hospitality, the company behind the SynXis reservation system. After choosing a room on a hotel's own site, the guest can add a plan that lets her cancel before check-in, for any reason, and get back up to the full room cost. Cloudbeds has offered the same product since March.
How the money moves. Cloudbeds' help page for hoteliers spells it out. The guest pays HTS directly for the plan. If she cancels, HTS refunds her, and the hotel keeps its payment and refunds nothing. On Aven, the cancellation goes into the property system and the room goes back on sale.
Cloudbeds' own worked example: a $500 non-refundable stay, a $45 plan. The guest cancels ten days out. The hotel keeps the $500. HTS pays her $500. She is out the $45.
What the hotel used to own. The gap between your refundable rate and your non-refundable rate is the price you put on flexibility. A guest who wanted the right to change her mind paid you for it, in a higher rate.
Now she has a second way to buy it. She can book the cheaper non-refundable rate and buy the right to cancel from Hopper, at a price Hopper's software sets for each booking. Cloudbeds' page says the product is meant to lift bookings "especially on non-refundable rates." For the hotel, that cuts both ways. A guest who would have walked away from a non-refundable rate may now book it, and if she cancels and the room resells, the hotel has been paid twice for the same night. A guest who would have booked the refundable rate may book the non-refundable one instead, and pay Hopper for the flexibility she used to buy from you.
The catch. Neither company publishes the split. HTS describes the product as "incremental revenue" for hotels, and nothing in either announcement says what share of each plan's price comes back to the property. The demand figures are HTS's own: 62% of travelers say they would add the plan at checkout, 95% of buyers are satisfied, and a "high single-digit" share of direct bookings take it where it's offered. Nobody has published whether guests actually move from refundable to non-refundable rates once the plan is there. And on Cloudbeds, the plan is switched on by default for eligible properties, so some hotels may be selling it without having decided to.
What it means for hotels. If you're on Aven or Cloudbeds, ask your account manager three things. What share of each plan's price comes to you. Whether you have any say in that price. And whether you can see your mix of refundable and non-refundable bookings before and after the plan went live. If you're on Cloudbeds, check whether it's already on.
Then watch the mix for a month. If refundable bookings fall while plans sell, the price of flexibility on your own website has started going to someone else.
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