Give a Stay Credit Instead of a Refund

Plenty of small hosts run a no-refund policy and still want to treat a cancelling guest fairly once the dates sell again. A stay credit is the tool for that: a credit note toward a future direct booking, delivered as a branded card with a code the guest enters when they book with you.

Nothing is charged when you give one. The cost lands later, and only if the guest uses it: the booking they pay for with the credit pays you out less by the amount it covered.

When to Use a Stay Credit

A guest cancelled under your no-refund (or partial-refund) policy, and you have since re-filled the nights
You would rather keep a guest's goodwill, and their next booking, than send money back
A stay went wrong and you want to make amends with a future visit rather than a refund
A guest who booked through Airbnb or another channel cancelled there, and you want to invite them to book with you directly next time

Cancel Under Your Policy First

A stay credit usually follows a cancellation in which the guest kept nothing, so the cancellation itself has to follow your policy.

The guest cancels themselves from their trip or guidebook: your policy decides the refund automatically.
The guest asks you to cancel for them: open the reservation, click Cancel Reservation, and under Who asked to cancel? choose The guest asked to cancel. Your policy applies exactly as if the guest had cancelled, including the 24-hour grace period, and the cancellation is recorded as theirs. Tick Refund in full anyway only if you want to waive the policy.
You are cancelling for your own reasons: choose I need to cancel. The guest is refunded in full, as they always are when a host cancels.

See Cancellation Policies.

How to Give a Stay Credit

From the reservation

Open the cancelled reservation — from Home → Overview, the calendar, or its conversation in Communication → Inbox.
Click Give a stay credit on the cancelled-reservation card (it is also in the ⋯ menu as Give a stay credit…).
The dialog opens filled in: the guest's name and email, and the amount you kept of their payment. It also tells you how many of the cancelled nights have been booked again, and warns you if you already gave a credit for this reservation.
Adjust whatever you need:
- Amount — any amount; it does not have to match what the guest paid.
- Guest email — booking-site relay addresses (@guest.airbnb.com and the like) are refused, because a direct-booking code must not travel through a channel's inbox. Ask the guest for their own email.
- Where it can be used — One property (the default), Several properties, or Whole group.
- Use by — 6, 12 (the default), 18 or 24 months, No expiry, or a date you pick.
- Message on the card — optional, printed on the card.
Click Send stay credit. The guest is emailed straight away, and the dialog shows the code with Copy code and Open card.

The same action works on a confirmed stay, past or upcoming, and on a reservation synced in from a channel.

For a guest without a Haven reservation

Open Grow your brand → Upsells → Gift cards & credits and click Give a stay credit. You can also open a guest from Marketing → Audience, switch to the Offer tab, and click Give a stay credit — the name and email come from their guest record.

What the Guest Receives

An email with a card drawn in your site's brand — your colours, logo and fonts — labelled Stay credit, with their name, the amount, the use-by date and your message. It carries the CREDIT-XXXX-XXXX code and a QR code that opens a page where the guest can copy the code, save the card image, and go straight to booking.

How the Guest Uses It

The guest enters the code in Have a discount code? when they book directly, on your listing or at checkout — or follows Book a stay on the card's page, which applies it for them. It comes off the total after tax, like cash, and it stacks with a discount code.

Leftover value is kept. When the stay costs less than the credit, the rest moves to a new CREDIT- code, emailed to the guest once the booking is paid. Nothing is forfeited.
The guest always pays a small amount. Card payments have a minimum (for example $1, or 10 MXN), so a credit can never bring a stay to zero.
Use by means the booking must be made by that date (the end of the day where your listing is). The stay itself can be later.
If that booking is cancelled, the credit comes back in the same proportion as the cash refund: all of it when you cancel, the tier's share under a partial-refund policy, none under a no-refund policy. It returns on a new code that is good for at least another 12 months.

Where Credits Work

Direct bookings that take payment through Haven. A listing whose direct bookings your PMS collects (OwnerRez payments, for instance) cannot take a stay credit, and the dialog greys it out.
Single-listing bookings. Multi-room bookings cannot use a credit yet.
Listings in the same currency as the credit.

Managing Credits

Grow your brand → Upsells → Gift cards & credits lists every gift card guests bought and every stay credit you gave: who has it, what it is worth, its use-by date, and whether it was used and on which reservation. From each row you can copy the code, open the card, resend the email (a credit can go to a corrected address), or void a credit the guest has not used. Voiding stops the code working at once; it is refused while a guest is checking out with it.

If a credit's leftover value ever fails to arrive on a new code, its row offers Issue remaining balance.

Payouts

A stay credit costs nothing when you give it. When a guest pays for a booking with one, that booking's payout to you is lower by the amount the credit covered. Your cancellation policy and the payout for the cancelled reservation are unaffected.

A refund you send later through Issue refund is cash only: it does not return any credit or gift card the booking used. Give a new credit instead if you want to.