Your property, your rules

Haven is not a marketplace. There is no Superhost score, no decline-rate ding, and no ranking penalty for saying no to a stay. You set the booking rules, you choose which guest stories appear on your site, and Haven does not take a cut of the booking.

There is no penalty for declining a request

If Instant Book is off, guests send a request to book. You can approve or decline. Declining:

• Does not lower a host score (Haven does not have one)
• Does not hurt search ranking on Haven
• Does not trigger a “too many declines” warning
• Does not restrict Instant Book or future requests

The guest is notified, the dates reopen, and nothing else happens. Pending requests are unpaid, so there is no refund to process.

You can also let unanswered requests expire on a timer you choose — see Auto-Expire Pending Requests. Expiry is cleanup, not a penalty.

To review a request: open it from Home → Overview, the calendar, or the request email, then Approve or Decline. You can adjust the price before you approve, instead of declining a rate that does not work.

You choose which reviews guests see

Haven is not a public review board. Private post-stay feedback stays private. What appears on your site is yours to curate, in Edit Listing → Your Site → Reviews & Testimonials:

Mode	What guests see
Only showing featured reviews	Only the testimonials you mark Featured. Everything else stays off the page.
Showing all reviews	Featured reviews at the top; guests can browse the rest in an All Reviews view.
Show all, hide select reviews	Same as above, plus mark any review Hidden so it never appears — including in All Reviews.

Per review you can set Featured, In All (when Show all reviews is on), or Hidden. One unhappy guest cannot force a public rating onto your direct-booking site.

Full walkthrough: Guest Feedback and Testimonials.

No Haven booking fee — only card processing

Haven charges a subscription, not a percentage of the stay. There is 0% Haven booking fee on every plan. The only per-booking card cost is Stripe's processing fee of about 2.9% + $0.30.

You choose who covers that fee under Host Dashboard → Payouts → Who pays the card processing fee?:

• You absorb it — deducted from your payout. Guests pay your rates, fees, and taxes only.
• Guests pay it — a separate “Processing fee” line at checkout, so your payout stays whole. Applies to new bookings only.

Optional product fees (Screen & Protect, identity verification) are separate from this and only appear when you turn those features on. See Payment Processing and Subscription Billing.

Related Articles

• Managing Bookings
• Auto-Expire Pending Requests
• Guest Feedback and Testimonials
• Payment Processing
• Guest security options