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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.
If Instant Book is off, guests send a request to book. You can approve or decline. Declining:
The guest is notified, the dates reopen, and nothing else happens. The card a guest saves with a request is only charged if you approve, so declining charges nothing and 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 → Inbox, the calendar, or the request email, then Approve or Decline. Approving charges the guest's saved card and confirms the stay on the spot. You can adjust the price before you approve, instead of declining a rate that does not work.
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 → Space → 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.
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 (Stripe's US rate — international cards and non-US Stripe accounts carry Stripe's extra fees, passed through at cost; see Payment Processing).
You choose who covers that fee under Host Dashboard → Payouts → Who pays the card processing fee?:
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.
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Haven is the direct booking platform these guides are written for — a branded site, secure payments, and guest relationships you own. Build yours free.
Free to build · No credit card · Private until you publish