Message when an Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com guest cancels

When a guest cancels a booking that reached you through your PMS, Haven can post a message in their booking thread on your behalf: "Hi Alex, we're sorry to see you cancelled your stay at Lakeside Cabin. Wishing you well, and we hope you'll stay with us another time." It goes out through your connected PMS as soon as the cancellation reaches Haven, so you don't have to write it yourself.

It is off until you turn it on. Bookings made on your Haven site have their own cancellation email: see The Guest Journey.

Turn it on

1. Open Communication → Message automations and choose {your PMS} bookings at the top of the guest journey.
2. Under Whenever this happens, find Message when a guest cancels on the Stay cancelled row.
3. Turn on its switch. The confirmation lists what will send. If automated guest messages are paused, confirming also lifts the pause.

The same switch is Message when a guest cancels under Settings → Account & Profile → Account → Guest communications. Turning on Haven messages for a PMS under Permissions doesn't turn it on: it only ever starts from its own switch. Like every automated guest message, it needs a paid plan.

Change the wording

Click Booking chat on the card. The editor shows a preview with sample values, and takes three shortcodes: {guest_first_name} (the guest's first name, as your PMS reports it), {property_name} (the listing's name) and {host_first_name} (the contact name on the listing, or your first name). The default wording writes {guest_first_name|there}, so it reads "Hi there" when the PMS sends no name.

Links, email addresses, phone numbers and social media handles are refused, because booking sites penalize listings that share contact details without a confirmed booking. Reset to default brings back Haven's wording.

When it sends, and when it doesn't

• Once per stay. If your PMS reports the same cancellation twice, the guest still gets one message.
• Only for a cancelled booking. A request to book that you declined, or that expired before anyone accepted it, never gets it.
• Not when you cancelled. Guesty and Hostaway report who cancelled when they know it. When they name you, a co-host or your team, nothing is sent. When the PMS doesn't say, including every other PMS, the message goes out for the cancelled booking: word it so it reads well either way, or leave it off.
• Only before checkout. A cancellation Haven learns about after the stay would have ended gets no message.
• Your PMS's own switch still applies. If Haven guest messages are turned off for a PMS, nothing is sent to that PMS's guests.

The card shows how many went out in the last 30 days. Each one is in the stay's conversation in your inbox, tagged Sent automatically. If your PMS also sends a message when a guest cancels, turn one of them off, or the guest gets two.

Which PMS can send it

It works through any PMS that can post a written message into a booking thread: Guesty, Hospitable, Hostfully, Lodgify, OwnerRez, Hostaway, Hostex, Track, Uplisting, Smoobu and Beds24. On Guesty, Airbnb guests get it in the Airbnb thread, and Vrbo and Booking.com guests get it by email, which is how Guesty delivers messages on those channels.

It isn't available on Airbnb connected directly, or on any PMS connected through Airbnb, because those connections only allow saved templates. The card lists each of your PMSs, and greys out the ones Haven can't post through, with the reason.

Related Articles

• Auto-reply to new inquiries
• AI replies to OTA guests
• Guest communications settings
• Cancellation Policy