The menu
The seven Vrbo cancellation policy options
Most hosts set a cancellation policy once, when the listing goes up, and never look at it again. That is a mistake on Vrbo, because the policy decides how much of a cancelled booking you keep and what you pay Vrbo on it. Vrbo’s help centre lists seven options, and you choose one per listing.
| Policy | Full refund if cancelled | 50% refund if cancelled |
|---|---|---|
| Day-before | 24 hours before check-in | None |
| Lenient | 5 days before | None |
| Relaxed | 14 days before | 7 to 14 days before |
| Moderate | 30 days before | 14 to 30 days before |
| Firm | 60 days before | 30 to 60 days before |
| Strict | 60 days before | None |
| No refund | Never | None |
Outside those windows the guest gets nothing back. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. in the property’s time zone on the last day of the window, not the guest’s time zone, which matters for a guest booking from the other coast. Where your policy and your own rental agreement disagree, Vrbo says the policy wins.
Read the table for its gaps as much as its windows. Strict and Firm both give a full refund up to 60 days out, but Firm still returns half between 30 and 60 days, while Strict returns nothing. Lenient and Day-before are the only ones a guest can cancel close to arrival and still get money back.
Choosing
Which Vrbo cancellation policy to pick as a host
The right policy follows how far ahead your guests book and how easily you can fill a cancelled date. A cancellation only costs you if the dates stay empty, so the question is how long you need to rebook.
- Short-notice markets (city stays, weekend trips): Lenient or Relaxed. Guests book days or a couple of weeks out, so a strict policy mostly puts them off, and a cancelled weekend can still be rebooked.
- Family vacation homes booked months ahead: Moderate or Firm. Summer weeks at a beach or lake house are booked early, and a cancellation three weeks out is hard to refill. The 50% band means you keep half while still looking fair to the guest.
- Peak weeks you could sell twice: Strict, as a seasonal policy on those dates only, not on the whole calendar.
- No refund: rarely worth it. It protects a booking you could easily have resold, and it narrows the guests willing to book at all.
Peak dates
Seasonal policies, and the check-in date rule
A seasonal policy covers only the check-in dates you choose and expires when that date range ends. Vrbo applies the policy of the check-in date to the whole stay: its own example is a guest staying from February 2 to February 24, who is covered by whatever policy applies to February 2. So a strict seasonal window that starts on a Saturday does not catch a stay that checked in on the Friday before.
Changes never reach backwards. Vrbo’s update page says a new or edited policy, seasonal or not, applies only to bookings made after the change; every confirmed reservation keeps the policy it was booked under. You change both from the Calendar menu, under Settings and the Availability tab, in the owner dashboard.
The money
What a cancellation does to your payout and Vrbo’s fee
Take a $2,000 week on Moderate, and a guest who cancels 20 days before check-in. That falls in the 14-to-30-day band, so the guest gets $1,000 back and you keep $1,000. Vrbo’s policy page says a pay-per-booking fee is based on the amount you keep after refunds, which at the 12% commission would be $120 on the $1,000, not $240 on the original booking.
One caution: Vrbo’s separate fee-refund page says booking fees are not refunded on partial refunds, which reads the other way. We set out both in our guide to Vrbo fees; the payout line on your first partial refund shows which applies to your account. On a full refund there is no ambiguity, because Vrbo returns the commission and the processing fee.
You can always be more generous than your policy. Vrbo lets you issue a custom refund for a guest in a hard spot, as long as it is equal to or more than what your policy already requires; you cannot refund less.
A cancellation only costs you if the dates stay empty, so the question is how long you need to rebook.Choosing a policy
When you cancel
If you have to cancel a guest’s booking yourself
Host cancellations are where Vrbo is strict. Per its waiver page, the consequences (payout deductions or a 7-day temporary suspension) are applied 10 days after the cancellation, and you have those 10 days to request a waiver through Vrbo support. Cancellation waivers are processed within 24 hours.
Some waivers are automatic: certain natural disasters and severe weather, events that make the property unsafe, and wider disruptions such as public health emergencies, government travel restrictions or major travel outages. For the rest, Vrbo accepts four reasons, each with paperwork:
- Natural disaster affecting the property.
- Property damage that makes it unsafe or uninhabitable, with a description, an insurance claim or repair estimate, and how long it will be out of use.
- House Rules violation, where the rules were published in the listing when the guest booked.
- Past due balance, where the guest missed a later scheduled payment, you tried to reach them, and you refund them in full.
Keep your messages with guests on the platform; every one of these waivers asks for the conversation as proof. If you also host on Airbnb, its rules for host cancellations and its guest cancellation policies work differently, and our Vrbo vs Airbnb comparison sets the two platforms side by side.
Everything you hand a guest, matched and priced to move together.
Which policy do you run on Vrbo, and has a seasonal one ever saved a peak week? Tell us in the comments what you host and where; other hosts’ cancellation stories teach more than any policy table.
FAQ
Common questions, answered briefly
What are Vrbo’s cancellation policy options?
Can a host change the Vrbo cancellation policy after a booking?
Which policy applies to a long stay that crosses a seasonal policy?
Does Vrbo refund its fee when a guest cancels?
What happens if a host cancels on Vrbo?
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