Booking.com - Most Hotels I Can Now Book Have Much Shorter 'Free Cancellation' Policies

Just wanted to check everyone else's experiences. I recently booked a whole heap of hotels for a trip to Japan in May next year with Booking.com. I like using this site as they have really flexible cancellation policies on most properties (sometimes a cheaper price for 'non refundable' rooms but I prefer the flexibility).

My current bookings show that I can cancel up to the day before without any penalty. However I periodically look through available hotels to ensure there's not a better deal going on, and I've noticed now that rather than the day before, most hotels now only allow cancellation within a month of booking (most seemed to be ~15 Jan?).

Is anyone else seeing this change? Thanks in advance.

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Comments

  • +2

    try and look signed out maybe in incognito mode and see if they are any different.

    • Wouldn't be surprised one bit after they've noticed OP has booked many hotels for the same dates!

      • I haven't booked hotels for the same dates, I have had to cancel a couple when our dates changed that we were planning to be in one location or another.

  • The cancellation policy is set by the hotel not by bookingdotcom.
    They must adhere to bookingdotcoms guidelines, but otherwise it's the hotels policies.

    Suggest you may be looking at a different demographic, location, season, hence getting different results to past bookings.

    • Yes that could be likely. Thought it was an odd coincidence but I had started looking at more expensive options.

  • Could it be related to the around 10-day long holiday for the change of Japanese Emporor at the end of April/ beginning of May?

    Just booked some GC hotels for early Jan and the free cancellation policies were all up to 1 month before check-in date - which I put it down to it being a popular time/ destination.

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