Table of content

• Eligibility Requirements
• Step 1: Enroll Your Account
• Step 2: Configure Individual Rentals
• Step 3: Configure Channel Settings
• Step 4: Confirm Payment Gateway Setup
• Step 5: Monitor Your Protected Rentals
• Enabling Protection from the Bookings Page
• What Happens After Activation?
• Need Help?

Follow these steps to activate Cancellation Protection for your rentals and start offering flexible booking options to travelers.

Eligibility Requirements

Before you can enroll in Cancellation Protection, your account must meet these criteria:

• SmilyPay Gateway: You must have at least one active SmilyPay payment gateway
• Currency: Your rentals must use EUR (Euro) currency
• Location: Rentals must be located in Europe, excluding Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
• Split Payment : This feature is not compatible with the Cancellation Protection at the moment, but will be very soon thanks to upcoming improvements

Step 1: Enroll Your Account

Access Cancellation Policies

1. Go to your Smily dashboard
2. Navigate to Settings > Cancellation Policies
3. Look for the Cancellation Protection enrollment option

Enable the Feature

1. Click the "Enable" button
2. A modal will appear asking you to accept the terms and conditions

3. Review the terms carefully, which include:

• All future rentals (created after enrollment) that meet eligibility criteria will automatically have protection enabled
• You can disable protection for individual rentals if needed

4. Check the acceptance box and click "Confirm"

Important: Existing rentals created before enrollment will NOT automatically have protection enabled. You'll need to enable it manually for each existing rental.

Step 2: Configure Individual Rentals

For each rental you want to protect, follow these steps:

Enable Protection on a Rental

1. Go to Rentals in your dashboard
2. Select the rental you want to configure
3. Click Edit and navigate to the "Cancellation Policy" tab

4. Check the "Enable Cancellation Protection" checkbox

5. Alternatively, click "How it works" to open a modal with more information and enable from there

6. Save your changes

Verify Rental Eligibility

Make sure your rental has:

• EUR currency assigned
• SmilyPay gateway assigned
• A location in eligible European countries

If any of these requirements are not met, you'll see an error message explaining what needs to be fixed.

Step 3: Configure Channel Settings

Booking.com

Once Cancellation Protection is activated:

• The flexible and non-refundable rates will be automatically created
• A default lower rate for the non-refundable rate will be applied
• You cannot edit cancellation policies directly from Booking.com, all changes must be made in Smily

Airbnb

Once Cancellation Protection is activated:

• The flexible and non-refundable rates will be automatically created
• You cannot edit cancellation policies directly from Airbnb, all changes must be made in Smily

Airbnb has a special consideration:

• Airbnb only displays the non-refundable rate within 60 days of check-in
• For stays more than 60 days away, only the flexible rate with price increase is visible to travelers
• You can choose to opt out of Cancellation Protection for specific rentals on Airbnb if this doesn't suit your pricing strategy. We do NOT recommend to opt out, and we highly recommend to keep the protection.

To Manage Airbnb Settings:

1. In the App's Preferences section, you'll see Airbnb-specific settings
2. Toggle protection on or off for Airbnb for this rental

3. You can also set the default behavior for all future rentals

Step 4: Confirm Payment Gateway Setup

This is a critical step to ensure proper reconciliation:

1. After enabling Cancellation Protection, the Smily team will receive a notification and contact you
2. You can get your IBANs directly from Smily in the Virtual IBAN section of the payment gateway (located in Settings > Payment). If there a lot of IBANs to generate, the Smily support team will be able to get them for you.
3. You then need to replace the payout IBANs on Airbnb and Booking.com using the virtual IBANs provided:
   1. Booking.com extranet: This is located in Finance > Finance settings > Bank Details
   2. Airbnb extranet: This is located in Account Settings > Payments > Payouts
4. On Booking.com, you then need to switch to “Weekly Payout” on Booking.com (located in Finance > Finance settings > Payout timing)

5. You then send proof of IBAN replacement to verification@smily.com (relevant proof may be screenshots or a video of the replacement)

6. Our support team will verify that your payment gateway IBANs are correctly set up for each channel (Airbnb and Booking.com), and activate the cancellation protection in your Smily account
In parallel, we kindly ask you to invite Smily support to join your Booking.com group account, so that we can ensure proper monitoring of operations by following the dedicated procedure.

7. You'll receive confirmation once the setup is complete

8. Protection will only be fully active once this verification is complete

Why this matters: Proper IBAN setup ensures that we can reconcile payouts from channels and collect the protection fees correctly. Without this verification, bookings with protection may result in reconciliation issues.

Step 5: Monitor Your Protected Rentals

Once configured, you can view the protection status for each rental:

1. Go to the rental's Cancellation Policy tab
2. You'll see status indicators showing:
   • Protection status per channel (Airbnb, Booking.com)
   • Payment gateway confirmation status
   • Whether the rental is ready to receive protected bookings

Enabling Protection from the Bookings Page

You can also activate Cancellation Protection directly from a booking:

1. View any booking in your dashboard
2. If the rental isn't enrolled, you'll see a prompt with information about Cancellation Protection

3. Click the link to be taken to either:

• The rental's edit page (if your account is enrolled but the rental isn't)
• The cancellation policies page (if your account isn't enrolled yet)

What Happens After Activation?

Once Cancellation Protection is active:

• New bookings on Booking.com and Airbnb will automatically offer both flexible and non-refundable rate options
• Travelers will see clear pricing for both options at checkout
• The protection fee is automatically added to flexible bookings
• You don't need to do anything else—the system handles everything automatically

Need Help?

If you encounter any issues during setup or have questions about eligibility, contact the Smily support team. We're here to help you get Cancellation Protection up and running smoothly.