Refundable Booking Upgrades

Customers may be given a choice to purchase a Refundable Booking Upgrade on their booking (currently only available to customers purchasing via Cool Camping, Cool Places, Glampingly and ILoveThisCampsite, and not currently available to customers purchasing via Bedful). A purple 'Refundable Booking' badge will appear at the top of the booking summary page on Bedful when this has been selected by the customer.

The customer is charged an extra fee for this upgrade, over and above the booking price, which goes towards administering the refund scheme (operated by the third party organisation Refund Protect).

Participating customers may then be entitled to a refund from the scheme, rather than from the accommodation partner, if the customer needs to cancel their holiday due to ill health or other reasons outlined here and for extra Covid-related reasons outlined here. In that case, the partner retains any monies already paid for the holiday, with the refund being settled in full by Refund Protect.

What is the benefit to the accommodation partner?

In addition to the significant benefit of not having to refund customers who are eligible for a refund under the scheme, there is also an instant financial benefit to partners on every booking, as below.

When a customer activates the Upgrade, accommodation partners recieve an automatic reduction in their channel commission amounting to 1% of the original booking value, less the additional Stripe fee for the Upgrade. The exact benefit to the partner varies due to fluctuating Stripe charges and Upgrade fees charged to the customer, but in most cases will amount to a net reduction in commission of around 0.86% of the total booking value which means you keep more of the revenue.

For example, for a booking of £1000, there would be a £10 reduction in your commission for the booking, but a small extra Stripe charge of around £1.40, giving a net financial benefit to the accommodation partner of £8.60.

This commission discount happens instantly when the booking is made, and only applies when a customer opts in and pays for the Upgrade.

A further benefit to the partner is that it offers extra peace of mind for their customers - and of course partners can keep the payments already made by the customer when refunds are made under the Upgrade programme. Partners are also free to re-sell the accommodation, in addition to keeping the revenue already recieved.

Refunding customers with a Refundable Booking Upgrade

If a customer who has paid for a Refundable Booking Upgrade enquires about a cancellation and refund of their holiday, please direct them to Refund Protect to apply for a refund via the online form as below (they will need their booking ID from the confirmation email):

https://form.refundable.me/forms/refund

If the refund is approved by Refund Protect, you would then cancel their booking, retain the funds, and be able to offer the availability to a new customer.

If their reason for cancellation is outside the conditions of the scheme, then any refund requests would revert to your own refund terms and conditions for that booking. Please note that partners should not refund the separate Upgrade fee.

Adding the upgrade option to your own bookings

Currently the scheme is only available for bookings made via the Cool Camping channel. However, we are hoping to offer this more widely to partners, so they can offer the scheme to their own direct customers via the Bedful booking system.

The benefits of the scheme would then be available for many more bookings, thus reducing refund commitments for partners.

If you would like to register your interest in this scheme, please contact support@bedful.com