With Vrbo rolling out their new same-day booking feature, it appears that bookings may be allowed throughout the entire day of arrival. Based on what I’ve been told by support, Vrbo does not currently provide a way to set a cutoff time for same-day bookings the way Airbnb does.
For example, on Airbnb we can set a same-day booking cutoff (e.g., 6:00 PM). This is important because many hosts need time to prepare for last-minute guests, communicate check-in instructions, and coordinate things like security registration or access codes. In our case, we also stop monitoring messages after 10 PM, so very late same-day bookings would be difficult to accommodate.
Right now, it seems Vrbo could allow bookings until late in the evening (potentially even close to midnight) if the property is still showing as available. It would be very helpful if OwnerRez could provide a way to prevent same-day bookings after a certain time when Vrbo performs its last-minute availability check.
Possible solutions could include:
• A configurable same-day booking cutoff time for Vrbo (similar to Airbnb’s setting).
• Automatically marking the property unavailable after a specified hour on the day of arrival.
• A setting that disables same-day Vrbo bookings after a host-defined time.
This would help hosts who need a reasonable buffer to prepare for guests and avoid late-night bookings that cannot be properly supported.
If this is something other OwnerRez users would find helpful, please consider upvoting this request.
Thanks!
I agree and would also state that this should probably be a priority because Hosts could conceivably have somebody book at 11PM and all the hassle that might come from that. I forgot to set that setting for AirBNB one time and had a guest book and check in right around midnight. Thankfully my automations worked and they managed to get their access, but that was not a good scenario for me. I'd rather be woken up or maybe even miss the booking than open myself up to being accused of not adequately providing entry.
My need is somewhat orthogonal to the above—it's not about time of day for me, but whether the property is actually ready.
Although I’m not sure Vrbo supports it, the ideal solution would mirror Airbnb: allow a 1-day minimum advance requirement for Instant Book, but still permit request-to-book outside that window.
In my case, I’m comfortable with late same-day bookings—even as late as 11pm—but only if the property is already clean and ready. Furthermore, once it’s ready, Instant Book works fine; my automated messaging sequence handles everything (legal agreement, SecDep, door codes) even if I’m unavailable.
The constraint is operational: if there’s no same-day booking, my cleaner may not service the unit until later in the day or even the following day. Before the property is cleaned, I need request-to-book so I can confirm whether it can realistically be turned in time. And after it’s clean, request-to-book or even Instant Book is fine.
Because OwnerRez doesn’t currently track “ready” status (e.g., via a two-way integration with Breezeway), I can’t safely allow Instant Book for all same-day bookings. I need that gating mechanism.
If Vrbo doesn’t support separating RTB from same-day minimum stay rules, I’ll likely keep same-day bookings disabled there—same as I do on my OR-hosted direct site—since there’s no way to safely distinguish between cleaned and uncleaned inventory.
Hey courtneylove,
We reached out to our Vrbo contacts and they've informed us that Vrbo same-day bookings will be allowed up to 12pm at the local time of the property. We had some in-app language on our end that implied it would be "all day", but we're going to fix that ASAP.
They've also let us know that a follow up iteration to allow property-specific configurable cutoff times will be released at a later date. Once they've released the ability to do so, we will certainly get that added as a configuration on our side.
Awesome, thanks for the update!
So great to hear, @Bri! Thank you!
