Agoda, Booking Holdings’ Asia headquartered digital travel platform, has introduced a feature, EasyCancel, which allows participating partner hotels and properties worldwide to offer their guests greater booking flexibility and the option to cancel up to 24 hours before arrival. This will relate to all bookings made until 30 June 2020.

Agoda unveiled the new product in response to customers’ desire for broader flexible booking solutions, thus reducing guests’ concerns by providing the assurance that if they book an EasyCancel room, there will be no issues canceling their booking if they need to do so. This differs from Agoda’s Book Now, Pay Later option because hotels, which normally only offer non-refundable options, can also opt in. Hoteliers subscribing to this new product benefit from Agoda’s ability to capture what demand there is currently available, helping improve productivity.

The program, which launched in March, has been particularly appealing to and received strong support  from partners in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, throughout South East Asia, – Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, – plus China, Japan, South Korea, and India.

Agoda’s Vice-President of Partner Services, Errol Cooke, explains,” The EasyCancel feature is part of Agoda’s proactive response to support hotel partners in this current challenging landscape.  We have always used our technology to develop features that can add value and productivity for our partners, and continue to do so with the EasyCancel feature.  We want to help all our partners by attracting customers that still want to book a hotel, but are perhaps reluctant to do because of uncertainty around evolving travel restrictions.

“The EasyCancel product allows guests to book with peace of mind, confident that they will be able to change plans up until 24 hours before arrival if needed.”

All participating properties offering the EasyCancel flexible cancellation policy will benefit from onsite merchandising and highly visible Agoda EasyCancel icons.

However, any guest’s booking cancellation received within one day before arrival date will incur the full period charge, while failure to arrive at the hotel or property will be treated as a no-show and no refund will be given, as stipulated within the property policy.