Unlimited Nights in Your Home

We understand that your vacation home is still first and foremost your house, and we make sure you always have the flexibility to easily reserve an unlimited number of days in your online calendar.

That being said, please notify us whenever you want to stay at your home, so that we may keep our calendar up to date and accurate for guests looking to book. The further in advance, the better. Occasionally, your home will be open last minute, allowing for a spontaneous vacation for you.

Our Guest Vetting Process

We have learned over the years that having quality guests in our homes is of utmost importance. We look for guests who exhibit signs of respect first and foremost. We screen all inquiries and look out for the various red flags that would potentially lead to bad guests in the home. We take vetting seriously and would rather have slightly less occupancy than partying groups that restrict the long term viability of short term rentals in your neighborhood or cause damage to your home.

We know that attracting good guests starts with the proper marketing of your home. By adding board games and family-friendly activities, we aim to attract the Moms and Dads planning the family vacation as opposed to the Bachelor party that could become a nuisance. Family-friendly board games are better than beer pong tables, so please leave it up to us to market your home to the best of its ability.

Importantly, Open Air Homes is hyper-aware of the cultural biases inherent in vetting potential guests. We do our utmost to be sure we are only considering relevant factors when determining whether a guest can rent one of our homes. We take our values very seriously. We will never discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual preferences, disability, age, or national origin at any time.
Booking Process – Select Homes

When we receive an inquiry to book, we will begin by quickly vetting the guest to make sure they intend to follow our Code-of-Conduct and will treat your property with the respect and care it deserves.

Once we are confident the guest is a good candidate to stay at your home, and if the homeowner trusts us with control over the calendar, we will book them in the home. This process is less time consuming and troublesome for the homeowner. However, if the homeowner wants to approve all guests on a case by case basis, we will reach out to get approval.

After six months of working together, we are confident you will see that we vet guests well, and the ideal scenario is that we have control over booking guests, as this frees up everyone’s time and energy.

Booking Process – Portfolio Homes

When we receive an inquiry to book, we will immediately send you the reservation information via email, and ask whether you want to confirm that particular request. In a lot of instances, time is of the essence, and the faster we get a reply from you the less likely we are to risk losing the reservation to places that allow instant booking. So please answer us back as soon as possible.

A large portion of our homeowners trust us to automatically audit guests properly and fill their homes with the best guests possible without reaching out for approval on every single request. If you decide to partner with Open Air Homes, we will work diligently to earn your trust so that the booking process is smoother and more efficient over time.
No Instant Bookings. Ever.

We will never open your house up to instant-booking options. This is a topic where we are taking a firm stand against the industry pressures to allow anyone to book your home whenever they want. We always want to make sure your property is protected, and your community is unbothered by the guests who rent your home. The long term viability of short term rentals only exists if we only allow people to book who actively engage in respectful forms of communication with us.

Canceling a Reservation

Once a reservation is confirmed for a guest, it is almost impossible for us to cancel that booking and cause hardship to the guest. The booking platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO, for good reason, do not allow canceled reservations except in extremely rare extenuating circumstances. For this reason, we are known for never canceling a reservation. In our thousands of guest stays, we had to cancel just a couple of times, and plan to keep it that way. Our status as a preferred client on Airbnb depends on never canceling reservations, and we are committed to protecting the vacations booked through Open Air Homes.

Allowing a Guest to Cancel

We are in the business of providing a great vacation experience for thousands of travelers a year. Rarely, plans change and guests ask to cancel. Open Air Homes reserves the right to fairly mediate the situation and try to work out a fair resolution between our homeowner partner and the guest. We believe that more good comes from allowing a guest to cancel and working to find a new guest to fill their spot rather than trying to force someone to use a vacation home or be hit with unexpected penalties. In our 8 years of experience in this industry, positive outcomes happen to us when we exhibit empathy, and allow guests to cancel their unwanted reservations when reasonable. However, this is case by case and we mediate as fairly as possible.