Vacation Rental Agreement Questions

[Amy Jones]

Hi Everyone,

I'm considering turning my property into an Airbnb, and upon some research, I see that it's required to have a signed vacation rental agreement for your guests. I also saw an Airbnb forum in which they stated that guests aren't required to sign these forms and can get a refund if they don't want to sign the forms. I'm wondering how other STR owners are navigating this? Do Airbnb and other STR platforms have functionality in which you can have your document signed within the app?

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

[Ken Boone]

Hey Amy,

I have used a rental agreement outside of AirBnb and VRBO for about 8 years now. My insurance company required me to have a signed rental agreement. So my understanding is that if you do this you need to disclose that guests will need to sign your rental agreement as an additional condition for renting. If the guest doesn't want to sign the form, absolutely let them cancel. If they can't agree to your rules, you don't want them in your STR. Period. In 8 years doing contracts across 4 properties I have never had a guest book and then refuse to sign it. EVER. So what I am saying is that issue about guests getting a refund because they don't want to sign, is not a substantial issue.

For years I used Guesty for Hosts and they did not have the ability to provide guests with a digital rental agreement so I used SignNow. I used Zapier to automate the whole process.

Since then I moved from Guesty for Hosts to Hostaway and they have this functionality built in. There are other PMSs out there that do the same.