Short answer
Make every booking cost the customer something before you block a vehicle for them: a partial prepayment, or a saved card backed by a written no-show fee.
Add a clear free-cancellation window, a reminder the day before pickup, a reconfirmation of arrival time, and a fixed routine for the no-shows that still happen: wait, call, mark, charge per policy, release the vehicle.
On this page
None of these levers is new. What makes them work is using them together and applying them the same way every time, so the customer knows the rules before they book and your staff know what to do at 10:45 when the 10:00 pickup has not arrived.
Why does a no-show hurt more in high season?
A no-show is not a lost customer, it is a lost vehicle-day. In November a car nobody collects can usually go to the next walk-in. In August, with the fleet fully booked, you turned other customers away to keep that car for someone who never came, and those dates are gone.
A simple example: a compact car at €60 a day, booked for seven days in the first week of August. The customer does not show, and nobody walks in for a full week at the last minute. That is €420 of revenue you cannot make back, plus the time spent preparing and cleaning the car. On a scooter fleet at €35 a day the numbers are smaller, but you lose far more bookings, because scooter bookings are cheap to make and easy to forget.
A late cancellation does the same damage. "Cancelled the evening before" and "never came" cost you about the same in peak weeks, which is why the policy below treats them together.
Which lever stops which kind of no-show?
| Lever | What it stops | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Partial prepayment | Casual and duplicate bookings | Some customers book elsewhere; refunds when you cancel |
| Saved card and written no-show fee | Customers who "forgot" | Charging it can lead to disputes |
| Free-cancellation window | Silent no-shows, because cancelling is easy | Some cancellations you would otherwise have charged |
| Reminder the day before | Honest forgetting, wrong dates | Nothing |
| Reconfirming arrival time | Late flights, pickups at the wrong time | Staff time |
| Deliberate overbooking | Losses you cannot prevent any other way | Stranded customers when everyone shows up |
Setting it up, step by step
Decide what a booking must carry
Choose, per channel, what the customer gives you before the vehicle is blocked. For direct online bookings the choice is usually one of three: nothing, a saved card, or a prepayment of part of the total. A prepayment of 20–30% is enough to filter out casual bookings without scaring off most customers; for peak weeks and the vehicles that always sell out you can ask for more. A saved card costs the customer nothing now but gives you a way to charge the no-show fee later.
If you save cards to charge later, your terms have to say so. Stripe's documentation asks you to get the customer's agreement to charges you start on their behalf, to explain when and how the amount is set, and to keep a record of that agreement.
In Renviq this is a setting on your online booking page, available once you connect your own Stripe account. Before the request is sent, the visitor either just sends it, saves a card (nothing is charged), or pays a share upfront: the percentage you set is held on the card, charged when you confirm and released if you decline. With a card or a prepayment the request only reaches you once Stripe has succeeded. Until then the booking sits in a pending payment state that holds the vehicle for about half an hour; a checkout the visitor abandons frees it again without anyone having to clean up. For a customer who booked by phone, you can email them a link to save a card on a secure Stripe page.
Write a cancellation and no-show policy
Three numbers are enough: the free-cancellation window (for example, up to 48 hours before pickup), the charge for cancelling later, and the charge for not showing up at all. Add the wait window after the pickup time and what happens after it: the booking is cancelled and the vehicle released. Put it in the booking page, the confirmation and the rental terms, in the same words each time.
Confirm in writing straight away
The confirmation should repeat the dates, the pickup place and time, the amount already paid or held, and the cancellation deadline as a date, not just "48 hours before".
Remind the customer the day before
A short message the day before with the pickup time, the address and what to bring (licence, ID, the card used to book) catches wrong dates while there is still time to resell the vehicle.
Reconfirm the arrival time
For airport and ferry pickups, ask for the flight or ship number and the expected arrival time in the booking form, and check it the day before. A customer delayed by three hours is not a no-show, and knowing early stops you from giving their car away.
Treat overbooking as a decision, not an accident
Some operators accept one or two more bookings than they have cars for peak dates, counting on some customers not showing. It only works if you have a backup: a vehicle from a partner, an upgrade you can give, or a customer you can move to another day. Without one, an overbooked morning means telling a customer with a confirmed booking there is no car. Prepayment and saved cards make no-shows rarer, which makes overbooking riskier: do not do both at full strength.
Renviq covers the written part. Your free-cancellation window and cancellation charge (a percentage of the booking total) are set once in your settings, shown on your booking page and in the confirmation email, and applied when a booking is cancelled, including by the customer from their booking portal, where they see the exact cost before they confirm. A late-cancellation charge is issued as an invoice automatically; it is not charged to the card on its own. The pickup reminder goes out by email the day before, and return reminders at the lead times you choose. Two limits: customer emails are not sent on the Free plan, and there are no SMS or WhatsApp messages, so reconfirming by phone or chat stays with your team.
What to do when the customer does not show
Wait the window you published
Not more, not less. Customers with a flight number get the window counted from the real landing time.
Try to reach them
Call, then send a message with a clear deadline: "We are holding the car until 11:30." Note the time of each attempt.
Mark the booking as a no-show
Do it after the deadline, so everyone on shift can see the car is free again.
Charge per policy, and only per policy
Capture the prepayment or charge the saved card for the amount your terms state. If you are not sure the terms were clear, charge less; a disputed charge costs more than the fee (see chargebacks).
Release the vehicle
Put it back on sale for the remaining days. A seven-day no-show from which you resell four days has cost you three, not seven.
In Renviq, Mark as No-Show on the booking is only available once the pickup time has passed, and it cannot be undone. The car is free again for those dates and the customer's profile counts the no-show, so the next time they book you can see it. There is no automatic no-show fee: if the customer has a saved card, Charge card on the booking charges the amount you enter immediately, without asking the customer to confirm. A prepayment captured when you confirmed the booking stays with you unless you refund it. A deposit hold is for damage, not no-shows; Renviq releases any hold left on a no-show booking in its nightly sweep, so charge the fee separately (see card deposit holds).
Common mistakes
- A policy only in the terms PDF. If the booking page and the confirmation do not say it, the customer will say they never saw it.
- A fee bigger than the loss. Keeping the full price of a two-week rental for a no-show is the kind of term that fails when challenged.
- Holding the car "just in case" until the afternoon. Every hour past the window is an hour you could have resold.
- Charging without a record. Keep the attempts to contact, the time you marked the no-show, and the policy text the customer accepted.
- Only fighting no-shows on direct bookings. Bookings from brokers follow the broker's rules; check them before you promise a car to both. Moving more bookings to your own channel helps: see direct online bookings.