Is it safe to cancel a Booking.com reservation and pay the Nha Trang apartment owner directly for a discount, and how do security deposits work?

For short-term rentals, owners often ask you to cancel the Booking.com reservation by 2pm on arrival day and pay directly on-site — this saves the platform fee and gets you a discount.

For rentals of 1 month or longer, direct deals are rare, deposits may not be returned, and utilities are billed separately — long-term rentals carry more risk than short stays.

Last summer, with the same 'cancel and pay directly' arrangement, the owner asked for a cash deposit — if you don't have Vietnamese dong, $100 USD works, the amount is written down and refunded at checkout.

The typical arrangement: once you're there, you pay the owner directly instead of through Booking.com, they skip the platform commission — a win-win, but there's usually no written contract involved.