New cancellation policies... and increased host fees!

Yes, you are right. I re read it. But for long term stays Strict is still better than Flexible or Moderate, for me. I’ve only had two cancellations and one early departure during the whole time I"ve hosted AirBnB, both with domestic guests and never with foreign guests. I am not too concerned about cancellations. I do think there should be no refund if someone cancels less than a week prior to arrival. I guess they are still considering various possibilities.

I must yes to IB, yes to their ridiculous price tips and yes to their super flexible cancellation policies. Now hosting feels more like prostitution.

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Yes, and it has a clear explanation. They are motivating guest to book with AIRBNB by relaxing your cancellation policies but they still want to collect their fees for the place they have finally decided to stay at. If guests cancels before check-in time is because they are not going to travel or they have decided to stay in another Airbnb. We (Airbnb) will refund you 100% of our fees as you will be paying them back to us again when you choose a different Airbnb. And you will bok with us again because we have the most flexible cancellation policies in the world. If, however, you decide to cancel during your stay, hell no, I’m sorry if you didn’t like your experience with AIrbnb but this fees belong to me (Airbnb).

This policy will be a real threat for us in the future. Guests will start abusing them. I might book a place that I like and my husband another one for the same travel dates to block their calendars. When the dates comes closer we will decide which is better or maybe check another one as now that we are close to the arrival date, prices must be much cheaper than before. We can do all this without spending nothing (100% refundable). In fact, I can repeat this anytime I want as there is no single penalization for the guest for canceling their stay. We (hosts) instead get penalized with money, with the lost of the SH status (if you are one), with a huge drop in the search placement, and with an automatic review in our profile (the hosts has cancelled this reservation …)

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I am always less leery of what a company does since self-interest is to be presumed and absolute greed is easy to understand, but the infinite combinations how humans will ‘game the system’ is the trickiest part to protect oneself from and preempt.

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Greed often leads to improvident decisions.

It is human nature to always find a way to make the system work for you (some would call this abuse).

So yes, this new policy will be abused, a lot, and AirBnB will first ignore it, then play it down, and then probably come back with another decision that is good for them and bad for the host.

The next step will with certainty be, that they still keep the new cancellation policy, without the giving back the service fees to the guest.

So the host will loose a lot, the guest will loose a little, and AirBnB will loose nothing (even make double when the guest rebooks).

Under that disguise every scammer will find justification for just about any behavior. I am just not hung up on the ‘us against them’ mentality and they are inherently evil and we hosts are the ‘good guys’. Nor is it their responsibility to be responsible for all human outcomes which are infinite in number; they are after all only a lousy booking company, nothing more, their flowery romance copy notwithstanding. I don’t come to conclusions by what people say, but what they do.

/out

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Well… At least for now, this doesn’t affect anyone except hosts in Italy…so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

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I just have one pair of guests that are coming in Oct-30th asking me to see if my place can accommodate a third guest now that they know another friend will be joining them on the trip. My listing is for a maximum of 2 passengers and I don’t have extra space in the apartment to accommodate someone else neither I want to have 3 people inside. My cancellation policy is Strict but with the new adjustments, they will cancel as soon as I say them NO without any penalties nor any compensation for me. Which will probably make me trying to find an extra bed for the 3 people to avoid losing the reservation. What I’m trying to say is that guests might abuse and request a lot of things that are outside your terms because they know that if you don’t help them get that they want, you will lose them.

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It seems to me that if Airbnb desires to provide a guest cancellation experience “more like a hotel”, it should be they who manage the risk involved.

A hotel is able to spread the risk of last-minute cancellation across its various rooms. In a hotel with 100 rooms, If one room cancels, the other 99 rooms carry the night, and total revenue is minimally impacted.

For me, if one room cancels… wait, there is only one room! For me I lose 100% of the revenue for that night.

It would be far more host-friendly for Airbnb to charge a higher host fee, and then absorb the cost of any cancellations over their entire platform. This is the model that hotels use, but in this case it would be distributed across different properties/owners rather than across the rooms at a single property.

As an example: If all hosts are paying increased fees, some of those dollars could be earmarked for the “cancellation fund”. If I have a guest cancel, Airbnb uses the funds from this cancellation fund (collected across the entire Airbnb platform) to pay me the full amount for the cancelled stay.

This would accomplish Airbnb’s assumed goal of having more “guest friendly” policies, while also providing better protection for hosts. I’d call this a win-win for hosts and guests, and would gladly pay an increased fee for that “insurance”.

As stated now, the new policy in Italy is a boon for guests, and could have serious negative impact on individual hosts.

Lastly, I’m new here! We’ve been hosting for nearly a year now and I found this forum while researching a problem with lingering fragrance from a recent stay. I just stumbled on this topic, hope this comment doesn’t derail the discussion!

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Welcome! It’s a great forum and you can learn a lot from reading the threads. They regularly go off topic so don’t worry about it.

In researching hotels for an upcoming trip, I noticed how many hotels offered a free cancellation option at a higher price point. The one I ended up booking will charge me $60 if I cancel or modify.

What AirBnB should offer is cancelation insurance.

A lot of travel agencies offer this service. You pay a small extra percentage, to be able to get all your money back in case of a cancelation.

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One easy thing they could do that I’ve never seen mentioned is when a guest cancels a reservation it shows up on their reviews! No matter the reason a host cancels it shows up in their reviews, why not for the guests? It wouldn’t cost any money, but maybe a guest would think twice about making a flippant booking/cancellation if they knew that a cancellation would show up and make it harder to book in the future…

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Just another reason to start using other and better alternatives to Airbnb:

10 better alternatives to Airbnb

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And here’s the official confirmation - from an Italian Airbnb rep - that the company will roll out globally the changes to the cancellation policies :earth_americas:

Thus, get ready also outside of Italy…

Ugh. Well, as we know, Air reps don’t always know everything, and sometimes make up answers that turn out later to be untrue.

Might be wishful thinking but I have had air reps tell me the darndest things.

If they roll out the new changes this is what I think it will happen.

  1. Hosts with Strict cancellation policy will remain Strict (despite the increase in the host fees) but many of them will not take bookings for more than 30 days in advance as if so, the guest will be refund 100%.
  2. Now that Airbnb fees are fully refundable before check-in we will start seeing a lot of abusing guests that will book a place without any sort of commitment to actually staying there. Host with Flexible and Moderate cancellation policy will be the most affected.
  3. As soon as host with Flexible and Moderate realizes how risky are the new cancellations policies to them, they will move to a Strict policy to protect themselves.

With the way is currently defined the Strict cancellation policy I’m open to accept a reservation from someone that wants to start his stay at my place 4 months in advance. With the new changes I will probably block my calendar for those dates. The end of the story is that the company will get the complete opposite of what they really want and more hosts will choose the Strict policy, not to mention the amount of bookings they will lose for the ones that will block their calendar to prevent getting a reservation with no cancellation penalties.

The new cancellation policies will approach Airbnb in what Booking.com is and the number one complain I heard from that platform is that there a lot of cancellations or the guests just didn’t show up.

It’s another slam to hosts… and so unfair. And I’m sure it will be touted as , “in order to serve you better,” … we have to raise our rates and give you less protection against cancellations… Sucks.

Maybe I should consider long term renters. Never thought I’d say that.

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Airbnb will present this as “Our reseach find that guests prefer more flexible cancellation policies in order to book so we think this si better for the community of hosts to get more reservations”

OF COURSE, guests like to cancel with no penalties, want the cheapest price possible, want not to be approved in order to book, etc. There is no cleaver exercise on that research. As a host I would also like to charge the most as possible, use the most strict cancellation policies, and have plenty of tools to evaluate my guests before they decide to stay with me. In the vacation rental world the more you give to your guests, the less you give to your hosts. It is Airbnb’s job to find the proper balance for this and I’m not sure how this will end if they take the path of serving in full the guest’s needs.

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Very well said florborne. The sites seem to never learn that a vacation rental, in -home host rental, etc. will NEVER be the same as booking a hotel room with 50 rooms, 100 rooms, 500 rooms. A hotel room can take the risk of a last minute cancellation. I think once dates are reserved…there should be no refund unless they are re-booked.

I wonder the same with myself and my own policies with booking direct. I saw all of my competition allowing full refund within 60 days or 30 days fo arrival. But why??? It doesn’t make sense. You don’t have an actual reservation if you are allowing people to cancel then.

Never in a million years would ANY hotel with one room allow people to instant book and cancel. There is no way a hotel would allow an 18 year old to book and just hope and pray they don’t throw a wild party. Any hotelier would know they then would have to cancel the following booking. But Air and the other sites for the most part assume “owners” are not very bright to begin with. They already know most underprice their rentals, and that is why Air was able to come up with their business plan of charging a 6-12% guest fee. If owners were priced accordingly, no one could have implemented that kind of strategy. They would have been forced to charge for an annual subscription.

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