New cancellation policies... and increased host fees!

So my question is do guests normally search for rooms based on cancellation policies? Not that they don’t cancel - people do that all the time.

We had one guest who would only stay at listings with the Flexible Cancellation Policy. He told us that he was frustrated that cancellation policy is not one of the filters.

Color me mistaken. You learn something new everyday!!!

Well said. That’s just another example of host/guest asymmetry. Like stars for a host being public, but not for a guest. Airbnb’s has a blatant pro-guest bias, and it shows.

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BTW, why is the owner of this forum not sharing this topic on his FB page.

He often shares a random posts from this forum, and a lot of AirBnB propaganda news items, but he is very silent about this important topic.

Probably because it has enough hosts, for now, and needs more guests, thus the outright pandering to them with all these ‘nothing-to-loose’ options.

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If Airbnb goes with this idiotic notion, we all need to vote with our feet.

Exactly …

It was before. Airbnb remove it from the filters recently. I don’t know if they are planning to place it back again.

Airbnb don’t understand that besides the fixed costs we have to run our hosting business we have maintainance costs that are very high in order to keep our places in good shape. If they go into the direction of promoting the welcome to more and more hosts the final income to each of us will be so low that Airbnb will soon become a place to find cheap quality places for a cheap price. Bad reviews will come and the whole brand will be affected.

Why on earth would they do this, when they have you to do it for them.

This is one of the reasons sites like Airbnb and eBay make money. They are able to push almost all the risk off onto individuals. They have huge incentive to create policies that are guest/buyer/whatever friendly because they make more money and yet don’t take on any additional risk. That risk is on you and they don’t care one bit. They will push this advantage further and further right up until the point where hosts start bailing in large numbers.

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I have noticed this too recently. If you want the flexibility to be able to cancel a booked hotel stay, you pay for that privilege up front. If you’re pretty confident you’ll be able to show up, you’ll enjoy a reduced rate.

Airbnb has no incentive to follow suit. They are not worried about guests cancelling. Only you are.

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Though I think this is a great idea, Airbnb isn’t likely to embarrass, or piss off a guest this way. This is something that might cause a guest to not use the site again and/or not recommend it to their family and friends.

@florbone Absolutely, they are now beating up on the hosts, in time they will RE-realize our contribution and true importance and the pendulum will swing our way.

They would do this so that they can keep both the guests and hosts happy, thus avoiding any “host exodus”. Seems like good business to me.

Yeah, because heaven forbid that the guests should be worried about being honestly reviewed and held accountable for their actions in a “home sharing” system… :wink:

As a data point I just got an email from Air BNB about a reservations from 2 years ago! We were the guest and cancelled within the flexible time period, all our money was refunded without issue, except the air fee of $111. I literally just got an email saying ABB was refunding me there fee of $111, This goes along with the ‘new’ purposed retroactive changes of the guest is fully refunded. Wondering if this was a fluke or the beginning of the new era of cancellation policy.

That is really.really weird. I have. A feeling they are going to drop the Italy tragedy on us before the end of the year. They probably won’t do it at the Open because that wou do damage the mood. But I have a feeling something bad is coming.

In all case no way that I will go to flexible, moderate is already very very generous.

There was a discussion on the ‘community’ board about the new guest cancellation policy being retroactive. So im wondering if thats why I got a refund??