Question here. 3 day booking, in town for a surgical procedure. They stayed in our Airbnb one night. They were given the ok to head home the second day and they messaged me at 3:50 on the second day to say they would be heading home. I have flexible cancellation policy. They have not cancelled the 3rd day. When is the cut off time for the 3rd day? Thanks
Iâll be interested to learn what others say. I Googled this but could not find an answer that goes beyond the words of the policy. However, it is clear that they owe for two nights (see policy below).
The question is whether they owe for the third night.
One approach is to wait for the guests to cancel. They sent you a message but based on your post they did not cancel. A message is not a cancellation.
You can reasonably anticipate that the guests will feel that their message was, substantively, a cancellation, and the average person would of course agree.
As things stand now and up until no later than sunrise tomorrow â without their by then having cancelled â they will owe you for the three nights.
When they do not receive a refund, they will likely complain to Airbnb customer service (if they complain to you, refer them to Airbnb). Then youâll see what Airbnb does. I suspect that Airbnb will contact you and ask you to accept the message as a cancellation; itâs up to you whether you agree to that.
Of course, not agreeing to that Airbnb request will invite criticism of you by the guest that you are seizing on a technicality. If this went to the press, adverse publicity of you and Airbnb would be expected. That criticism will be exacerbated by the guestsâ disclosure of their health condition or circumstances.
â Wikipedia
It seems to me that in a three-day reservation logically, and by the defining terms of Airbnbâs policy, the guests should cancel before sunrise of the third day (I would prefer the deadline to be either the check-in time of the second day (so the Host has a better chance to list the property for the next day, which is unpaid) but no later than the check-out time of the third day.
Requiring a cancellation in reference to a fixed time like a check-in time or a check-out time is preferable to defining it by whether a guest stayed the ânightâ because if ânightâ is to be the measure, how would you determine if a guest stayed a night in, say, Alaska during those times they have all-day daylight??). Or if a guest stayed until a minute before sunrise, have they âstayed the nightâ? [It seems to me, by Airbnbâs unfortunately worded policy, that if they do not cancel by sunset of the second day they have stayed during some part of the night, and that that is all that is required to be a ânight stay.â Of course, this also gives rise to the question of what a âstayâ is. If you are physically present for an hour after sunset is that a night that have âstayedâ? If so, sunset of the second day is the literal requirement (presumably ânightâ is defined by the location of the listing property, not the guest). ]
This is another poorly crafted statement by Airbnb. It seems to me that because they drafted it Airbnb should bear any costs, including the criticism from any adverse publicity, of what is their policy.
Further, the Host should not be required to engage in somersaults of logic or astronomy to determine whether a cancellation has occurred in a timely way. However, again, since here no cancellation has occurred, the timing is moot.
Of course, some will say that you should have responded to the message by saying that the message is not a cancellation and that they guests should cancel either with Airbnb on the phone or on the platform. You of course have not agreed to advise the guest. Yet some would say that advising the guest would be the decent thing to do.
However, you might have been reluctant to advise the guest because Airbnbâs inscrutable policy made it impossible for you to properly do so.
After all, as this discussion reveals, you donât know by when they need to cancel. Suppose you simply responded to say "Please note that a message is not a cancellation. You need to cancel on the platform or by calling Airbnb.â Now suppose that while driving home they feel ill and wish they could return. By cancelling they are unable to return. Your message, which was unsolicited, hurt them.
But if you would have responded "Please note that a message is not a cancellation. You need to cancel on the platform or by calling Airbnb. However, you should know that you need not cancel now (after all your situation might change unexpectedly); the deadline to cancel in case something comes up for you is . . . Well, you wouldnât know how to finish that sentence. If you finished it incorrectly, you would come in for criticism or worse.
So you were in an impossible position.
I suppose you could have responded by saying that âa message is not a cancellation. If you wish to make an irrevocable cancellation, you can cancel now on the platform or with Airbnb by phone. Alternatively, you can call Airbnb and ask them the latest time by which you need to cancel and still not pay for the third night.â
But the cognitive effort it takes to reach this kind of wording is unreasonable to expect of the Host, whose responsibilities do not include advising the guest on the inâs and outâs of Airbnbâs inscrutable and poorly crafted policies. These days â I assume youâre in the U.S. â providing advice, and here unsolicited advice, could potentially open you up to damages for all you know.
So I would expect that if they had cancelled (Iâm supposing that night had not begun at 3:50 pm) rather than just sent you a message on that second day that they should receive a refund from Airbnb for the third day; youâd have time to get the place ready for the next guest. Logical as that might be to me, Airbnbâs policy is silent on a time. But Airbnb is not silent on the need to cancel; it is, after all, a cancellation policy,
There was a recent story â I think here on the forum (?) â where someone thought that they cancelled ahead of checking in by sending a message on the platform but did not cancel. Initially in that situation, Airbnb did not treat the message as a cancellation. My recollection is that after the story went to press the message was accepted as a cancellation but the story didnât say, sofar as I recollect, how the refund was treated between Airbnb and the Host. I inferred that the guest received a refund only because of the adverse publicity.
So I am finessing your question. I donât know; you donât know; the answer is unknowable except to Airbnb, which they will pull of their a**âŚ
[I tried to channel how KenH would answer this question, 
]
I think potentially I may have recâd a booking for the 3rd night if they cancelled, but it isnât that busy yet. I am not trying to hose people but I donât want to get a penalty for cancelling, either. I was thinking that they would cancel and I would be fine with that. The only reason I can think of that they didnât cancel is they will get a receipt for the 3 nights and submit it for reimbursement from OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Program).
Well, you shouldnât cancel the reservation. THAT would incur a penalty on you.
I think you should do nothing, and see how this plays out.
If the guests do seek a refund and you direct them to Airbnb, I think you could have some fun with the Airbnb customer service rep if thy pressure you to authorize the refund. When you start talking about the aurora borealis, and, not to be Northern -hemispher-centric, the aurora australis, latitude, Alaska, Norway, sunrise, sunset, night, stay it could be fun. Or you could simply say you donât agree to it.
Right. But without a cancellation you couldnât accept a reservation. Your listing wouldnât;t even show up on a search for that night.
Maybe or they just didnât know better, as itâs been reported in the press that others have done. But if they cancelled timely (and I am guessing that 3:50 pm was timely) they would have paid for two nights and received a payment for two nights.
I donât see how it was to their advantage not to cancel unless they wanted the option to return for that night.
The most likely thing is that they thought they did cancel, just didnât know how to do it properly.
We read so much about guests who try to get refunds that we can assume that all guests will. But there are some guests who have situations like this who actually donât care about getting refund. They know their booking blocked dates you possibly could have rebooked, and accept that responsibiity. Not all guests try to get money back.
Twice I had guests who missed the first night of 10 day or two week bookings due to flight issues. When I offered to refund them the night they missed, out of goodwill, both said âOh, of course not, it wasnât your faultâ.
If your guests had wanted a refund, they probably would have said so. Do nothing and forget about it- youâre overthinking it.
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Not quite sure how you feel this is how Ken would answer a question - Ken is not known for such verbose responses @HostAirbnbVRBO
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In both style and substance my response is the very opposite of how Ken might respond.
Of course, itâs a joke.
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I would be totally fine if the guest had to cancel the 3rd night, plans change for all of us. I was paid out for all 3 nights on 2nd day at 1:43 for all three nights. If I cancel, yes I will be penalized so I was waiting for guest to cancel. If they were to cancel then I could potentially get a booking but that would be on pretty short notice so it probably wouldnât happen. I guess I wait and see if they approach me. At the end of the day they do have a receipt for 3 nights. | |
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Iâve been the guest in cases like this. Iâm just telling the host Iâm leaving early so they can get a jump on cleaning. Iâm not expecting a refund, and donât expect them to rebook the room to reimburse me. So I donât feel the need to cancel.
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Iâve had to leave a day early in my last couple Airbnb stays. I certainly did not expect a refund, it was my doing and I just told them I had to leave early.
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But the potential difference here is with a flexible cancellation policy they might have been eligible for a refund for the third night.
I think it was early enough for them to get a refund to but I guess they donât really care or like some other hosts have said they donât expect one so they didnât ask.
As a rule, the cut off for a nightly refund for a stay being shortened is outside of 24 hours before check-in the next day. Airbnb uses 3:00 p.m. as that magic check-in time. A guest can certainly cancel their stay at any time. The perimeters around the timeline will dictate the refund amount unless the host decides to offer a more complete refund. Being asked at 3:50 p.m. if a guest can leave is certainly their prerogative, youâre not holding the guest against their will. Contractually, the guest is still on the hook for that nightâs stay and the next night if they had booked it.
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Not after 3:00 p.m. However, as a business owner, you can decide for yourself if you want to issue a refund for the 3rd (and 2nd) night if you want.
Good to know â thank you!
That was the missing information.
How do you know that? From experience or is it somewhere in Airbnbâs documentation ?
As with most things related to Airbnb @HostAirbnbVRBO use the Airbnb Help website.
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I agree!
I had looked there and didnât find it, which is why I asked if the 3 pm cutoff was something that @Josiah knew from experience, or something found on the Airbnb site.
It is not 3pm.
It is the hostâs check in time. So if the hostâs check in time is 5pm, then cancelations occuring before 5 are eligible.
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What is says in the Airbnb info is that 3pm is the default time if there isnât a check-in time stated, which I guess means if a listing has a âflexibleâ check-in time. But I have a hard time imagining that many hosts wouldnât have stated check-in times, unless they have self-check in and never take back-to-back bookings.
I have a large range of check-in time, from 11am to 11pm, as I leave one day prep time and live and work here so itâs easy to greet guests at almost any time they arrive, but I would never just list check-in as âflexibleâ, as I wouldnât want to have them check-in at 7am or 3am.
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