Guest can’t cancel if they’re dead either…
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I disagree, after my only experience of cancelling a guest under EC, which CS fully agreed with, even before I sent them evidence.
Our new kittens arrived with campylobacter infections at the end of the season last year. It’s a notifiable disease, with a hard, lengthy process to treat successfully; it took two months.
There was no way I could put guests at risk of becoming infected, let alone have anyone in the house with the amount of poo that was being produced in their litter tray; I was changing it, and washing the wall down, between 6-8 times per day.
I was very glad of my nurse training in infection control; good practice too for C-19.
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Sorry - I was not clear. And very sorry about your kitties! It sound like your stay is perhaps not “entire place to yourself”, from the health concern?
My point is GUESTS should be prevented from exploiting EC. It should be allowed in extreme conditions only and with proof. We are not travel insurance. Guests can always buy that 3rd party. OTAs may or may not offer it in future, but that is a different discussion.
As a host, if we need to cancel for a significant reason, it is our business to run and gosh-forbid but emergencies do happen. The guest simply gets refunded. Air can try to help them find a new stay or not - and that is not our problem.
Naturally, if we “must cancel” due to emergency circumstances then it is FAIR that the stay is blocked off for that timeframe. We “can’t host anyway” and should be prevented (somewhat) from “pulling a fast one” (getting more money with a different booking, etc).
Nothing will be foolproof or perfect. I can’t imagine anyone being happy with Air’s policies before or after March, especially before. Most of us have read horror shows of Air’s host mistreatment. Some here have experienced it first hand.
Too many darn stories of a Guest getting away with serious rule violations, damage, etc - all with Air mostly backing the Guest - despite proof from the host.
Sigh …
I would rather pay a $100 cancellation if I cancel then be subject to the current EC/host insurance policy as it is now.
The devil is in the details, I wonder what it will actually say in the TOS, I hope that they offer trip insurance as an alternative to EC.
RR
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Indeed. It would be a huge jump forward if they were to offer trip insurance, along with a sensible new EC policy.
Regardless, we do not expect some Air CS Bonehead to properly enforce those polices, or our cancellation policies. Would love to be wrong about that, with whatever they do next year. But we have no faith that Air will get better and expect them to continue on the current path.
Direct marketing and booking, along with any non-Air OTA will be our focus. If we can attain a max of 20% or so Air bookings with 80%+ occupancy, we would be well-positioned to leave them entirely when or if they decide to screw with us.
It’s a shame. Our few interactions with Air support pre-C were satisfactory. From all the posts that we have seen from March to today, we are not optimistic.