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I’m not sure if anyone has observed this but I can’t believe how many guests I get who have to cancel a reservation with a full refund because their parent or grandparent died.
I know correlation is not causation, but one has to wonder if booking an Airbnb will decrease life expectancy of your close relatives.
Just a funny observation.
Yes, I actually mentioned that on another forum years ago- that Airbnb guests seem to have a much higher proportion of recently deceased close relatives than the general population. 
Just got a cancellation last night for a guest who booked a month ago and was due to check in tomorrow. She didn’t even have the manners to message me with any apology or excuse. After I just sent her a bunch of info on taking the bus here from the airport, for which she did thank me a day ago. Then cancels at 4am.
I’m just glad she only had a 3 night booking, from the 23rd- check-out the 26th- with my moderate policy at least I’ll get paid for the equivalent of 2 nights. But I had a direct booked guest who checked in on the 19th and wanted to stay until the 27th, but that cancelled booking was blocking those dates. So in fact I lost out on 3 nights booking fees.
Again and again and again on the forum I hear about apparently “commonplace” problems that I have never encountered in nine years. Could it be because our one-week minimum screens out a lot of the boors (probably not… we only imposed that requirement when we re-opened in summer 2020 after closing for the the first three months of COVID)… or is it because I am a Canadian Airbnb catering to mostly Asian guests (and how we ended up doing THAT, I have no idea), and I’m swimming in a different pool than most other hosts who are regulars on this platform?
I’ve only ever had one guest who said a close relative had died, and in that case I had no reason to doubt her. She hadn’t been answering my messages, so I asked Airbnb to try to contact her, which took them 2 days before she even answered them. Then she messaged me, apologizing profusely, saying a close relative had died and her Airbnb bookings were far from her mind, and that she had had to cancel her whole planned trip.
She never asked for any refund, I got paid in full, so I didn’t have any suspicion that she was lying.
Apart from that, I also don’t experience a lot of what other hosts complain about, although I get guests from all over and have never had an Asian guest, unless you count the originally Filipino guest who had lived in Canada since she was a young child.
Never had a guest cause damages, only one left a mess behind her (the others have all left their space tidy and clean), never had a guest act entitled or demanding, try to take advantage of me, never had a bad review.
Being an on-site host seems to have a lot to do with avoiding a lot of guest problems.
Also I have a Moderate policy, which I think cuts down on guests trying to get refunds, even if they lose some money. And just a private room listing, which isn’t expensive. When guests book under a strict policy, and lose hundreds or a thousand dollars by cancelling, they would be more apt to try to finagle refunds.
That sounds more realistic than a guest who opens several tickets and sends lots of messages about a refund instead of grieving for their close relative. And of course, does not provide any proof? How could a host ask for such private info?
Maybe when prospective guests see lots of reviews from those of their same nationality, they are more likely to choose your listing over others?
That might apply to other demographics too. If a POC sees lots of reviews from other POC, they could feel more at ease that they won’t encounter any discrimination.
I have long-suspected this was the case. Many of our reviews are actually written in Chinese or Korean, and would appear at the top of the reviews if the member was logged in using those languages…
Me too. And I’ve never had a cancellation due to a bereavement. Just another factor to prove that we’re all different. 
… or – maybe – the American domestic-travel market is different from Australia or Canada.
I have a strict cancellation and don’t usually offer a refund without verification because I just don’t believe them. I recently had a guest who informed me that him mother died, then she was in the hospital and he was taking a train, the the next conversation said he was flying. So it just seemed odd. I offered him a refund with a copy of his death certificate and eventually I hear back from him saying he was sending it but never did. Trust but verify.
Have only ever had but one cancellation and I offered a refund as the nights resold. Have had several guests come for funerals and memorial services…. Does that count?
I am an American host and knock wood have never had the kinds of problems that I read about here. Think my biggest complaint to date was guests who don’t lock up after themselves.
Oh and the much older couple who were furious I didn’t have cable tv despite listing quite clearly it is streaming only and they should bring their sign ins and passcodes but he didn’t know how to do that since his son set’s everything up.
I would say 90-95% of guests were great. And 0% were terrible
We just had a cancellation for next week, due to Covid. If she had tested the day before and cancelled she would have got her refund. She asked me for a full refund and I explained nicely that if I got a booking, on those dates I might consider. I stated that my hub is sick (not covid ) and not working. I also offered her a unspecified special offer for next year. This potential guest has 20 reviews 5* so she knows the ropes and thanked me for my reply. Let’s see how much I get or if she escalates. I have not heard from Air.
Merry Christmas everybody, stay well and happy always!
A full refund for cancelling a booking at one of the most lucrative times of the year. These guests can’t think past their own desires.
I can understand people not bothering to purchase travel insurance- I’ve only ever done that once. But then the traveler should understand that they should be prepared to bear the cost of cancelling their booking, flight, etc.
If this happens often why dont you adopt the air bnb strict cancellation policy. If you feel its genuine you could offer 50% back
I don’t offer any refunds to people who claim that of a parent or grandparent if they don’t offer me any proof.
I would offer something if they offer me some proof but so far none of them have done that.
I know a host who had a guest claim their mother had died, and sent Airbnb a death certificate to “prove” it. When the host had phoned Airbnb, who had given the guest a full refund, to ask how they could determine it was true, the CS rep sent her a copy of the death certificate (which he probably wasn’t supposed to do).
With that info, she was able to search public records and found out that the death certificate was fake. (The lengths some people will go to in order to wriggle out of a cancellation policy)
When she told Airbnb it was fake, they still backed the refund.
Did Airbnb return their service fee i wonder.
This reminds me of a paper an academic wrote several years back, published in the “Annals of Improbable Research,” observing that university students’ grandmothers were more likely to die right before a final exam, and (humorously) expressing grave concern over the serious health threat that uni exams posed to the nation’s grandmothers.
"It has long been theorized that the week prior to an exam is an extremely dangerous time for the relatives of college students. Ever since I began my teaching career, I heard vague comments, incomplete references and unfinished remarks, all alluding to the “Dead Grandmother Problem.”…
The basic problem can be stated very simply: A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year. While this idea has long been a matter of conjecture or merely a part of the folklore of college teaching, I can now confirm that the phenomenon is real. For over twenty years I have collected data on this supposed relationship, and have not only confirmed what most faculty had suspected, but also found some additional aspects of this process that are of potential importance to the future of the country. The results presented in this report provide a chilling picture and should waken the profession and the general public to a serious health and sociological problem before it is too late."
The author provides a chart showing the phenomenon, and particularly the fact that if a student is already failing, one of their relatives is up to 50 times more likely to die than if they aren’t failing. They conclude:
Only one conclusion can be drawn from these data. Family members literally worry themselves to death over the outcome of their relatives’ performance on each exam.
The whole thing is really funny. For some reason I’m not able to post the link here, but if you google “Improbable Research Grandmother Effect” you’ll find it.
I don’t experience these problems either - but I’m in Cape Town, and maybe the long-haul nature of the destination means people are pretty committed to their trips before they book me.
I also think there’s something about being an on-site host. My guests tend be incredibly well-behaved, as I’m in the adjacent property (party wall); they know I’ll be waving them off when they go :).
I always thought that was a reason not to turn up for work!
