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I did this too. At some point airbnb did change their strict policy to refund 50 percent farther out than it used to be (probably years ago but I didn’t notice.)
When I first reopened I had moderate but then guests cancelled and I got nothing while the guests help onto my STR and given the market I wasn’t rebooking like pre-pandemic.
I’m down to one reservation in February and I’m heavily discounted. I did do as suggested and opened up my bookings to one night with a day before and after but I closed my bookings after March to see what is going to happen. I like the minimum 2 days but am hoping I can pick up a few new bookings this winter.
I barely covered the increased costs to my insurance policy for the fall bookings so if this continues I will break even. On the plus side, I live on the first floor of the STR and the utilities are not separate so I’ll be able to take a nice deduction from the heating, electricity, water and vendors who snow plow and remove my leaves.
Starting to get a few last minute cancellations for guests arriving from the US (to Costa Rica), largely due to guests actually contracting Covid.
We have a strict cancellation policy in place but not sure if we should be offering a date change as a good will gesture on top of this? Naturally when guests make travel
plans during a global pandemic there is an element of risk involved, we can’t really stay afloat if we fully refund all guests unable to travel due to illness, isn’t that what their travel insurance polcies are for? Curious to know what other hosts are doing in scenarios like this and the language they’re using when communicating with guests… peace, plants & pura vida…
Best I understand, travel insurance isn’t covering covid. Best case is to get “cancel for any reason” policy, but those are more expensive. I looked at a policy that cost $200 for $2000 of coverage and decided against it.
We haven’t had this level of travel during a pandemic before no one seems quite to know how to handle it: not Airbnb, hosts or guests. And it’s a catch 22 because if guests really realized the risk they were taking and that all the responsibility and costs would be on them, they wouldn’t book any travel and we’d all be back to square one.
As for the question, I don’t have a vacation rental but I was getting a high number of people booking, then canceling within a day or two so I changed my policy to moderate from flexible. If anyone cancels under that policy I will tell them I only refund if I rebook their date.
I have “flexible” and since COVID, the one time someone cancelled I stuck to my policy and got the money. I would NEVER allow a reschedule because they could then cancel and get refunded.
For the first time EVER I have not a single reservation of any length at either of my entire house AirBnBs. The calendar for both houses is empty to infinity and beyond.
Granted this is the slow season here typically. I’m in West Virginia, not in a tourist area or in the mountains. Our usual guests are either here to work a temporary assignment, or here to visit family.
But I’ve got nothing. Not on AirBnB, not on a direct booking. I’m thinking of going back to listing on Craigslist and also trying Facebook.
Back in March 2020 I tried to get a longer-term rental (I don’t have a full kitchen) but every person I interviewed lied to me. I told them I was going to check their references. The thing that worries me the most is that my state has very strict evictions rules and with the ban on evictions during covid I was too scared.
I re-opened in September and made enough to cover the 200 percent increase in STR insurance but I too am re-thinking closing again. I have two booking left and even opened up my place to 1 night stays. It’s so frustrating.
OTOH I can understand why a guest would feel that you should cancel because you are the one that is sick.
You should be able to get a penalty free cancelation through Airbnb. I’m assuming this wasn’t IB? You get 3 penalty free cancels with IB.
Edit: or maybe not. Since they changed extenuating circumstances on illness for guests, they’ve also changed it for hosts. That seems fair but if we don’t want sick guests traveling, neither should we want hosts who are sick hosting if they feel they shouldn’t.
Yes, technically this should be a host cancellation because the host can’t or won’t fulfill the booking. Also there are a lot of guest posts I’ve read where the host told the guest they would fully refund them if they cancel, only to renege on that afterwards and totally ghost the guest. So I can understand that guests might be wary.
No one said it’s malicious. But it’s your responsibility. Same as a guest who loses fees when they cancel. Their problem, their penalty. Your problem, your penalty.
No one thinks it’s a “malicious cancelling”, nor that you shouldn’t cancel if you are sick- that’s a responsible thing to do.
But asking the guest to cancel isn’t right- you telling her you can’t host her, requiring her to look for another suitable place, is a hassle for her, and not her responsibility in this case. And depending on whether she is still within the full refund period, she will lose all the Airbnb fees she paid.
How would you feel if a guest who got sick and needed to cancel insisted that you cancel from your end?
I had to cancel a while back, because the current guest wanted to stay for two extra months because of construction delays.
I had one booking to cancel, about six weeks out. I canceled online, figuring I’d take whatever penalty they handed me. The warnings said $100 fine, loss of sh, and blocked calendar for the affected days. I think the reason I chose was “home already occupied” or something like that.
At the end of the process the penalties were automatically waived，except the calendar block.
The past two years have been interesting, to put it mildly. But 2021 overall was a good year. We put in a cleaning fee for the first time ever, splitting the cost for a person to come in and clean (we cover half of the cost of cleaning the cabin). And moved to blocking two before/two days after the rental. Still stayed fully booked on weekends throughout the year, with a few booking for a full week. Usually by this time, we have bookings into March. Now, there are a total of 4 bookings into February total for our two cabins. The third cabin is on it’s second year of full time rental to a local schoolteacher. I don’t know what normal is, but since 2020, the new normal is just go with the flow. Since 2017 we’ve managed to stay booked every weekend; we’ll see if that lasts into next year.
