CNBC: AirBNB hosts getting almost nothing from $250 million relief fund

Just popped up on CNBC:

Sounds like payments are mostly miniscule.

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I saw his post on one of the Airbnb host Facebook groups last week and there were almost 700 replies from hosts saying they hadn’t received anything. I’m glad he’s calling out Airbnb for promising things that make them look like a charitable company but then they don’t actually follow through on it. On the FB group, the reporter said “Please keep hitting me up if there is something you think I need to write about. Airbnb is my main focus of coverage for the foreseeable future.”

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This agrees with what @hostess1 posted here.

I suspect Airbnb is stalling payouts on purpose, either that or it’s yet another show of their software development incompetence.

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It is interesting to see the vast, vast majority of those complaining on discussion boards are mainly western hosts who often are property management companies or have more than one listing.

You don’t see many hosts from much poorer countries and communities who don’t have access to welfare benefits, tax breaks, food banks or mortgage breaks etc moaning.

From my point of view I wasn’t expecting anything back from Airbnb, so anything I do get will be a bonus.

In terms of the superhost fund, even though I qualify I am happy for funds to go to hosts in poorer countries who will literally be left with nothing.

The problem is it will be hard to police. I have seen hosts on Uk forums complain they have been left with no income to pay bills because the STR market has tanked.

Then they admit to not being eligible for benefits because their other half earns too much, or they have too much in savings.

So they aren’t being left with no money to pay bills they are just losing an income (admittedly a very nice income) stream.

People you are running a business, what happened to keeping liquidity in your business to cover the lean times? What happened to taking out loss of income insurance? What happened to not relying on an unstable source of income to pay your bills?

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Every booking I had has been cancelled until July. I have refunded in full every cancelled booking. My calendar is completely empty until then and I am waiting to see if the July event is cancelled as it has been directly booked 10 months ago. I am not eligible for anything from anywhere, however have a disaster fund put aside and I am fine until July. I have not complained about the lack of assistance from Airbnb, because I didn’t expect them to do anything. This is my business and they are just a booking channel and one of many that I use. Do you complain to the newspaper that ran your ads for the lack of bookings?

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This has been mentioned a number of times before. The reason for this $250 million is that Airbnb went against the agreed-upon refund policies of hosts and gave back the money without discussion agreement or approval of the hosts. Their apology was to pay $.25 on the dollar of the refund.

This has nothing to do with bootstrapping, or people asking Airbnb to do anything other than what they committed themselves to.

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Ditto, except for us our next next booking is for August, and I fully expect that to be cancelled at some point.

We have no idea when we will be allowed to reopen. Andalucian tourist minister hinting at July, government minister in Madrid indicating Autumn at earliest. If it’s the latter, we will have effectively lost almost one years revenue, and ironically it had been looking like a bumper years for us. We were almost at the point where we thought we might afford a new roof :unamused:

Depending on the criteria for the “Superhost Grants”, we may be eligible. I’ve no idea, but latterly Airbnb accounted for less than 40% of our guests so I suspect not. Strict cancellation policy simply doesn’t work in our market, so we’re due nada from that fund.

I think so too. In fact, it makes good business sense (solely for Airbnb) for them to do that right now. Hang on to the cash for as long as possible, get what interest they can on the wedge sitting in their bank.

Not so good for hosts waiting for their payout though.

JF

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I suspect that they are just overwhelmed and they aren’t sitting on it on purpose. They’ve cut staff, they never seemed uber-competent in the first place and now someone has has to administer a program they just developed. And I can guarantee that for every quarter they refund they are getting a call or email (like the story hostess1 posted) asking if they got this one, why not that one.

Apparently no one has been invited to apply for the 10 million SH fund either?

In like fashion, I still haven’t gotten the $1200 the US govt promised me. That’s another incompetent organization who has cut funding and staff from the Treasury Dept and now they have a garangtuan task to carry out.

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Let’s hope they didn’t miscalculate and just now realized that $250M is half of what they need to cover the cost. I did a back-of-the napkin estimate and came up with a value of $650M being 12.5% of all bookings over an average 79-day period. However, it doesn’t consider that only some fraction of all bookings were for listings with strict cancellation policies, or that there were a lot less bookings than average during that period simply because people had been holding off on making travel plans for at least 2 months leading up to the start of the period due to the uncertainty of COVID spread.

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I was looking at a bumper year for both the tours and the BnB, which would have bought me a new heat pump heating system. Now I’m putting together a disaster loan/grant application.

I can be open, but at a fly-in destination with a 14 day mandatory quarantine, I’m not getting any new bookings, and I had 2 cancellations today, one for May after I informed her about the quarantine (which applies for each community in Alaska separately), and one for July because her event was cancelled today.

I’m going to set my rooms to require a 3 day pause after stays and raise the room rates to reflect that.

How about - I am not getting any money (let alone “little”) but I am being financially penalised and also having my calendar blocked. Phone calls on this point are useless. And means lost income as I am receiving a lot of interest for LTR for “key” workers or medical people who need to isolate from elders etc etc. I am done with Air when this is over.

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I got a check for $10 after about $2000 cancellations. And the latest cancellation today for may which was booked using strict policy back in Feb. says “guest got full refund per your policy”. Well my policy doesn’t give full refund! What a scam and PR effort.
We have places in Ca and last summer they allowed same day cancellations with strict policy without telling me giving full refund because guests said air was smoky! There were fires 100 miles away and always are! I write in the conditions that if my place is affected by closures they get full refund but all a guest needs to say is they have someone with asthma and can cancel and not tell me. I still turn ac on and have cleaners lined up. Airbnb says “special circumstances”.

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I expect absolutely nothing from AirBnB. Zero, zip, nada. I suggest you all adapt the same expectation. The money AirBnB gets will go towards payroll.

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I agree- I can’t think of a more useless waste of time, brain cells and emotional energy than sitting around waiting and stressed and ranting and claiming to be dependent on receiving any of these funds.

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So far all April and May guest have had full repayments, what % of your cancellation fees have you had repaid and for how many stays?

Airbnb CEO broadcasted 25% of all cancellation fees will be given to all hosts as an apology for going ahead and giving full refunds to all guests (even though holiday insurance covers, if they took it out) without consulting hosts In the first place.

The focus of complaint is on the CEO of Airbnb appearing immeasurably benevolent to guests and being slow to repay or no evidence yet of paying at all the 25% cancellation fees.

@Siobhan_Farnsworth.

Not had any money from Airbnb for guest cancellations under my strict policy . Why do you want to know about refunds I have been given?

The $250 million fund is for refunds for those whose cancellation policies weren’t upheld.

Nothing, not even an email. So disappointed, since this is a major part of my income. The state isn’t doing any better either. We are screwed.

Well said, I am in the same situation as you and agree, Airbnb is booking channel no more no less. However if they are good enough to put funds together for people in need then good for them.

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I have now had a payment of USD211 for about 6 cancellations during the very short period that is applicable ending May15. However, anything beyond that, and I am pretty much booked out with a strict policy, the guest only receives 50% but if I offer a full refund then my calendar is blocked. And I get nothing of the 250m plus I cannot rebook for “key” personnel. So, grateful for the US$211, but we have to sort the rest. Sending this message to update my prior message.