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They only hold the control you give them. Promote your listing yourself, start your own website, join the local chamber of commerce, etc.
I’m not sure what that means. I would never think posting on the internet is a representative sample of all Airbnb hosts.
I’ll believe it when I see it. But as I said, this is way bigger than Airbnb and if your business is dependent on tourism you are going to be hurting for awhile. If you are solely dependent on tourism you may have to go into another line of business.
I agree with you 100%, this should have already been an ongoing part of every business owners strategy. It’s been discussed here for years.
I know you aren’t going to agree but without guests you have no business.
If this were completely turned around and Airbnb was taking all the non refundable bookings and keeping the money it would be terrible publicity and would probably cripple Airbnb faster than what they are doing.
It’s on the front page of CNN now. Hosts are upset.
Think about it this way - Airbnb just pissed off every host in the WORLD with their policy change. Hosts are on their platform almost EVERY day. A customer with a booking in April within the cancellation window has much less influence on the business overall. Yet Airbnb handed it to them over the core constituency of their business. It’s blind and very shortsighted in my opinion.
All Airbnb hosts should raise their rates on Airbnb slightly over all its competitor sites. That way traffic will move away from Airbnb over time. It’s the best way to stick it back to the company for their practices. Hopefully there will be class action lawsuits over this whole thing as well.
I do wish you well and even though this is primarily an Airbnb host forum, it’s not a requirement. Please do stick around and keep us appraised of your results.
I’m not pissed off either, although I think Airbnb should have come up with a better plan than refunding all guests 100% and leaving hosts out to dry. They could have let hosts keep 20-25%, which would have been somewhat of a compromise.
I have great sympathy for those hosts who have relied on Airbnb in their principle residence, or on their own home property, to pay the mortgage and the bills and feed their families, but I’ve also been seeing posts on host forums from hosts with a dozen properties which they purchased for the sole purpose of Airbnbing, who are outraged that they may not be able to pay the mortage on all of them. OMG, maybe they’ll be forced to sell a couple of them- big first-worlder problem for which my heart does not bleed.
This is a disaster for people who depend on tourism and renting on Airbnb as a business.
I’m happy to refund if there is a valid reason but to just allow anyone to cancel is a bad thing because people can now just cancel and rebook at a lower price since all the prices are going down everywhere.
I will be using Airbnb less and less in favour of the other platforms and price more aggressively on other platforms from now on.
“We are now offering Guests full refunds and Hosts no charge cancellations for reservations booked on or before March 14th with a check in date of April 14th or earlier. Please note this policy will not cover any new bookings.”
That doesn’t mean they will stick with it but it does mean people who are cancelling and rebooking are risking a loss. And Airbnb will have a record of this rebooking behavior.
Risking a loss how? All the hotels rooms are free except for resort fees where I am. People can just book hotels for next to nothing. There’s no risk. I doubt Airbnb is going to chase down guests to see what they have cancelled and rebooked.
I thought you were referring to rebook at Airbnbs.
In any case, I don’t think most people are jerks like that. But some are and some Airbnb hosts will suffer just like everyone everywhere is suffering something.
Not all areas are affected. I just think giving guests a free option to cancel is unacceptable and a more balanced and fair resolution should have been made. Guests aren’t going to go bankrupt because they lose money on their vacation. Hosts will go bankrupt when they cannot pay mortgage payments. Anyway I will just price lower on other platforms from now on.
In fact when guests book through Airbnb I will contact them by phone and offer them a discount if they cancel and go an book through VRBO or Booking!
Well I have had two guests cancel. One before the notice and they were covered by my moderate cancellation policy at the time. I still got no income. One today under the new EC policy and again no income because again the booking was made before I implemented strict. But I can’t blame AirBnB for this if they had cancelled without EC I still would have been out of income. I can only blame Covid19
I have a couple more that fall under this policy (up till 14 April) and I hope they don’t cancel since they were local for family events (wedding and 50th birthday party). There are no travel restrictions in my area and my apartment is self contained.
Perhaps more fairly would have been to offer the full refunds for EC where the guests cannot travel because of regulations or cancelled flights. The guest has no control over that. But for situations where there are no restrictions and flights are available, as you say, offer something for the hosts - 25% could be reasonable.
I can cope with no income for 2-3 months but I would not want it to be much longer than that.
Airbnb just posted a notice claiming that they are fully refunding guests their service fees, yet hosts are reporting their guests telling them that they weren’t refunded- that they were issued a travel credit instead. Seems that Airbnb and the current US admin are taking the same courses in lying and obfuscation.
Well stated. This is going to effect everyone. It could have been cut off at the knees at multiple times and governments didn’t do what it takes to make it happen.
