Airbnb has AGAIN extended the date to July 30 for guests to cancel and blame it on Covid-19. Airbnb policy says the guests needs to provide PROOF that they couldn’t travel, but Airbnb will not share that proof with us hosts … they sight “not legal to share”. What a joke, there are no travel restrictions in the area where my house is located, so guests can’t legitimately use this as an excuse, but I’m sure they are… and Airbnb is accepting it.
US Government still has travel restrictions for government employees. Your guests might not be able to travel to your location based on their employer’s restrictions. Also, if they booked after March 13th, they can’t cancel.
I let everyone that wanted to cancel their stay do so. People are scared and they are spending a lot of money to travel. It’s better to be flexible and let people that want to book your place do so
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Wow. Time to direct market and get bookings that overlap your current Air bookings. Then call Air and use Corona EC on the Guest with no penalty. Then you have bookings that you control.
I am so frick’n sick of Air and their 100% Guest Centric BS. Our new stay is not yet open, and we would rather not use a platform that continues with such capricious policies.
Sorry for the rant - every time they pull this crap it is beyond the pale.
It is past time that a lot of us chip in $100 each and get a new platform with minimal fees and FAIR practices for all - guests and hosts.
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I’ve thought the same thing! Airbnb could get major backlash from guests if owners cancelled on guests and blamed it on Covid-19. Ive thought of that, but I just couldn’t do that to my guests (even though they’d do it to me without thinking twice).
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I understand your point, but I feel there should be some percentage the hosts with “strict” cancellation policies should receive. Maybe the guest should give up 10-15%, but Airbnb categorically decided to error on the side of the guest 100%
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I thought from the beginning of this Covid cancellation mess that guests should have been charged 10-15%. If Airbnb had explained to guests that this covers the time the hosts spend on each booking, before the guest arrives, in messaging with the guests, etc, and that hosts have lost all their bookings for months, I think most guests would have been okay with that- if not 20%, then 10%. I’m sure there still would have been a lot a hosts screaming about that, too, but at least it would have seemed a bit more equitable.
To expect hosts to spend time communicating with guests, keeping their calendars and their listings up-to-date, checking daily for messages, all for no compensation whatsoever is pretty rude. Most companies have “shipping and handling fees” applied to things that are returned. I had to return a piece of fabric the other day to the distributor I’d bought it from. They charged 10% for returns.
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I’m not sure why this is a surprise, but I also expect the number of remaining reservations to few, since reservations had to be booked before March 14, and lets face it, not many people were booking in February or early March due to the spread of COVID-19. You might as well expect them to extend it indefinitely for those reservations. The bad thing is that hosts had only a small window of opportunity to cancel all of those bookings without penalty. It was pitched as a way to reduce the host’s risk of COVID and as a way to be able to switch to long-term rentals. However, it also would allow all reserved dates to be freed up so that they could be replaced with bookings that aren’t subject to the lenient cancellation policy, and that benefit was NOT advertised. As hosts, we are told that cancelling a guest’s reservation is the worst thing to do, but in that instance, when Airbnb told us it was penalty-free, it was probably in most host’s best interest to just wipe their calendars clean. Guests that really wanted to keep their reservations could just re-book them, but they would do so under the new policy.
Obviously, we can’t be certain that the process is fair and Airbnb is doing their due diligence at verifying claims, and let’s face it, that has always been the case with EC claims, but they definitely should not share proof with hosts.
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One would think but too many people were and are acting as if nothing is going on so we will continue to have to deal with it in our imperfect ways. It really is unprecedented in our lifetimes… new rules in effect.
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I hear where you are coming from, but I do not think that one can legally charge a customer for service not rendered.
But … they handled this (and continue to do so) in pretty much the worst way possible.
IMO, they should have done something like "bookings made after March 15 - Host Cancellation policies will be honored unless their government shuts down stays in their area.
FYI - 10% for returns? Grrrr … how about the money you spent to ship it back? That is already out of your pocket. Make waves and they should waive that bs. Hey that is a double wave …
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Unfortunately in Mexico it’s very hard to return things. They have a weird business sense. Or, more accurately, bad business sense. I’ve been doing business with that company for at least 6 years and have spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars with them. Which I pointed out. Yet they wouldn’t make an exception for a piece of fabric that cost the equivalent of about $40.
I ended up not returning it, because between the 10% and the shipping I’d have had to pay for, it wasn’t worth returning. I’ll use it for something.
If you buy something here in a store, like Office Depot, or any place, really, they only have a 30 day store guarantee, even if the item has a one or two year guarantee. After that, they say you have to send it back to the factory. So you’d be lucky if you ever saw it again, or received a replacement.
The only store here that’s good about returns is Costco.
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I was shocked to learn today of this change from July 15 to July 30, causing me to lose a reservation that was to start July 16. I called Airbnb to complain, and the very nice person told me that a committee made the decision today. No notice was given to hosts, not was there apparently any effort to get our opinion. I suggested that instead of allowing people to cancel due to extenuating circumstances due to COVID 19 that they instead require guests to rebook to a later date. I also wrote Airbnb with this suggestion. If you agreed, please speak out in a nice way to Airbnb. Maybe if they hear from enough of us they may change their policy. I am worried that come July 30, they will again extend the policy to Aug. 15. This virus unfortunately is not going to go away any time soon.
I don’t expect they are going to change. The only thing I expect to remain consistent about AirBnB’s terms is that they will change them at any time they feel it benefits AirBnB.
But it benefits Airbnb financially to require rebookings, not cancellations. It’s a win-win-win for everyone. The guest gets to take their vacation eventually, Airbnb gets its fees, and the host gets their rental income.
And overnight, has the marketing reach of AirBnB? 
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It’s better to let people rebook then to cancel. That should be Airbnb’s policy. Then it is fair to hosts and to guest.
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The guest who can’t get their money back in their pocket probably doesn’t see it that way, though, and AirBnB has decided to take the course they believe will being them more future guests. There is no reason to believe they would change this so long as host supply continues to exceed guest demand (and it does). I am just being realistic.
Edited to add, if I were to just place a $1 wager for fun, my money would be on Air forcing all hosts to adopt flexible policies… well they already basically did that, huh?
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How is it fair to guests? There are plenty of guests who wanted to travel somewhere for a special event that was cancelled. They have no reason to travel to that place again, and wouldn’t be interested in rebooking. And there are plenty of guests who’ve lost their jobs during this pandemic and wouldn’t be able to afford to take the trip anytime in the near future, even if they wanted to.
Rebooking should certainly be an option, but to say that only allowing rebooking is fair to guests is something many of them would heartily argue.
Reach out to guests and take the booking direct. Heck with air! Hopefully they did not remove the contact info - we were usually good about copying that off system, just in case.
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I plan on reaching out to all my guests that are scheduled to visit in July and give them an option of backing out now with full refund (I am strict cancellation)
At this point I will refund all but whatever service fees I would get charged by AirBnB.
I don’t want to wait to hear from my July guests at the last minute wanting to cancel. This way it will give me a chance to fill the spots. I am getting requests for July and August often.
Too much stress in everyone’s lives now. Not fair to hold people to travel plans they made before the shit hit the fan.
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This extension should not apply to any bookings made after March 14. If Airbnb refunds a guest 100% for bookings made after that date, that is totally contrary to the information on their site and this should be quoted to them.
“Reservations for stays and Airbnb Experiences made after March 14, 2020 will not be covered under our extenuating circumstances policy, except where the guest or host is currently sick with COVID-19. COVID-19 related circumstances not covered include: transportation disruptions and cancellations; travel advisories and restrictions; health advisories and quarantines; changes to applicable law; and other government mandates—like evacuation orders, border closures, prohibitions on short-term rentals, and shelter-in-place requirements. The host’s cancellation policy will apply as usual.”