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To be frank, this is something all hosts with bookings that can be cancelled under the pre 14th March condition should have been doing, especially during the period where hosts could cancel free of penalty.
If you don’t know what guests are going to do then make contact, get a feeling for what their thoughts are and if necessary, give them a nudge towards cancelling so you can free up your calendar for bookings now.
I contacted all of our upcoming guests a good few weeks ago, and of the international guests, all have said the only barrier will be flights. Now I know that, I’m happy enough to leave the bookings in the calendar. They’re all post August, so there’s a good chance that their flights will be reinstated and less chance of short notice flight cancellation.
I honestly don’t know why folks keep bitching about Airbnb becoming guest centric, their outlook shifted to being guest centric a long long time before this current crisis. You don’t like, then there are other OTA’s out there.
Of the few bookings we have left in our calendar, only one is Airbnb, the rest are BDC and we know exactly where we stand with them and, equally importantly, so do the guests.
And yet, this is what Air has done with many guests. Some guests were not given actual refunds, they were only given travel credits for the amount of their reservations. I now have 3 guests who have told me that they were only given credits (even though I had clearly approved the cancellation and refund). So, ultimately, Air is forcing them to re-book, but just not with any particular host (e.g. the one they cancelled on).
This is the part that digs at me. Hosts are losing out and guests are losing out. Air is keeping plenty of the money. One of my guests who were given a credit told me that it’s “useless” because they “were never booking Airbnb again”. They probably aren’t the only ones and that hurts hosts also.
The reasons a guest may have a Covid 19 reason to cancel:
Active case of Covid 19
Quarantine due to Covid 19 exposure
Local area travel restrictions
Your area may be travel restricted To government employees.
Booked to stay for an event that is now cancelled.
If I understand correctly only reasons 1-4 would be covered.
Do you want people with reasons 1&2 in your home? I don’t. Please cancel & I will gladly refund
If there are government restrictions, it is not the guest fault. It is not your fault. It is part of these extraordinary times. Be supportive of your fellow man.
Reason 5 falls under your cancellation policy
Cancellations and periods of time we were/are closed due to government regs or maybe we close for our own health-safety has affected us all financially—some severely.
Many of us are making tough decisions like moving to LTR, selling out, temporarily closing, etc.
Creating your own booking platform will probably give you greater protection if you require travel insurance. You may wish to price travel insurance—it is EXPENSIVE. You may be moving your rental to be cost prohibitive to your potential guests so fewer bookings.
For now, I’m staying on Airbnb, looking at other platforms, and hoping if I treat people the way I want to be treated it will eventually be repaid
Airbnb will not listen to any suggestions from owners … they don’t care.
you can bet on Airbnb continuing to extend the cancellation date through at least August. They’ll extend it every 2 weeks, so we die a slow death.
allowing guests to rebook doesn’t really work for me … we’d never be able to agree on the rebooked dates … IMHO a 10-15% cancellation fee would be a better option.
Even though my July and August bookings have been reserved for 6-7 months, I expect to lose most of them. The upside is that I’ve been able to rebook the cancelled reservations, but for less nights (due to my cleaning service now refusing to do back-to-back cleans, which reduce my available rental days).
Airbnb at least has been clear that bookings after March 14 fall under “normal” cancellation rules (can’t use Coronavirus for the cancellation excuse). I don’t see them changing that.
I don’t think they would. @muddy You can’t ask someone to pay for a service you cannot provide.
Guests are struggling as much as hosts and the money could represent a holiday or trip they have been saving a long time to afford. Guests like hosts could have lost their jobs/income.
Would you be happy to pay airlines, hotels, event operators, restaurants, entertainment and sports venues for services they couldn’t provide because they had put ‘work’ into the booking. After all how long does a host spend on managing a booking particularly where you use IB before the booking takes place - for me it’s about 15-20 mins.
If they are active Covid19 or required quarantine they can get medical note & qualify under extenuating circumstances policy, which is available for medical reasons already.
This is my peak season. I would rather them cancel than stay in my condo.
However In the fall, when I have no bookings, if they want a 30 day booking while they isolate, I’m happy to accommodate.
Hi Lindeman6872
It’s a shame how they are acting! Here in Spain, where I have my apartment, the state of alarm will end on June 22nd and Airbnb continues extending the force majeure period. Besides they give to the guests a voucher, saving in this way their own profits, and we hosts will remain with nothing. I’m really really sick of this situation. I understand that some people don’t want to travel anymore, but it cannot be a host problem, since all the activities are available, if a guest want to cancell he has to pay the cancellation fee.
Helsi, you are missing some of the point here. Just because the host can’t supply the service to a certain guest (due to that guest’s circumstances) doesn’t mean they couldn’t provide it to another. In my case the “service” I provided was reserving major weeks on my calendar to guests who cancelled after I had held those dates for them for 6 months, while I could have rented it to guests who WERE able to travel and stay. Bottom line, if I view it from the guest’s side, I would expect to pay a 10-15% cancellation fee if I had tied up someone’s calendar for 6 months.
I am not missing the point. I know how Airbnb works - I have been operating STRs for five years
When I say as hosts we can’t provide the service - that is because in many countries and regions (yours sounds like an exception) it was actually made illegal to operate an STR for anyone but key workers and other exceptions such as visitors attending a funeral, so we literally couldn’t provide a service.
You may expect to pay up to 15% for a vacation you aren’t able to use, but from seeing discussions on various STR forums from guests you are clearly in a tiny minority. They wanted a full refund.
Even where we can, the simple fact is that in most countries guests were not able to travel to the location booked.
I know as hosts Airbnb allowed us to cancel penalty free under their Covid EC policy, so hopefully you were able to cancel promptly and rebook.
That’s exactly what I said. There’s no way I think guests should lose 50% of what they paid if they can’t come. But some service was provided, in that the host likely spent time messaging with the guest, answering their questions, etc. I don’t think 10% would have been too much to ask. Sure, some guests might be upset about having to pay anything, but I read several guest posts on the CC which said they would have been fine with a nominal cancellation fee like that.
Not everyone uses IB. I probably spend about 30-45 minutes messaging with most guests when they book or request to book.
I agree that the travel voucher option was a bad one, both for hosts and a lot of guests. Typical Airbnb, though- hang on to as much money as you can for as long as you can. However, my understanding is that the travel voucher option is being offered to guests who have no documentation to prove that they are unable to travel due to COVID. And if they can’t provide documentation, then they may just be using COVID as an excuse.
Hi Denise!
I totally agree with you. It happen the same thing to me and when I claimed they told me to be patient and cooperative! Here in Spain from June 22nd the state of alarm will end and I don’t really understand why they continue extending the force majeure period. Moreover they get a voucher to the guests so to save their profits and we, the hosts, remain with nothing…
I was thinking to create a group (maybe on whatsapp) to collect our ideas and claims and try to force them to listen to us and change their policy, such as booking. com already done.
This has been an ongoing conversation between me and my business partner. The tough part is the cost. Someone needs to get paid! We own a custom software development company that has built software platforms manufacturing companies, and a start-up that is now the nation’s largest outsource paralegal work flow platform and.
There are others on this platform with mad software and workflow skills and I’m sure we could get it done. I’ve actually been speaking with my business partner about this as Air’s capriciousness (love that word) is out of control. It would have to start bare-bones, just like Air did, in order to get traction. There are other platforms out there already, but without the name recognition or the traction that Air has. The digital marketing would have to be aggressive.
Preach it!! I think guests would have been fine paying the 25% to cancel us and we should have had the option to cancel penalty-free as hosts and still get 25%.
Actually, you can. We have a client whose T&C state that the 50% deposit is non-refundable unless it meets 3 criteria, all of which are reasonable given his business. As long as it’s clearly stated when booked or purchased, and it is within the laws of the land, as it were, it’s legal.
Welll…Depends upon how it’s rolled out. Say you have 100,000 hosts who have all chipped in $100 (and yes, the basic platform would cost about $250,000 - $1,000,000 to set up to be as user-friendly and powerful as Air).
With the right message and planning for launch and teases pre-launch, it could get a big push. That and a favorable article in the New York Times and International Press…
It’s a lot of work. Lots. But it’s doable with the right planning.
If I take something from someone (I.e. reserving their valued weeks and defaulting on my expressed promise to stay), then I would expect to pay a penalty.
I’ll accept that in March and April many hosts might have been unable to rent due to government restrictions, but that isn’t the case in most areas now, but Airbnb continues to side in favor of guests (and themselves) without any compensation to hosts … and that is wrong. Our calendars and available nights have “value” that we are giving up without compensation, and in many cases because the guest is given a “pass” by Airbnb whether it is valid (a true consequence of COVID-19) or not or without proof of inability to travel.
I canceled on air and refilled the dates via VRBO. I won’t give air any dates that I am unwilling to lose the money. They only get things like Tuesday Wednesday that would otherwise sit empty. Certainly not a house over any key dates … ie all summer is off the table for them from me.
It need not be so expensive to launch. Some of the core team could get compensation in equity rather than money. If it was started with an initial market of USA, and others phased in later, it should be do-able for $50 - 100K.
I’ve been doing custom software development projects for over 25 years (dang!) and as my own business for 18. I don’t take equity, it always costs me money. There are ways to monetize it and set it up so that the folks who were the initial crowdfund investors could get options if it were to go public or to have shares in earnings over and above a threshold. Besides, $100 isn’t that much money. But pure base code is no less than 100k.
But $100,000 would be base and it would roll out world-wide right away. Why not?
We own a custom software development company that has built software platforms manufacturing companies, and a start-up that is now the nation’s largest outsource paralegal work flow platform and.