FYI: Superhost coupons not transferrable

Just a friendly tip to keep in mind when making your highly tentative COVID-era travel plans:

I used my Superhost $100 coupon as part of a trip I planned in early November that was designed to be 100% refunded if canceled. When I ended up canceling it I got everything back from the airline (miles & money), the hotel in Sedona (and the free night credit from Hotels.com), the car rental company, and the AirBnB rental in Tucson… except the $100 Superhost coupon.

I guess it’s my fault for not reading the fine print, but I would have never used that coupon if I didn’t think I’d get the money back if/when I canceled the reservation. AirBnB is always looking out for us Superhosts :man_facepalming:

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Yep always been that way in the six year I’ve hosted. It’s really unfair.

FYI: You mean the coupons are not refundable but for anyone reading they are also not transferrable. The only way you could really transfer them is to find a host willing to do a 3rd party booking for the person you wanted to transfer it to.

Here’s another thing you might try if you get in this situation again. Since you can’t get the money back, arrange to let the host keep it but at least tell them what is going on and maybe they would credit you for a future stay or something. So in this case maybe you could have changed the reservation to a one night stay instead of canceling. I had a situation this fall where I thought I’d have to cancel a stay I booked with a coupon but instead the host worked with me so I could keep the reservation. I told her I wasn’t going to cancel because I wouldn’t get my money back anyway and I guess she took mercy on me.

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Same happened to me with my last trip but I did know it was going to happen. When Kesky was asking for host to write about what they wanted from Airbnb I included that superhost coupons should be refunded if the trip is cancelled.

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I had the same thing happen when I canceled a trip for the holidays. I looked it differently though. I was glad that $100 of what we were losing by canceling was free-money. I waited too long to cancel so we lost all of a $350 reservation but at least we only really lost $250 of our real money.

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I did the same thing in 2020. Foolish me. I booked a 1 night stay $100 with my friend/neighbor/competition because my condo was booked. Family emergency so I couldn’t go. Oh well.

I realized 30 minutes ago that I had made the same error when I was trying to cancel a reservation (with a flexible cancellation policy). Lesson learned. I called Air to tell the CS that I had recently accepted the option of issuing full refund to 2 groups that had cancelled under the non-refundable cancellation condition (one group had chosen the 10% discount whereas the other had reserved under the strict cancellation policy) and that Air should have an option of fully refunding superhosts of their coupons.