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We just had a 3 night reservation request for Feb. 22nd through Feb. 26th. We accepted it within 10 minutes at 1:29 pm today. 5 minutes after we accepted, the guest messaged us that she wants to cancel and could we reverse the reservation. We have a firm cancellation policy so I’m not sure if they still can cancel within 48 hours. We want them to be able to cancel the reservation, penalty free, but we aren’t quite sure how to go about it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Below is the text of their messages:
Hi Host, I just requested a stay at your property but now he is not able to stay. please confirm that he can not stay. Thank you, Guest
hi Host, it was only a few minutes after it was confirmed that i realized my husband cannot make it. could you please consider reversing this reservation, i would appreciate. I am also an airbnb host and would completely consider a request this quick. Thank you, Guest
Message them and tell them to message ABB to cancel as they made a mistake. Then Message ABB yourself and say you will provide a penalty-free cancelation.
Message them and tell them to message ABB to cancel as they made a mistake. You will then get an email from air asking if you want to provide 100%… then push the button.
While I would also refund a cancelllation made 5 minutes after booking, what seems odd to me is that it sounds like a third party reservation she made for her husband. If she is actually a host, as she claims, she should know that 3rd party reservations violate Airbnb policy. She should also know that a host cannot “reverse” a reservation.
I suspect she’s a bullsh*tter- why would she not verify whether her husband could “make it” before she booked?
Hmm, it has got bit of a smell about it. Maybe have a look at her profile, look at her host profile and check out her accommodation. If it all rings true then continue to be kind and as helpful as you can.
I haven’t been in such a situation before, maybe you can help me understand:
If such a guest would immediately call ABB support in order to cancel a reservation made in error just minutes before and me contacting ABB support as well to let them know that “I will provide a penalty-free cancellation”, does that mean that ABB will still keep their commission and I would pay out of pocket the difference to make the guest whole?
The last time I had a guest cancel in this same situation, when I clicked the ‘refund in full’ option it was simply as though the booking had not been placed at all - I didn’t pay any penalty or fees to airbnb and I am fairly sure they didn’t charge the guest their fee either. On the other hand, if you merely refund in part, all the fees still stand.
I don’t know if AirBnB would refund their service fee, but I’m always clear that I will only give their “rent” back.
I say “I’ll call AirBnB and tell them to give you your rent back. If they keep their service fee, you’ll have to call them about getting that back.”
Since this hasn’t happened yet to us I just want to be prepared. I’m not aware how my back-end reservation details look like if any refund options would show up. It would utterly confuse me if I had to choose from multiple options, already assuming that ABB would make it as obscure as possible for hosts not to understand how it works exactly.
The only problems I have ever had with refunds occur when the guest doesn’t actually cancel but uses the request money option instead. That is a total pain and using that function means you still pay the host fee and they still pay the guest fee. You have to decline the request for payment, as you can’t deal with the cancellation if that is still open as that takes precedence… afterwards you can then sort the cancellation refund as the cancellation notification gives you the option to leave as is, refund a bit more or refund in full.
After 8 back and forth messages with the guest, 2 messages with CS and a 35 minute call with CS everything was finally sorted out.
First message from CS was one explaining the refund situation to me and also saying that as the host I was in the best position to make a decision. I wrote back that we wanted the guest to receive a penalty free refund as long as there were no adverse consequences to us. Then I received a phone call from CS. They explained that I could give the guest a courtesy full refund by contacting CS and letting them process it. I asked her that since I was now speaking with her couldn’t I request the courtesy refund from her while we were on the phone? She told me yes I could. Before I made the request for the refund I decided to cover our ass and I asked her to email me in which stated that: 1 - No penalty for us, 2 - will not affect our listing placement and 3 - will not affect our “favored guest” or Superhost status. They sent me the email confirming all of the above while I was still on the phone with them. After I received it I requested the “Full Courtesy Refund” and they processed it, the guest received a full refund, and I could get on with my life after spending a total of one hour dealing with the issue. I’m sure that was more time than the guest spent. But I guess that “all’s well that ends well”
I checked on Airbnb, and the guest is a Superhost with 51 five-star reviews, so I guess that she was on the up and up when she requested the cancellation for her husband. Does Airbnb prohibit members from making a booking for their spouse?
Once again, thanks to everyone who responded. Every response was appreciated very much.
Some Airbnb accounts are joint spouse accounts that will say “XX and YY”, in which case it wouldn’t be a third party booking. But if the account only has one name, it would be.
Ugh, something new for me. I was wondering about that before as some guests show two people in their profile picture but use one name (maybe not always?!).
So far we used to have reservations of one spouse who added the Airbnb profile of their other spouse.
Once, when I inquired about third party bookings with Airbnb support, I was told that normally the person who books is supposed to add the other travelling party’s Airbnb profiles to the reservation. Since this has rarely happened and couples usually book under a single person’s profile, I’m wondering to what extent this may put us in a difficult situation if an accompanying guest causes damage and who are not “officially” added to the reservation with their individual Airbnb profile.
Not trying to split hairs - just wondering how you are all dealing with such situations?
We also had plenty of company bookings which were not immediately identifiable just by looking at the booker’s profile and reviews (all reviews left were addressing the guest by their profile name but in the end other people actually stayed). Business accounts don’t appear to have any additional badges or notes that inform hosts that it is a company account. How did you encounter such cases, in case you had any?
I often have couples in my rentals and I don’t think I’d be able to maintain my occupancy if I required, or even just asked for, the name of the second guest.
Quite often, when greeting guests, I’ll introduce myself to the number two guest, my hand held out for shaking purposes, and yet they still don’t give me their name.
This of course, is because the couple isn’t a couple in normal life, but at least one of them is part of another couple.
I couldn’t care less whether they are a couple, a throuple or whatever people feel they identify as these days. They stay under my roof, where I and my family reside, plus the legal requirements in our country dictate to collect every guest’s personal details including their government issued ID.
Obviously, all guests are informed about this upfront in the listing description. So, when they show up, they better be talking to me or else they can book some anonymous, self-check-in place.
My concern was if it ever happened to a host before that a guest who was not on the reservation caused damage and AirCover refused to step up to the plate?
Yep, I once hosted a business owner who booked for his workers. They were kind but extremely messy, broke several things in my house because they couldn’t read the house rules (by not having access to the Airbnb App), and generally struggled to manage themselves.
My house rules clearly state that only the guests listed in the booking are allowed on the premises, with a significant fine for violations. So, I politely asked the booker, via Airbnb chat, to update the reservation to reflect the actual guests. He was too lazy to do it properly, so instead, he just put himself as the booker, changed the guest count, and sent me the workers’ real names.
The mess they left behind was spectacular. I took a deep breath, documented everything with photos and videos, and upon closer inspection, discovered broken tools, damaged pictures, and other issues.
I followed Airbnb’s process to request reimbursement for the extra mess and damages. The business owner refused to pay, but Airbnb eventually reimbursed me for the additional cleaning and the broken tool. However, it wasn’t easy: I had to provide documentation of local cleaning rates and an invoice for the tool replacement. I spent a lot of time documenting everything and dealing with CS. But the payment was quick after approval.
So, the workers here were not under reservation (I consider being under reservation only the people added with a profile in the booking).
That’s unfortunate. We regularly have business owners booking our places for their workers. Since manual labor is frowned upon by most local adolescents and young aults (just trying to make it big as influencers ) - many workers we welcome come from Eastern Europe often in mixed combinations (3 workers, 3 languages).
Also for this reason, we demand all personal details, not only for security purposes (besides the legal requirement) but also to be able to welcome them in their native language (even if it’s online translated) and to ensure they are fully aware of the house rules and to help them properly if they have any questions.
It’s a losing battle to expect the company owner - who’s probably hanging out on his yacht - to provide us with all (required & necessary) details of the people who stay with us.
Many times for such reservations, communication was inexistent, slow and unreliable. Reservations were made on Fridays at 5pm, with workers arriving on Sunday afternoon but nobody responded to our messages anymore since their office was closed. I do mention this in our reviews but with hundreds of reviews they have in their “personal” profile they get drowned by self-check-in listings who flat our leave 5 star reviews just because they left the accommodations without burning them to the ground. Often, we deal with extended cleaning times - luckily without greater damage.
Most annoyingly, as the workers don’t have to fear any consequences regarding reviews, they often behave disrespectfully by leaving a big mess or spitting around in our garden as they do on the construction sites or putting the trash next to the trash can instead of inside the trashcan
Haha, you already made me add “Europe” on my profile… Now I’ll try to modify it to “Eastern Europe”, which is the complete truth . The story I shared (and other experiences) already convinced me to never accept bookings in the name of someone else, for any reason. You cannot make responsible a person who doesn’t exist for the platform. I had so many “I didn’t smoke, it was my occasional partner and I allow this kind of visitors to do anything in order to pay less” or “I didn’t broke the mirror, it was the child of my ex-wife who visited me”. In this case, my effort to punish the owner was mainly rewarding because I pressed him to educate his employees and to make separate accounts for them. He never booked again since then, he left or he made individual accounts.
Business owners or other third parties that want to book for their workers or clients are supposed to have an Airbnb business account, not a regular account. (I think it’s called Airbnb For Work) You should see this designation on their profile.
I’ve never researched it, as I only host one guest at a time, so it’s never an issue for me, but that kind of account may have specific rules attached to it, like having to enter names of guests, and that the business account booker is responsible for any damages, rule-breaking, big mess, etc. It might also facilitate sending the listing info to all the guests, so they are aware of all the house rules, etc.
I reached out to Airbnb to get more information about this, since not once did I see a profile of our guests that had any identification of their account being a “Airbnb for work” account.
Airbnb’s rep confirmed to me that there is no indicator, badge or any other information displayed to hosts that would confirm that these companies are using a “Airbnb for work” account (and some have been confirmed by Airbnb to be a business account).
Needless to say that I expressed my discontent about that as well as the suggestion for their “higher-ups” to consider implementing an identifying feature to make it easy for hosts to clearly identify such accounts.
Naturally, Airbnb has not done anything towards that - obviously the dev team has much more urgent things to fiddle around with besides making their platform more user friendly.
) - many workers we welcome come from Eastern Europe often in mixed combinations (3 workers, 3 languages).
. The story I shared (and other experiences) already convinced me to never accept bookings in the name of someone else, for any reason. You cannot make responsible a person who doesn’t exist for the platform. I had so many “I didn’t smoke, it was my occasional partner and I allow this kind of visitors to do anything in order to pay less” 
or “I didn’t broke the mirror, it was the child of my ex-wife who visited me”. In this case, my effort to punish the owner was mainly rewarding because I pressed him to educate his employees and to make separate accounts for them. He never booked again since then, he left or he made individual accounts.