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We have a mountain cabin near Lake Lure, NC. We went through the hurricane with one felled tree that damaged a stairway (rarely used by guests) and a few feet of fascia and gutter on the porch overhang.
Power is out and anticipated to be back on within two weeks. While cabin property is in good shape, two of the major attractions in the area, Lake Lure and Chimney Rock were decimated by flooding. At this time, the convenient grocery store (15 minutes away) is not accessible by a direct route… the nearest grocery store is now 25 minutes away.
We have multiple guest reservationsover the next month, one within the 2 week power outage.
We are keeping them informed of the status… the advice we need is on refunds… our leaning is on giving full refunds if requested, even for the guests who took the “no refund discount” option…Advice?
Also, had anyone had experience with how FEMA and SBA deal with AirBnBs in the disaster relief programs?
I would certainly give full refunds in such a case. Golden rule and all. And those guests may very well book with you again in the future, which they certainly won’t do if you keep their money when there’s no power and major inconveniences, just because they had a non-refundable booking.
The purpose of non-refundable policies is that the guest can’t just change their mind about coming and expect any refund. It’s not designed in order for a host to refuse to refund if they can’t provide what they promised.
I suspect that if hosts refuse to refund under the circumstances (no power, local services and attractions non-functional or limited) and guests call Airbnb, they are going to get refunded anyway. Better that you look like the good guy before they have to phone Airbnb.
The Extentuating Circumstances refund policy says guests aren’t entitled to refunds for weather events that are common to the area at certain times of year, like booking in Miami during hurricane season, or booking in Minnesota in January. Guests bear the risk of a hurricane or a blizzard in those situations.
But no one could have anticipated flood conditions in NC unprecedented in 300 years.
My best friend and his husband and their grown children all live in Asheville. It seems like it’s going to be a real mess for a while. I’m sorry that everyone is going through it. Glad to hear you’re ok and that your property didn’t get destroyed.
I’d encourage the guests to cancel and provide full refunds. There are all the obvious reasons but I’d also consider a couple of other less obvious things.
One is that the area doesn’t need extra people who are just vacationing coming in to strain the already stretched resources there right now.
The other is that there is a need for temporary housing for both people from the area that have been displaced due to damage of their own homes as well as for people who are coming to help with the repairs and restoration efforts like linemen, etc. so it would be nice for your place to be available for those two groups instead.
Full refunds, no questions asked. Offer it up now. The last thing your area needs is guests and tourists taking up much-needed resources for locals.
Your area needs help. FEMA and insurance will pay you to rent out your cabin to a family in need of housing.
I already have LTR from last year’s Hurricane Idalia, otherwise I’d be taking in my neighbors. The home my “kids” had under escrow is totaled, so now they’re back to searching for another house and very thankful they hadn’t closed yet, otherwise they’d have been without insurance and without a home and without any money.
Offer your home up. There are local real estate agencies that will put you in touch with the County to get people (paying people, your neighbors) into your cabin. Get a lease.
Absolutely, but, unfortunately for guests, North Carolina is on Airbnb’s list of places where natural disasters (listed as tropical storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons) are to be expected from June - November (along with Florida and some other coastal states).
Obviously, the expectation for these weather events should be for coastal North Carolina and not Western North Carolina in the mountains but North Carolina being on this list of expected weather events is already causing a lot of issues. I’ve seen tons of posts by guests and responses by hosts on other forums discussing it and some hosts are insisting that guests who cancel trips to the Asheville area shouldn’t get refunds by referring to Airbnb’s chart of weather events.
Hopefully, Airbnb will facilitate the refunds anyway but surely it will depend on who answers the phone when the guest calls them. And I hope most hosts will do the right thing but I know many of them won’t.
Exactly. Here’s my favorite quote (so far) from a host fighting a refund, “It’s a cabin near the mountains. It’s supposed to be rustic anyway. Now it’s just more rustic.”
Reminds me of when Covid hit. Responsible hosts were of the mind “Of course you get a full refund. Not only are normal travel operations shut down or limited, and lockdowns in place in many areas, we don’t want to encourage people to travel and spread this virus around.”
Then there were the hosts totally outraged because Airbnb was issuing full refunds without question, demanding that guests should pay 50%, since a pandemic and Covid restrictions weren’t the host’s “fault”.
They refused to acknowledge that the guests had paid for a service they couldn’t and shouldn’t avail themselves of, whereas the hosts are running a business, in which there is no guaranteed income and they should have had some contingency plan for when unforeseen things happen, which are no one’s fault, but certainly not “fair” for the guests to shoulder any financial loss over.
I guess in CA we could say fire season is all refundable. If there were a fire event here, I certainly would wish my guests to leave> Bon Voyage and >here’s your full refund for unused days and inconvenience!
