LOL. I did tell him in a text as I departed about seeing the roaches.
I’m going back to Austin in TX in Feb and am going to direct book with the private room host. Her cats keep the roaches at bay.
Wish my cat did. She’s great at catching rodents and lizards but doesn’t seem interested in roaches.
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Yes, they were small and yes it was the one near Shoal Creek though it’s been pretty dry there. The important thing is that they were dead. The ones I’ve seen in my house this year were 2x the size and still alive.
OK, back to the topic at hand (although I love the digressions).
Does anyone see a bit of a conflict of interest here? AirBnB keeps the money they penalize the host, and they are the ones that decide if the host gets penalized and how much. The host loses the revenue from the cancelled booking no matter what. (I do understand the host has to cancel first.)
I thought this was the answer:
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Agreed. It is more than I thought. Seems like hosts should at least get a penalty free cancelation within a given time frame.
No, not every deterrent lines the pocket of the intermediary. And AirBnb gets over 10% of every booking already, so they get a lot of money which should cover their work to help rehouse the guest.
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It hasn’t been made clear by Airbnb, but perhaps the intention is to use that penalty charge to rehouse the guest, with it being enough to cover what is available when it may be much more expensive than their original booking, especially if it’s a last minute cancellation.
Airbnb used to be good about rehousing guests, so I’ve heard, but that seems to have gone by the wayside judging from the guest posts I read these days where they are left having to scramble to find themselves alternative housing with no help from Airbnb.
I’m sure Airbnb isn’t blind to bad PR from guests and I would not be surprised if this new policy is more about a revenue source for rehousing guests than about trying to rout out bad hosts.
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Bad hosts definitely impact all hosts. But that is mostly due to what I have pointed out is Airbnb’s elephant in the room which they don’t acknowledge- their terrible customer service.
If a guest is an experienced Airbnb user and has a bad experience, they generally chalk it up to bad luck and it won’t prevent them from booking with other hosts. If it’s a newer user, they say “I’ll never use Airbnb again!”
But even if a guest is seriously inconvenienced by a host cancellation or other issue, if CS addressed these things in a responsible and consistent manner, guests would feel they were dealt with appropriately and would only hold the bad host responsible, not the entire platform, which encompasses all hosts.
A guest who finds themselves on the street at 9pm in a strange city, unable to access the listing, or make contact with the host, is going to have a whole different attitude about the experience if after phoning Airbnb, they never get the promised “I’ll phone you back in 10 minutes” call, and have to scramble to make their own alternative arrangements, than if Airbnb calls them back in 10 minutes with a new accommodation address and offers to pay for their transportation there.
There are all sorts of possible glitches, delays, and aggravations when it comes to travel. If an airline cancels or overbooks a flight, it’s how the airline deals with the affected customers that determines whether passengers will ever book with that airline again. If they are given sincere apologies, hotel and meal vouchers and appropriate new flights, their customers are much more likely to take it in stride than if they are left standing around in the airport for hours or overnight, having to purchase expensive airport food and water, trying to find out what happened to their lost luggage.
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I hope Airbnb enforces this policy strictly and the number of hosts go down. That will be good for business.
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I hope they enforce it fairly. In other words, not fine hosts who truly have a circumstance beyond their control that CS deems “avoidable”. I hope the number of bad hosts goes down, that will be good for business. Just wanting other hosts to be shut down to lessen competition isn’t reasonable in a free market society. Of course it’s easier if you don’t have a lot of competition, but if you do, you just have the challenge plenty of businesses do, to do something to stand out from the crowd.
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I don’t think they help guests in any meaningful way based on an inquiry I had received… this guest must have messaged lots of guests for a discount. My guess is the guest probably had to cancel his trip.
I’m not sure why you are reading a suspicion that the guest cancelled into that message. It seems pretty straightforward to me. (Of course I have no way of knowing if they are fabricating) They were left in the lurch by a host or Airbnb cancellation 2 weeks before check-in and now places in your area are much higher in price than when they booked. Of course that doesn’t mean hosts need to offer them a discount, but I wouldn’t fault them for asking.
But you are right, Airbnb no longer seems to be helping out guests who find themselves in difficult situations through no fault of their own. But what I have read is that years ago, Airbnb used to work to find guests alternate accommodation. And with this new policy, it sounds like they are looking to start doing that again.
this guest is actually trying to get a new host to offer a discount, because another host cancelled on them? wow. ballsy.
“we will pay in full right away” shows they don’t understand how the whole process works.
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I think he was not very savvy. He thought giving his sob story would help him get a discount. I did the opposite: raised prices, and then someone else booked at the higher rate a couple of days later.
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Something to bear in mind:
I have been in the situation where I blocked out a period on the Airbnb calendar for a non-Airbnb reservation, the calendar became unblocked and a guest managed to book through Airbnb. I contacted Airbnb who contacted their guest on my behalf and the booking was cancelled with no penalty.
This shows me two things:
- You cannot rely on the Airbnb calendar
- Airbnb are aware there is a problem
Someone here suggested to increase your prices to a really high amount to avoid getting booked even if the blocked dates become unblocked. So I do that
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Hey PitonView: Your comment is the exact reason I started with OwnerRez about 5 years ago. I am very happy with the instant calendar sync and there is so much more it can do that I had not even considered.
I PMed you the Google Doc I created about my OwnerRez experience. I have written this because the question arises near daily & having a solid set up like this has allowed me to be so much more professional than before; the automated communications are such a great addition for my business model. Everyone does things differently, maybe OR is right for you, maybe not, hopefully my list allows you to evaluate that a bit more accurately.
PS: I am not trying to hype or market OwnerRez. There is a lot to know about the CM/PM options, things I did not even know to ask about when I started. I am paying it forward so others can skip learning the hard way, by sharing some info.
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I had an old friend die the day before a guest was due. I didn’t cancel because he was on a plane from Europe. He made life for both myself and Air a living hell. I ended up getting sick and the police were called because he refused to leave.
Lesson to self: me first.
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I attended the Zoom meeting where this policy was discussed. The speakers assured us repeatedly that real emergencies are exempt from the new policy.
What’s not exempt is “preventable” or I might say casual, or convenience, cancellations by hosts.
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