Refunds for COVID-19

21

And for every host who removes their listing in disgust there will be two desperate for income who sign up looking to make money any way they can.

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22

I think they are in Total panic, AirBNB has never made any profit. They have been living on advanced payments of guests.

That 3.2Billion pile of money they have been bragging about all the time is dwindling, and they do not know if it will last until the end of the crisis. Their IPO is already gone for this year.

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23

A lot of “billionaires” are also billionaries in name only because their billions are based on stock holdings. It’s already been noticed that assets that are usually safe havens like gold and bonds are falling in price. Investors are desperate to raise cash.

Airbnb could continue or they could get bought out by one of the giants. Everyone complaining about Airbnb best be careful what they wish for.

24

Sharing because as of 1:00 am EST USA emailed this. It expands the guest’s ability to cancel as extenuating circumstances and let’s hosts cancel too globally.

New information is coming out about the coronavirus (COVID-19) every day, and we’ve talked with thousands of you who have been impacted personally or professionally. Many of us are hosts ourselves, and we understand this is a challenging time for members of our community.

On March 11th, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic, and our customer support specialists have been overwhelmed with calls from people with flight cancellations, travel restrictions, and questions about whether it’s safe to open their homes or travel abroad. The world is worried, and we know that many of you are too.

We’ve worked hard to find a balance between supporting your hosting business and protecting the well-being of our collective community. This is a difficult time, and millions aren’t able to make their trips or welcome their guests. For the rest, it’s clear that no one should feel obligated to host or travel if they don’t feel comfortable right now.

For that reason, our extenuating circumstances policy will now apply globally* to eligible reservations booked on or before March 14th, and with at least one night between March 14th and April 14th.

In simple terms, this means that for eligible reservations:

  • You can cancel reservations without worrying about cancellation charges or impact to your Superhost status
  • Guests have the option to cancel reservations for a full refund
  • Our service fees will be refunded in full for every cancellation

This was a difficult decision, but the declaration of a global pandemic made it clear. Many of you may have cancellations that affect your earnings, but this is the right thing to do to prioritize our community’s health—and we believe it’s the right decision for your hosting business in the long term. We also want to clarify that Airbnb won’t benefit from any reservations canceled under this policy. We’re in this together.

We want you to know that we’re working on more ways to support you, and we’re committed to helping your business recover as quickly as possible. We’ll continue to reach out with new ways we’re fulfilling that commitment, and you can check Airbnb.com/COVID19 for regular updates.

Lastly, lean on this community. We’ve seen the way you’ve supported one another in the last few weeks, and in isolating moments like these, we need those connections even more.

We hope you and your families are staying healthy, and we’ll check in later this week.

With gratitude,

Greg Greeley

President, Airbnb

25

What else can they do? We know they’re customer service has been understaffed for years. Their support burden just increased by an order of magnitude within a couple of weeks. They have to find a way to deal with it, so they’ll continue to update the policy and automate the enforcement of the policy.

Reminds me of this scene from Bruce Almighty. Too many support calls ends with “Yes to all”:

Post of the Day.

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26

Exactly. And that’s what I’ve been saying for at least a week but people still want to argue how unfair it is. Yet if they were to catch it I bet some of those same people would blame Airbnb for allowing guests to book their place and expect Airbnb to send them a check because they are too sick to host. People always want someone else to blame, even when it’s an “act of God,” (and they won’t blame God.)

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27

@KKC - :100:

Fair: that’s a word my mother, and now I, don’t allow in our conversations. There is no such thing and anyone that expects a situation to be “fair” to them, is essentially screwing someone else.

This entire situation sucks, no matter who you are. Hang in there everyone, and be well. Hug the ones you love and hang on tight.

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28

I had a guest cancel today 3 hours before check in. They had booked 10 days and just requested an extra 7 days the night before. They messaged me they had cancelled due to the snowed in highway. Airbnb gave them 100% refund (I have moderate cancellation policy)
This can’t be right

29

I’ve always considered “nice” to be a highly overrated virtue. I’ll take honest, responsible, hard-working, funny, intelligent or any one of many other virtues over “nice” anyday.

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30

Since they’re making decisions about what’s right for my business now, I have a whole list of other tasks I would like to delegate to them, starting with cleaning out the rain gutters…