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I have friends who live on 10 acres in IN and a power line runs at the back of the property. Their power went out for several days and they huddled with pets and blankets in front of the fireplace. They could have driven to a friend’s house with heat but with multiple pets they stuck it out. They didn’t have a generator at the time. They said it got down to 32F inside the house.
In any case just because there is a power outage at your listing and no one can leave town doesn’t mean they have to suffer at your listing, they should be free to cancel and find another listing with power or even alternate heat sources.
I agree. It was someone else who said that they should stay. I do have a fireplace and plenty of wood. For myself, I would probably stay with my pets and live in the one room but I really don’t feel that I need to invite my guests. I think Airbnb would allow me to cancel the guests without penalty. If however, we are in a major blizzard, I would allow them to stay in my own area with the fireplace until it was safe for them to leave.
We just had a situation like this in that a guest was supposed to arrive today but Diego knocked out our power Sunday night. Seeing as ABB would have refunded them under some extenuating circumstances clause or another, I have been keeping them updated as to the situation. They are currently in a hotel and I refunded this first night. Power came back 2 hours ago and, if the house is okay, they will be coming in tomorrow to finish out the week. Instead of losing all four nights, I only lost one. They are happy, I’m relieved my house is okay, and I am enjoying a good beer. Hopefully a win-win. At least the beer is a win …
If you are many tens of thousands off your property and power failures are distinct possibility then consider buying a backup power generator run off gasoline. In the US I think they only cost about $1000.
We just lost power at our AirBnB. Or at least I thought we did. I got a text from the power company saying that power was out at our address, but it actually wasn’t. But I had already bought some power failure nightlight things from Costco that you can use as a flashlight in a power outage, so I ran a couple of them over in case the power actually does go out tonight.
I was once staying in a hotel in Del Mar, CA, and the power went out for some unexplained reason. It was out for about 8 hours as I recall. Of course it wasn’t freezing there but it was pretty hot. The hotel did not offer to refund a dime as it was beyond their control. They did say we could move to a different hotel if we wanted without penalty.