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Airbnb vs. My internet sleuthing, the neighbors, the guest, and five thousand stories on host forums about guests getting kicked off platform for no apparent reason - none of whom had any contradictory information?
Easy call. (on the initial red flag)
I really can’t imagine why anyone who went through all he did to get booked would then say, “got laid off. not coming. don’t expect a refund.” and it be a lie. There is no point to this lie. He never asked for anything. He just wanted to let me know he wasn’t coming. Why disbelieve him? (Rhetorical question. I absolutely believe him.)
“Dear guest, I’m sorry to hear about your circumstances and I hope that the situation will improve for you soon. When things pick up, please feel free to contact me regarding a future stay with us.”
That is what I would probably say to the him, then I’d get moving trying to fill the dates and then forget about it.
Yes, harsh. Yet I’m lenient. I have a flexible cancellation policy. But I’m not a charity either. I wouldn’t be able to tell if his story about being laid off is true.
By writing the message above, I’m saying (I hope I’m saying) is that I am not totally and completely discounting the idea of a discounted stay in the future but I’m certainly not saying anything about it now, or a refund. That is, if I thought that I genuinely would host them in the future.
After donating all of August’s bookings to the El Paso shooting victims fund and being gone all of Feb I’m about tapped out for the past 12 months. But once I reopen I will continue to donate 10% of bookings to charity. This year’s charity will the the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. Looking on the bright side, my taxes will be lower this year.
That’s what I was trying to say- unless someone is a newbie, innocent host who doesn’t know how to spot the red flags of a guest lie or omission of the truth, only the host who has been dealing with the guest can really have a sense of whether the guest is trying to scam or not. Many hosts who’ve had guests be less-than forthcoming or blatantly lie may be overly suspicious of guests being scammers or cruising for a refund.
So what I did was give a 50% refund in the case in the OP. I called in and explained the situation and had it cancelled by admin so it was pentalty free to me and they could issue the refund out of what I had not yet collected, overriding my settings at my request.
Fast forward to today, I am not so sympathetic. I woke up this morning to an inquiry. It was a random person inquiring if I any “special circumstances” related to COVID and cancellations. I replied, “As detailed on the listing, we have a strict cancellation policy so I strongly recommend you know that your travel dates are certain before booking.”
A few hours later a guest who is booked for 4 weeks from now wrote inquiring what I would do, hypothetically, if the governor issues shut down orders.
I say to my screen: Oh, I’m so sure that inquiry from this morning totally wasn’t your buddy feeling me out for a reply. I bet you’re checking to see if I say the same thing?
I replied, in summary: no refund at this point. If I can rebook the dates I would refund you the amount I’m able to collect less any fees, so if you want to gamble on this cancel quick so I have the best chance of rebooking. I said it nicer but that was the gist of it.
This was booked a month ago. The pandemic was a known quantity.
He was eligible for a 50% refund up til about 5 days ago.
This is not a trip that requires air travel. The trip there can be made on 1 tank of gas from where the guest lives.
None of the prior shutdowns effected our business nor any businesses that the guest would require to use in order to get there and stay there (e.g. gas station to fuel up to go home) so I have no reason to believe that any hypothetical orders upcoming would require us to shut down.
Our population density is 8 persons per square mile. They aren’t going to infect anyone or get infected while staying. They don’t have to ever see other people in order get here or to stay.
It’s not a destination where people come to see things that are going to be closed down. The river, hiking trails, state parks, etc. are still available. Even if the state parks close, there is plenty of wide open space to enjoy. A “'shutdown” is hardly noticed. So you have to use our kitchen and drink wine from the liquor store instead of going to a restaurant and visiting the winery. shrug
Repeating #1 - They knew damn well that COVID-19 was a thing when they booked.
Not going to be serving as travel insurance. It’s not like our detination (or any destination right now) is so overbooked that reserving a week on someone’s calendar for 2 months in advance is necessary. Wait til the last minute to book or take your chances is my attitude.
Now watch them cancel, dispute the charges with the credit card companay and get refunded anyway. I’m cynically waiting …
At least if they are “forced” to come they can’t give you a bad review.
People really need to start making their plans last minute. As I posted in another thread, Austin City Limits Fest just canceled and the bar exams in multiple states are looking to be changed (that’s not the kind of thing that affects many hosts but it’s reflective of what’s going on). I knew when I blocked off my Airbnb for my friend who came here to study that things might change so I can’t be mad now.
You said you’ve been getting a lot of inquiries. Since he would have gotten 50% a few days ago anyway would the prudent approach be to say "These are tough times, I understand if something has come up. I’ll waive my policy and give you 50% same as if you had cancelled sooner if you cancel by (today, tommorrow). Then you have plenty of time to rebook and high confidence that you will.
He explicitly said he wasn’t planning on cancelling and retorted “like I said, we aren’t planning on cancelling”. It was a purely hypothetical question: If we were ordered to shelter in place, what would you do? They acknowledged that they were aware of my policy and wanted to see if I would make exceptions. In this case I will not. The reservation has been blocked off for what will be almost 2 full months by the date of arrival. And because of the way it falls and the turnover blocks before and after, I lose 2 weekends, but no weekend rate dates are booked. It’s a Sunday - Thursday. Very economical to the guest, high “overhead” to me.
So it sounds like some of the calculation is “askhole” vs “nice family with kids who have local connections.” And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Part of the calculation is that I am highly unlikely to rebook the same dates. We almost never book those days of the week. So he will not likely get a refund under that hypothetical and he probably is smart enough to know this.
The very best I could hope for is to book the weekends around the week. I have the pricing such that in this scenario it prices out about the same as two Friday/Saturday bookings or actually a little more considering I only have to pay for 1 turnover.
But I typically book 3 to 4 day weekends. I love-hate minimum stay bookings. I said I would assess whether to take them at all in year 2 and it was about 50/50 so I kept the 2-day min. That said, we are hardly getting them anymore and they may be off the table for year 3. Depends on what autumn looks like.
But sure, big family visiting parents/grandparents who happen to live in a really small house therefore are going to always need a place to stay if they visit definitely is a prospective guest I want to court. 100%
People really need to start making their plans last minute.
Is why the answer to
is a toally different answer in 2020 than it was last year. My answer is set your rates and be done. Set them about 15-20% higher than the same dates last year and leave them.
Sorry to read this and or that I missed that is was just a short booking mid week. My initial thought was cut him loose because business is booming. But of course that was before the current situation.
I have a dog client who told two weeks ago they want to go rent an Airbnb in San Diego and board their two big dogs with me. With dogs it’s a whole different situation so I can say “no issues if you need to cancel.” But I won’t be surprised if I’m losing $$ and some airhost in SD gets screwed.
It’s the 5 cheapest days of the week, but that is a long booking for us. Typically they are 3-4 days so far this season. Last year 4 days was the longest and that was the rare exception. Usually it’s booked Thurs-Sun or some portion of those days by people who live < 5 hours away.
Yeah Sunday - Thursday so i have to block Saturday nigh prior, and Thursday night after but then I got nervous about new guest + long stay so I blocked 2 nights after, so I probably wasn’t going to book that weekend for Saturday-Sunday. I dropped that subsequent Sunday rate really low to encourage it but it’s rare people stay Sunday nights when Monday isn’t a holiday.
Sunday is always priced $10 to $20 cheaper than M-Th anyway for that reason. Sometimes the guest ends up noticing how little it costs to add Sunday compared to the total cost of the stay and I get that “we discussed it and is it possible to extend” message that makes me do the happy dance.
I’m not suggesting that you do anything differently but I will suggest that the hypothetical questions are valid as TX is in a much different situation than it was even 5 days ago.
Florida, Arizona, Texas (FAT) are leading the country in COVID19 cases, so I think your guest is asking the questions any reasonable person would be asking.
I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t foresee Governors Abbot or Ducey implementing any significant restrictions. I believe TX Lt Governor has already gone on record suggesting that old people are willing to sacrifice themselves, to keep the economy open, for their grandchildren. We can only hope he leads by example.
(on the initial red flag)
Yeah Sunday - Thursday so i have to block Saturday nigh prior, and Thursday night after but then I got nervous about new guest + long stay so I blocked 2 nights after, so I probably wasn’t going to book that weekend for Saturday-Sunday. I dropped that subsequent Sunday rate really low to encourage it but it’s rare people stay Sunday nights when Monday isn’t a holiday.