New strict cancellation policy update

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

The Airbnb team heard feedback from you and the host community about the upcoming change to our Strict cancellation policy. In order to address your concerns, we’re delaying the change until May 1, 2018.

Before the change goes into effect, we’ll share more about what we’re doing to address your concerns, particularly around protecting your listing details from being shared with guests who cancel. But for now, we’d like to clear up some confusion and help you better understand the new policy and how it will benefit the whole community:

Here’s how the new grace period policy will work—and some of the protections we have in place for hosts:

Limited-time refund within 48 hours after booking when the check-in date is at least 14 days away

Guests must cancel within 48 hours after booking and can only cancel if their check-in date is 14+ days away. This means that no matter how far out your guests book, they only have 48 hours from the time they book to cancel for free. We want to make sure that if guests change their mind, you have enough time to get another booking.

Three refunds per year per guest

To prevent abuse, guests are limited to three fully refunded cancellations a year.

No full refunds for overlapping bookings

To make sure guests are not making multiple bookings and then cancelling, any booking made by a guest when they already have an active booking for those dates will not be covered under our grace period policy.

Your hosting success is top of mind for us, and tests of this policy—including among hosts with strict cancellation policies in place—strongly suggest the change will result in increased bookings and successful stays. With this grace period, not only do guests book with more confidence, but they also have the ability to resolve booking mistakes without requiring your valuable time and intervention.

We value your feedback, and will follow up shortly with more insight into how your ideas are shaping this policy.

Thanks,

Lizzie

----------Update April 24th, 2018----------

Hello everyone,

Just to let you know there is now an update regarding protecting your listing details, as mentioned above. 

Here is the link to take a look: An update on the Strict Cancellation Policy

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Ann10]

@Martin140@David2088@Fiona-And-Mark0@Barbara979 and others- Outside links to comment on regarding new management

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-prime-executive-greg-greeley-leaves-company-164103043.html

[Jamie231]

This is not a good policy for hosts who wanted a strict cancellation policy.  The feedback you have recieved on this looks to be overwhelmingly of the same opinion.  Please let us decide if we want strict or strict with the grace period.

[Armando89]

Great!

[Julee4]

We only have 24 hours to respond, and sometimes that response is not answered. I live in a city that is known for people coming to use drugs and visit prostitutes, so I do not want ANYONE who has no references and is not willing to confirm at least they will not smoke ANYTHING in my house. 

I believe that 24 hours grace period if fine, but I'm not understanding about 14 days, what if they book within 14 days?

[Amy587]

Somehow I missed this policy change announcement a few weeks ago.  I think it was very clear before what guests were getting into when they booked with me - my strict cancellation policy was stated right up front.  I did once make an exception for a nonprofit group that had a good reason to need to cancel, so I am flexible -- but in general, I think I have a right to set the terms for booking my own home.   I am a superhost with no complaints.  I just had a long (for me) booking cancel, almost 48 hours after booking, and was shocked to find that airbnb had issued a full refund.  Airbnb, please note:  this is NOT OK with me.  If you want hosts to stick around on your site, you can't screw them over by changing the terms you've allowed them to set.

[Robin310]

In my area, there are certain weeks of the year (3 of them) that book a year or two or more in advance.  If I accept a booking for the most popular week, when the competition is HOT for properties (and so is the price - highest of any time) Iplan around that payment which is $3K+.  Given this grace period scenario, a guest could book my place 2 years in advance and cancel 6 months before check in and I will NOT be able to get another booking because of this.  Anyone who is booking, will book at least a year in advance.  

This "grace period" is terrible.  

I would suggest that HOSTS be able to designate certain dates when STRICT MEANS STRICT.  Perhaps limit it to say 2 or 3 weeks of the year, but this change is terrible.

[Ann10]

Robin-VRBO

[Alexandra390]

Hi Lizzie,

There seems to be a disconnect in the policies. Moderate is crazy that they can cancel free of charge up to 5 days away. Yet strict, correct me if I'm wrong, says that they lose 50% even if they cancel 3 months out from check in and after the 48 hour grace period??? What if someone books 12 months out and 3 months later falls pregnant? 50% charge if they cancel 9 months out knowing they will be giving birth? sounds harsh.

Why isnt there a policy which has a free cancellation up to 21 days ( allowing time to get another booking ) but 100% charge after that? 

[Martha216]

Here's my reply to him:

Good morning Prateek,
I appreciate your quick response on behalf of your CEO, to whom I addressed my email yesterday. 
I'm baffled by your statement, "There are few hosts who are happy and few who aren’t. " because it appears that you are misinformed. If you were to truly analyze the feedback from Hosts, you would see that
1. It's not just a 'few" and to say there are a few that are happy and a few that are not is statistically inaccurate. I suggest you try counting the "happy" vs the "unhappy" and you'll see that there is an overwhelmingly large number of Hosts who are very upset.

2. You say it's very difficult to cater to every input but in this matter, it seems that Airbnb is catering to only a small fraction of Hosts who support this change.

Please let me know what the plan will be if this change does NOT result in an increase in bookings for me as a Host? In other words, what type of evaluation will you all be doing to find out if this is working well for us Hosts?

Thank you,
Martha

[Ange2]

A new problem is arising. I have seen a few posts with guests incensed by the fact that "Free Cancellation within 48 hours",  as advertised front and center on Strict policies and in bold,  is not in fact always FREE, the actual limitations (like 14 days out for example) being buried deep under clicks and scroll down pages.

____________________________________________________

- YESTERDAY on my listing the following wording appeared, which is somewhat transparent, despite the bolded FREE

"Strict – free cancellation within 48 hours of booking.

Cancel within 48 hours of booking and 14 days before check-in to get a full refund. Cancel up to 7 days before check in and get a 50% refund (minus service fees). Cancel within 7 days of your trip and the reservation is non-refundable."

_____________________________

- TODAY transparency has become opaque to be extremely misleading to the point of being completely disingenuous.

"Strict policy – Free cancellation within 48 hours

Cancel up to 7 days before check-in and get a 50% refund, minus Airbnb service fee."

________________________________________________________________________________________

For the guest to see what 'FREE' actually means they have to perform a series of interactions.

1.CLICK to  see more

2. CLICK to see details and yet at the top it says in a large font that there is Free Cancellation within 48hours, not a peep about 14 days.

3. SCROLL down the page to the "example"  - only then is the 14 days is mentioned.

That's a lot of hiding of the terms, it requires a deep drilling down to find out what the actual terms of the policy are. Many guests do not even read the description, so it's unrealistic to expect them to click, click, scroll down to get at the terms of the policy, or maybe that is the point for whatever Airb goals are with this - which is obviously nothing to do with supporting or helping hosts.

And why would a guest even bother when it has been stated in bold and large font a few times that there is "Free Cancellation within 48 hours', there is no IF, UNLESS or BUT to alert them to the fact that limitations apply so all is not as it seems and that FREE might not actually mean 'FREE'.

[Martha216]

@Ange2  Thanks for the update on this!  Guests will likely miss these terms given that it takes several clicks to get to the details.  I wonder who will be on the recieving end of their frustration....us Hosts?

And so the story continues to unfold......

[Ange2]

@Martha216  From the posts I have seen from guests who have been blindsided, they have referred to hosts as greedy, opportunists, in it for a quick buck, indulging in illegal practice and on and on. Not a good sign especially as the wording has now become even more disingenuous.

[Christian347]

Let's face it, only in AirBnB-land would this ever be classed as strict. 

The site never seems happy unless you're giving away nights for nothing and have such a lax poicy that people can treat it like a flexible hotel booking. Even the so-called strict policy is a lot more flexible than most...

[Nora36]

Well, it looks our input was brushed aside. I'm looking at homeaway.com now as an alternative to Airbnb. I changed my settings in Airbnb so that no one can see wifi info but there doesn't seem to be any other safety measure set in place to prevent people from seeing our actual address as soon as they "book" while they look around. 

It's also a problem that they've changed wording and display on the Cancellation policy for guests, and that it's misleading as @Ange0 mentions. Now hosts look like jerks when we - quite clearly - have no bearing on Airbnb's decisions and policy changes. I'll be adding "Be sure to review cancellation policy details prior to booking" to my listing description just to be sure.

Also - where does our official notification of policy changes go? As a host, I have received nothing in my email nor in the mail from Airbnb. My first knowledge of Strict policy changes was an alert from the Community thread, here.

[Liz-And-Robert0]

I don't feel Airbnb has heard the many, many concerns expressed regarding this new cancellation policy, nor have they done anything to explain why this has been implemented.  I have blocked much of my calander for the upcoming year and am currently looking for a new hosting platform that is more responsive to hosts.  Unfortuante after 5 years of a mutually successful relationship with Airbnb.