Hi @David7664. It was a mess and Airbnb was no help at all. My mistake was assuming that prior examples of people transferring their listings meant that it would be possible for me to do the same.
I stopped taking bookings when I decided I was going to sell. But my property sold much quicker than anticipated (we were in contract the same day it was listed) so I had three bookings post-closing. Since there was no clear Airbnb policy on the issue, I tried to do what I saw others had done in the past. The buyer created a duplicate Airbnb listing (same pictures, same content - btw, its crazy how easy it is to do that) and all the guests agreed that they wanted to transfer their booking to the buyer's listing. I then spent ages on the phone asking Airbnb to make the change. Airbnb refused.
Airbnb told me to cancel or co-host instead. I did not want to cancel because I still had several other Airbnb listings (the penalties aren't too bad for ONE cancellation but are increasingly severe for more than one). So I opted to co-host with the buyer. But, because the bookings were made before the buyer was my co-host, Airbnb would not allow me to designate that the payments be disbursed to the buyer. So I had to transfer the funds to the buyer, via bank transfer, each time I received my payout from Airbnb.
The situation was not ideal. I was still in the loop on all the messages and details for each stay, even thought the property was no longer mine. The guests were thoroughly confused (and understandably nervous about the situation). And the buyer would have preferred to receive the money directly from Airbnb rather than trust me to send it each time. By the end of the third booking, we were relieved to finally be done with the awkward arrangement. For example, the buyer told the guests in a welcome email that they would have access to a new grill during their stay. For some reason, the new grill was delayed. So when the guests arrived, they contacted both me and the buyer asking where was the new grill and what were they supposed to do with all this meat they had purchased. I was not close by and had not been aware that the buyer made the promise of a new grill, so I was flummoxed as to how to help. Long story short, the buyer ended up making a run to walmart and personally delivering a new grill to the guests.
I suppose if we had more bookings (any successful STR will have bookings more than a year out), then we could have drafted a detailed written contract and business plan for how to handle the bookings. But that obviously adds a great deal of complexity to the process of trying to sell the property. I've seen others say that a property owner should just stop take bookings if they intend to sell - but that is risky also. It means a property owner would be giving up income that supports the property while they try to sell it and it means allowing a valuable STR business to die off during the process.
It was frustrating because Airbnb refused to do something they had done before and that all three parties said they wanted - the seller, the buyer, and all the guests said they just wanted the booking transferred to another listing. Fortunately, the buyer was gracious. The guests were gracious. Only Airbnb was completely unhelpful and unflexible.