cancelled reservation removed from calendar

[Nathan2421]

how long does it take for a cancelled reservation to come off my calendar? I cancelled a guest's reservation and it is still showing up hours later 

[Till-and-Jutta0]

Isn't a blocked calendar part of the penalty for canceling a reservation on host's side?

[Sarah977]

@Nathan2421  Oh dear. You can't just cancel confirmed reservations. There are penalties for that, one of which is that your calendar gets blocked so you can't rebook those dates. You will also be fined $50- $100, a notice appears on your review page saying you cancelled a reservation, which can make guests reluctant  to book with you, and it disqualifies you from getting or retaining Superhost status for a year. 

I realize it was a newbie mistake, but you really need to read all the info provided for hosts in the Help section of the main Airbnb site.

Why did you cancel?

[Nathan2421]

I had a guest who wanted to book two solid months, and the other guest had an intervening week. 

[Sarah977]

@Nathan2421  Can you be a little more detailed as to what happened? You had a guest who had booked a week, and then someone wanted to book for 2 months so you cancelled the first guest to get a longer booking? 

You can't do things like that. Not only do you get penalties from Airbnb, it's a terrible way to deal with guests.

And a 2 month booking is exactly what you don't want as a new host. After a month, your guest  becomes a tenant in most jurisdictions and falls under landlord/tenant laws. And if they prove to be objectionable you are stuck with them for 2 months, and if they stop paying the rent, and decide to squat, you'll have a hard time evicting them. Airbnb will do nothing about this. 

[Colleen253]

@Nathan2421 

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/990/host-penalties-for-cancelling-reservations

[Linda108]

@Nathan2421   Your action of disregarding a guest reservation in an effort to book a more lucrative booking is why Air BNB is so harsh with hosts about cancellations.  I see you have several reviews as a guest and no host reviews as yet.  As a guest I am pretty sure a cancellation by a  host would have been disruptive, to say the least, to your travels.  Now your first review will be a cancellation review that will likely affect future bookings.  

[Ben4128]

I had a business opportunity to lease my AirBnB during the winter for 6 months.  I only had one booking after January 2022 that would be affected.  I cancelled this booking and sent them an email explaining why I was doing so.  Before I signed the lease deal the company backed out, thus leaving me holding the bag.  Live and learn.  Now I reached back out to the customer to advise them the unit is available.  AirBnB has the dates of cancellation blocked out.  Is there a way to resolve this with AirBnB?  

[Ben4128]

ps  I've only been doing AirBnB since July and am still trying to read up on policies and procedures.  Should I have asked the customer to cancel instead of me doing so on my end?

[Sarah977]

@Ben4128  No, you should not have asked the guest to cancel.  If you don't want to host them, it is your responsibility to deal with. A guest cancellation is appropriate if the guest wants to cancel, not the host. 

No, you can't get the dates unblocked. As you said, live and learn. 

As Linda said, Airbnb imposes penalties on hosts for cancelling (unless the reason falls under the EC policy, or you have a valid reason for cancelling an IB booking), precisely to discourage hosts from cancelling guests just because they got offered a better deal. 

[Helen3]

The time to read up on Airbnb's policies and procedures is before your start hosting, rather than months after you have launched your listing 🙂 @Ben4128 

Try looking at the Airbnb Help website to familiarise yourself with the basics like cancellations around how Airbnb works.