Hi @Bethany132
hope you are well.
Even though I completely sympathise with your situation I would like to share some light from a host’s prospective:
When the WHO announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic, Airbnb allowed for all guests who have a reservation booked before that date and starting mid March to around April 30th or so, to cancel penalty free, over the last weeks they have extended this, in London alone this has covered all dates from mid March to July 3rd.
Airbnb did not tell hosts of this and it blindsided a lot of people.
A fellow host had a guest cancel their several month stay, one month into their stay they left and Airbnb still refunded them the full reservation stay including the month they have already stayed. With situations like this, you could obviously understand why hosts are angry by this.
Now from a logical stance , I can understand this decision made by Airbnb
-if this is not an extenuating circumstance, I don’t know what is and we did sign up to an EC clause when agreeing to use this platform to market our spaces. It was written ambiguously at best but still that is neither here nor there.
-this would prevent people from travelling; due to travel restrictions, the need to quarantine and social distance.
However, guests could potentially claim these costs against their travel insurance, whereas hosts are unable to do so and bare the whole financial burden associated to this decision. This created a lot of hardships as some people are completely dependent on hosting, etc. Some hosts, similarly to some guests have lost their livelihoods, employments, health care benefits etc.
As you mention previously everyone has lost absolutely something from this pandemic and I am so sorry you are facing hardships but Airbnb has truly chosen their decisions as to cater for their guests.
Note: I was lucky and able to allow for complete refunds out of my cancellation policy but this is not a luxury many have and yes, financially it did hurt but we’ll make do.
The advice given above is sound and I truly can’t add more to it but as the Chinese proverb goes, every story has three side; yours, mine and the truth.
Good luck and please stay safe!
Yadira 🙂