@Scott1156
Could you please enlighten us of your business model as i would be interested to how you feel "y'all" should be running our business.
As for me, my husband has reached the age were it is unsafe for him to carry on in the career he has been doing for 44 years. for which a huge part of that was working away with the Army (where may i add his wage back the was lower than welfare payments" and in Civilian life.
We had a choice to apply for welfare or look for another way to support ourselves. Our choice was, to move into a small flat on our 1400 square metre block and rent out our family home to gain somewhat of an income. This was not done to make a quick buck, it was done to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Because of this we chose a strict cancellation policy. (good business sense for our situation as for as i'm concerned)
Now when a person looks at our property it shows our cancellation policy, we even put all our house rules on and recommend they take out travel/holiday insurance for the unforeseen.
On booking they acknowledge that they agree to these terms.
Fast Forward to a unforeseen incident, now its no ones fault.
The guest has budgeted for this holiday, the host has supplied the accommodation.
So a cancellation is needed.
If the guests looses 100% of the accommodation money they are still able to live and pay bills, If the host looses 100% of the accommodation money they are unable to pay bills etc. Now with the strict policy the only time a guest will lose 100% is if the cancellation is within 7 days of the stay otherwise its 50%. Taking into account it is not the guest or hosts fault I would of thought a 50/50 should have been a fair and reasonable solution.
The hosts that are in uproar is to the fact that we all know that there is a extenuating circumstance clause but to completely change our policies that have been agreed upon between guest and host (and bear in mind the choices we had were set by Airbnb) with no correspondence prior to the full refund being offered was very thoughtless to say the least.
In our situation because of this action we now have no income, whereas if it had adopted our cancellation property we could have struggled through for a few months.
If Airbnb had a good business model for the type of service it is offering it should be encouraging guests to take out a Travel insurance and maybe even have links or a policy for them to access on their site.