First off, it’s not about “protecting the brand” or anything like that. It’s about allocating loss. Airbnb as a company chose a completely self-serving policy that forces 97% of the loss on hosts.
Second, there were several better ways to do this, such as giving a credit back to renters, which would have put the loss on Airbnb, not me. Or they could have split the loss any number of ways between the hosts, guests and themselves.
The idea that their policy resembles other hospitality and travel company policies is misleading. Many if not most other companies gave a credit to guests, not full cash refunds. And because of the difference in the way that Airbnb is structured, the end result of a big chain refunding money is significantly different-in that the company is the one actually paying for it. But some third party.
While the extenuating circumstances clause has been in the Airbnb agreement, that doesn’t mean it was implemented in a fair way... or that Airbnb necessarily didn’t apply it in an illegal way. Also there are questions about whether the company was negligent to not account for these types of losses and adequately insure itself.
You don’t have to be an apologist for a multi-billion dollar company. They pay tons of lawyers to do that for them.
Airbnb screwed the hosts. Period.
