I see that a few other people have mentioned this on other threads, but I feel this deserves a thread of its own - and I am making a complaint to Airbnb about it. All of our guests for March and April have cancelled, specifically because they have been informed personally that there has been a Covid 'incident' in the village where our cottage is. I have searched online, and spoken to friends and relatives who live there, and no , there has not been an incident as far as I can tell, and in fact Scotland generally has had low numbers compared to England ( 6 deaths by yesterday compared to about 350 in England?)
If they put out an obviously generic message saying there have been incidents in the UK or Scotland, fine, but they have lied and said there were incidents in Freuchie, a small village, which gives a totally false impression of risk. I suppose this is carelessness, but the effect is malicious. They must change this wording in any future messages, and rectify the damage done, as this message has been directly cited in our cancellation messages from guests. At the very least, it is neglectful of hosts and guests, and I am furious.
I know it is an awful time, and was expecting cancellations, but why make it so much worse?
I contacted them two days ago about this, to get information as I didn't even know it was generic and if we don't know that, how can the guests? They have never replied - tonight I phoned and at first the rep denied any message went out, and then he said it was up to me to tell guests it isn't true - not good enough. I said I want to make a formal complaint and they are supposed to be getting back to me.
I know thing will get worse before they get better, but we could have made a few hundred pounds now while it isn't prevalent. Grrrr! My blood is boiling!
Maybe part of the problem is they think in terms of 'cities', but in a small place with a few hundred folk in the country, it is a very different picture, people could be safe for some weeks.
What can we do to stop them lying and scaring off our guests?