Our input as asked for:
1) We have posted on our listing that guests need to book with a credit card that includes trip cancellation insurance or purchase it, because we are not an insurance company...regardless of reason for cancellation. Guests always have the option to have cancellation insurance, whereas, there is no such insurance available to hosts. We've recommended that Airbnb get into the insurance business and maybe we pay an extra 1% for our booking fee to cover cancellations. Then we wouldn't even need a cancellation policy or wrestle with trying to uphold it in any circumstance.
Also, guests could collect insurance AND whatever our cancellation policy permits.
If an insurance company doesn't insure a reason for cancelling, we as hosts should not have to. Again, we cannot be treated as insurance companies for any reason.
2) We cannot afford these full refundd. As real as the risk is for people not being able to travel and losing their money...so is the risk of hosts losing their properties, which will be as critical for the platform as well. None of this is guests or hosts fault so at the very most 50/50 is fair.
The extenuating circumstances should be 50/50 as in this case it is neither fault, in other illness circumstances it's not the hosts fault either. 50/50 is still tough, however, a lot more fair than a full refund to guests. They would also know this when they book... so no complaining. If a reason for cancellation is not covered by insurance there is no reason us hosts should be expected to take the financial hit.
3) We have offered to change dates of stays, however, we ask them for their preferred dates and if available, we block them manually. This way there is no risk of the cancellation policy being abused, that you mentioned. If not available we find dates that will work for both of us and we make it available as long as we own our properties.
Hope this is helpful. We are struggling to and it doesn't matter if a host has 1 property or many. We are all valuable and have the right to host the way we choose and should not be discriminated against for either choice, as the CEO has done with the $5000 grant being made available to help only a specific group of hosts. Very disappointing to the rest of the hosts not considered as important, even tho their expenses are higher and they have more risk.