Apparently Airbnb has “flagged” reservations as fully refundable under the extenuating circumstances policy citing Covid-19 as the excuse. But, they will provide absolutely no explanation as to how this is determined. We get it. It’s a worldwide pandemic and unless you’ve been on Mars for the past 2 weeks it is very well understood.
However, every situation is different and Airbnb is just using a blanket set of dates to cover all guests. I believe this is an extremely lazy and thoughtless approach.
Ex. My beach house is in Galveston, Tx about 45 minutes from Houston on a private beach. Guests who rent get the entire house to themselves. If I had a guest from Italy who had a reservation, I totally understand that they should be able to cancel without penalty. There is a travel restriction preventing them from entering the country. But how about the guest that just cancelled that lives in Houston? There is nothing stopping him from getting in his car and driving 30 miles. I guarantee that this guest saw a 50% chance of rain this weekend and used this as an excuse to breach his rental agreement. He should not be entitled to one dime back. Had he messaged and said something like “my son is not feeling well and we’re going to get him tested”, of course I would let him cancel. In order to get a full refund, they should have to jump through as many hoops as we do when we put in a damage claim against a security deposit. I challenge Airbnb to respond to this and clarify their position.
