Guest was a no-show due to health emergency. Didn't cancel due to being in hospital. How to handle?

[Sam240]

In the interest of preparing myself for a possibly sticky situation, I'd like some input. This has never happened to me before and I'm unsure of the best way to handle it.

Customer (let's call him "Bill") books a week at my place about a month ago. Cost: $2000 bucks, he's going to stay with his 2 sons. We had our cancellation policy on "Flexible" which meant they could cancel with a full refund up to 1 day before arrival. (After this happened we changed our settings to 'strict'!)

We live in this property, so when someone books for a week we have to go elsewhere. Being summer, the wife and I booked a little vacation of our own - the cost of which was just about $2000 bucks (same as our airbnb customer paid us). So yesterday morning we woke up and cleaned, changed linens, all the stuff hosts do to prepare for guests. We jumped in the car, drove 3 hours to the beach condo we'd rented, went to the grocery store and settled in.

We text Bill to see if he's checked in yet. No answer. About an hour later, we get a message on the app:

"This is Bill's son. He had an emergency medical situation this morning and was rushed to the local hospital. He's in critical condition. We won't be coming to your place, please let me know if I need to do anything".

So first of all, my wife and I are devastated to hear about Bill's situation. We'd gotten to know him over the past month with many messages. So I wrote back: "We're so sorry to hear this news" and some additional sympathies. The son doesn't need to deal with me explaining a formal cancellation policy while he is waiting for doctors to operate on his dad.

On the business side, I'm feeling anxious. First of all, neither Bill nor his son "cancelled" their reservation. As far as Airbnb is concerned, they are in my house right now. And they have the house for the week. And they'll get to "review" our place after their stay is complete. But they're not there. On top of that, I'm unable to communicate with the guest/booker directly and I have no idea if Bill even made it through his surgery (pray to God he did).

What should I do here? Should I contact Airbnb support to help me? Should the guest be considered a "no-show"? Do we just....do nothing? Leave the place empty for a week, come home, proceed as normal? We want to send flowers to the hospital if we can find out Bill's room number and we'd also be open to refunding $100 bucks or something....but fully refunding this guest would set us back quite a bit. We would have given them a full refund if they cancelled even 1 day before arriving. But they cancelled on check in day. Refunding the guest would be a huge blow to our own financial situation.

[Anonymous]

@Sam240   Something similar has happened to me before:  a day before the scheduled check-in, I got an email from the guest's girlfriend to say that they couldn't make it because he was hospitalized after an accident. I presumed that she couldn't access his account to cancel the booking, so I copied the email into my customer service ticket with Airbnb and asked that they process it as a neutral cancellation (no penalty to either party). That way, the guest's payment method was refunded (maybe minus Airbnb fees - not sure about those) and my calendar dates were opened up.

Two things were different back then:  1) Airbnb had competent, in-house customer service rather than an awkwardly outsourced mess,  and 2) the Extenuating Circumstances clause superseded hosts' cancellation policies in medical emergencies, which is no longer the case for bookings made after January of this year. 

But look, the booking was made under the Flexible policy, it's very clear that Bill's son is making a good-faith effort to cancel the booking on his father's behalf despite having graver concerns at hand. He explicitly said to let him know if he needs to do anything, so I think that ethically obliges you to answer him honestly. If the son can access his dad's account, you need only advise him that in order for the booking to get the refund it's eligible for, he needs to complete the cancellation process. If he can't, call customer service and pray that you get an agent who's capable of comprehending the situation and knows that the correct solution is to process it as a cancellation-by-guest (be very sure they understand that you are not the party that is canceling). 

The sooner you get this out of the way, the greater your odds are of reducing the losses with a last-minute replacement booking. 

[Sam240]

Thank you for the advice.

[Lisa723]

@Sam240 this is a tough one. One thing I don't understand, you say that if they had canceled a day earlier you would have refunded them, but today it is a "huge blow" to your financial situation? How can one day make so much difference?

In your shoes I would probably do as @Anonymous suggests, since if the guest had had his medical emergency one day earlier and his son had been in a position to cancel for him your flexible cancellation policy would have refunded him anyway. However, if this would truly be a financial hardship for you and you want/need to exploit the one-day technicality, I would simply message back to the son that he should cancel the reservation, without mentioning a refund. The refund may not be important to the family at this point and that may be the end of it. If they do respond with questions about a refund you can redirect them to Airbnb. But if this is the course you take I would not send flowers or do anything else that indicates that you have anything other than a purely business interest, because that would seem intrusive and hypocritical.

[Sam240]

Frankly, we didn't count on them cancelling - so if they'd cancelled the day before, it would have also been a huge blow to my financial situation. However, if they'd cancelled the day before, there's nothing I could have done about it. In this situation, I'm going to be handed $2000 (money that I've already spent on a condo for my wife & myself this week) and I've got to figure out how I'm going to go about working with a grieving family and/or hospitalized (possibly deceased) booker in order to make things right.

Honestly,  I'm feeling a little defensive here. Forgive me, but you seem to kind of insinuate that I'm being a bit of a jerk here. Trust me, I'm torn up about this whole thing. If I was some kind of greedy, cold-hearted scrooge, I wouldn't have posted this question to the forum. Obviously the client and their family are dealing with a much more troublesome situation in the grand scheme of things. I'm only discussing the business side of this situation on this forum because I want to speak with other hosts in a safe place about what to do. I'm here asking for suggestions or ideas, not a jury. I hope you understand, thanks.

My initial thought is to refund $500, eat rice and beans for a month and take my lumps on the loss. I dunno.

[Lisa723]

@Sam240 I'm sorry, I don't think you're being a jerk and I didn't mean to imply that. It's obviously a difficult situation for everyone, including you. But the unfortunate fact is that your flexible cancellation policy has put you in this position. This guest is entitled by that policy to a refund of "nightly rate for the nights not spent 24 hours after cancellation" and the fact that he's in the hospital, or worse, and his family is distracted doesn't materially change that. I agree with @Anonymous that you do have an ethical obligation here to at least tell the son he should cancel the reservation, in response to his direct question.  If you don't do that then I would say you would be kind of a jerk, regardless of how torn up about it you feel.

[Helen3]

Hello @Sam240 

One piece of advice I would add, never count on Airbnb income until you are in receipt of it, particularly when you use a flexible cancellation policy.

STR income can fluctuate hugely and I would recommend you never rely on it for day to day living expenses (including the cost of your own holidays). 

If you choose to rely on the income for your day to day living,  then make sure you set aside some of your profits each month say 30% (all businesses should set aside profit as reserves) to cover periods of low income/cancellations.

Your options

1. ask the son of the guest to cancel under the policy they booked under and suggest they look at their travel insurance to make a claim against it

2. you could choose to give more of a refund (in part of in whole) than they are entitled to and hope you get replacement bookings to cover some of the time

[Sam240]

Thanks - after thinking about it, we chose option #2 that you listed. They will be refunded and we are offering our place at a discount while we're gone and hope we can get a replacement over the next few days.

[Sarah977]

@Sam240  I don't think you should be conflating the fact that you chose to book a beach place for $2000 while the guests were due to be in residence, with the guest's situation and giving them a close to full refund. 

Many hosts who rent out the entire home they live in go stay at a friend or family member's home for free. They are renting out their own home so they can earn some much- needed money, not to take a vacation at the beach. It was your choice to decide to spend money you hadn't received yet on a vacation for yourself. 

The old adage "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched" comes to mind.  And you had a flexible policy, so even if the guest had cancelled the day before, you would have been in the same financial position.

So while I understand it makes things financially difficult for you, I don't see it as having any bearing on refunding the guest. The refund issue is business, how you choose to spend the money you have in your bank account or anticipate receiving is personal.

[Sam240]

Update: we have decided to refund the guest. Thank you all for your replies and input.