Guests breaching COVID 19 rules... where is the Airbnb support?

[Alexandra199]

I have been inundated this week with bookings from guests who live in UK Tier 3 areas. Government guidance says these guests are not allowed to travel out of their Tier 3 area, except in exceptional circumstances. A nice little holiday in an Airbnb is not one of those exceptions!

I've had guests lie to me, ask me to turn a blind eye, argue the guidance etc but I am following the rules and as a result I have had to refuse or cancel over £2000 work of bookings this week. The vast majority of guests attempting to book have been from Tier 3 London, they don't think the rules apply to them. My issue here is two fold:

(1) Where is the help from Airbnb to follow the rules, many of  these guests are registered as living in London yet there doesn't seem to be any restriction on their ability to book. Added to that if I cancel their stay once ive found they are breaching the rules, the dates get blocked on my calendar.

(2) I'm starting to wonder if I'm being an idiot stringently following the rules. Other local properties are all fully booked, are these owners turning a blind eye? Do they just not care?

What are you doing to keep to the rules? In my opinion we are in this mess because people arent following the rules....I'm just trying to do my bit.

[Helen350]

@Alexandra199 It's not Airbnb's job to police who we host. They are "just a booking platform."

Have you written at the top of your listing "I am unable to host guests from Tier 3 areas who are coming for a holiday, due to government regulations. Guests from Tiers 1 & 2  & ALL workers welcome!"

Airbnb have millions of hosts & guests around the world. They can't micromanage bookings & computer systems to take account of shifting Covid regs in 150 countries.

From late March - 3 Jul & during November, ALL travel was banned except for work in the UK, so Airbnb blocked all UK calendars. Which was frustrating for those of us who host doctors/nurses/engineers in our spare rooms. Blanket bans keep out legitimate travellers. Either Airbnb OPEN calendars or they close them. They can't possibly devise a system to take account of the ever changing UK situation, let alone the rest of the world.

We just have to make suitable enquiries of our guests & do our due diligence...

[Alexandra199]

Hi Helen, yes I have put a note in the Booking Message section saying if they live in  a Tier 3 please do not book. They just ignored that and went ahead and booked anyway. I do understand that Airbnb cant police everyone but a penalty when I cancel a booking that breaches the rules does not seem fair to me. 

[Helen350]

I meant to say before @Alexandra199 , if someone books when they are breeching regulations, you can message Airbnb Help and ask for a penalty free cancelation, explaining you have to do this because the guest IB-ed when his/her stay would be against current UK laws. - I did this in November, and it was all sorted in 20 mins, with no penalty to either party. (It was a booking made AFTER Nov lockdown so she should have known better! A doctor too! On a leisure trip, not permitted work! She was very nice about it, unlike a subsequent enquirer, whom I told could not book holiday during Nov lockdown. "Oh f*** off!", replied that particular young lady! )

[Alexandra199]

Wow, yes so you have had to deal with these guests too. I am flabbergasted this week with the incredible selfishness of some of these guests. Ive not been told to F off but I have had people telling me its not up to me to tell them what they can and cant do.

[Helen350]

@Alexandra199 If it's YOUR house (home share or whole listing), then you jolly well CAN tell them what they can & can't do! - I'm not sure whether we hosts are breaking the law, by hosting from Tier 3, but when guests would be breaking the law by leaving home, then I'm not comfortable aiding & abetting someone else's law breaking.... 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Helen350 From all I have read it is not against the law to travel from Tier 3 but rather against the guidance.

We have switched off Instant book so that we can control bookings (ie turn them down) as we are in tier 3 ourselves where it is illegal to host all but a few types of guest.

[Helen350]

Now I'm confused @Mike-And-Jane0 ! If I'd known it was guidance, not law, I would not have turned away my post Christmas guests from Kent! 

- BUT, I keep reading that police can FINE people breaking lockdown regs.... So how can there be fines just for breaking guidance?

What do you make of this? https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1374/pdfs/uksi_20201374_en.pdf 

It is worded in a way which sounds like law to me?!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Helen350 I could be missing something but the only restriction I see for Tier 3 people going to other tiers is in italics below. So for whole home rentals I think they can come but not for home shares.

(2) No person living in the Tier 3 area may participate in a gathering outside that area which—

1. (a)  consists of two or more people, and

2. (b)  takes place in a private dwelling or in any indoor space.

[Helen350]

@Mike-And-Jane0 I don't understand your answer! (Probably me!)

Then again, I don't understand the legislation I posted above either.

I genuinely want to understand the law, and not break the law. But I don't mind ignoring 'guidelines', if not actually law.

I had THOUGHT people in Tier 3 were not allowed to travel at all, on point of penalty/fine if caught.... But 'guidance' is saying 'Do as you like' - Does anyone have a definitive answer on this? 

[Clare167]

I've just spent a while scrolling through the statutory instrument on this phone. Not a good plan. To understand this properly I would need both screens of the desktop, with 2 copies open. But the short answer is that paragraph 12 of schedule 3 is intended to deal with commercial accommodation. It may be that, as @Mike-And-Jane0 suggest, the rules on 'gatherings' are not entirely consistent with that, but I suspect that is unintended. 

Not going to do further work on this as it may all change at the press conference less than an hour from now! @Helen350 

[Clare167]

Could not resist looking at schedule 2. The restrictions on indoor gatherings in tier 2 and for tier 2 residents look to be the same as for tier 3. Yet there are no similar restrictions on accommodation businesses including B&B. 

[Sarah977]

You do realize that people ignoring guidelines is why the virus keeps spreading and why guidelines have to be turned into laws and fines give out? @Helen350

[Helen350]

@Sarah977  Who knows? I'm starting to believe the conspiracy theorists.... It has been proven that most tests give a false positive. An Austrian politician was filmed getting a positive test on a bottle of Coca Cola! (Which we all thought killed all known germs!)

Cacooning oneself indoors also lowers immunity..... 

Masks do more harm than good. 

Who cares if many people have the virus? It's no different from the common cold for most, and many have no symptoms so it's a non-illness. Yes they can pass it on, to others who get non illnesses!

I've got a nurse staying at present, and a pharmacist arriving soon. (Both BAME, which is supposed to increase risk, but obviously they are not bothered.)

I went to the theatre last night, (almost next door) for the first live performance since  March 13th. It was wonderful to be back!

- Don't know why a free thinking 60s hippy child like you has bought into all this nonsense, Sarah! 

[Sarah977]

And I don't know where you get these scientifically false ideas ("masks do more harm than good"???) or why you think that the medical professionals you get as guests in your little corner of the UK are some kind of experts on infectious diseases and some sort of authorities. FYI several doctors and nurses in the US have been suspended from their jobs for spreading false information about COVID or being caught ignoring Covid precautions when off the job. 

And as far as I can tell, you've not "started to believe the conspiracy theorists", you've subscribed to them all along.

As a free-thinker, I do my own research. The research is clear to all but those who wish to pretend that life should just go on as normal, as are 76,447,000 infections and 1,689,000 deaths from COVID. 

@Helen350