How come Airbnb can allow guest to cancel after check in time?

[Nanxing0]

I just had a guest who booked same day stay around 8pm in the evening, and cancelled it around 12am. It's not refundable though but since guest might have already checked in, what if the guest causes any damage or anything? Is the host guarantee going to cover such incident?

I have noticed such cancellation a few times. It doesn't make any sense for guests to be able to cancel after check in time.

[Anonymous]

@Nanxing0 If the guest decides they don't want to complete their stay, wouldn't you want them to cancel so as to free up your calendar?

The Host Guarantee applies for the day(s) in which the booking is active, but it's incumbent on the host to be certain that the guest has vacated and can no longer access the property after the cancelation has been lodged. I also recommend immediately sending a message to the guest confirming what has occurred and inspecting the property. 

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous It's already past the check in day so it won't free up the calendar at all, at least for the first night, and in this specific situation the guest only booked for one night. The thing that annoys me is that the guest booked the night of 22nd, and essentially cancelled it on 23rd (a few minutes past 12am). I'm wondering if Airbnb ever has a cancellation deadline, that prevents guests from cancelling an ongoing reservation?

[Anonymous]

@Nanxing0  As far as I know, the deadline only applies to the period in which the guest can receive a refund. If I were the guest, and for some reason I had to leave the property at midnight and not return, I would insist upon cancelling the booking to make it official, so that I would not be deemed responsible for anything that might happen to the property between then and the scheduled checkout time. 

What is it that you object to about the cancellation being processed, if the guest had truly departed and your refund policy wasn't overridden? I'm struggling to understand what bothers you here.

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous Well let's see what happened. I inspected the property this afternoon and found out that the guest indeed checked in and stayed at least for some time. As of when the guest left I don't know but I can probably find out from my camera record, but I can definitely assure that the guest did stay for some time. Fortunately the guest didn't cause any damage to my property other than some spill of coke, but again I want to ask if the guest caused any damage then who is going to cover it? 

It's not about allowing or not allowing a guest to cancel to be honest. I have had guests decided to depart early and we managed to shorten the stays to the next day. My point is that this should be solely based on mutual agreement between guest and host, not something guest can decide from one side. Some time ago Airbnb used to not allowing guests to cancel their reservations once it's past the check in time but now this policy has changed apparently and I guess it's mainly to reduce the workload of the customer service team.

Also this makes it more difficult for us to schedule cleaning. We are using a website "turnoverbnb" for cleaning schedule and this type of incident is obviously a disruption of the cleaning service scheduling. Apparently the cleaning job is needed but since the guest was able to cancel the reservation the cleaning job has disappeared. If I didn't know this bizzaire and bothered to inspect the property, it will be uncleaned when our next guest checks in today. 

Same question I want to ask you. Why does it make sense to allow the guest to cancel after the check in time? Once it's past the check in time the listed property (no matter if it's a house, an apartment, or a room, whatever) is officially for this guest to use, and it shouldn't matter at all if the guest stayed only for 1 hour or overnight. 

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous And I'm sorry to say I completely disagree with your point " If I were the guest, and for some reason I had to leave the property at midnight and not return, I would insist upon cancelling the booking to make it official, so that I would not be deemed responsible for anything that might happen to the property between then and the scheduled checkout time."

I guess we might be operating on a slightly different way, but to me the operation is based on complete "cycles" that runs from the check in time of the first day till the check out time of the next day. Guests book those "cycles" and they cannot be further sectioned. We allow guests to check out any time before the due time, but it doesn't matter when the guest checks out that cycle is booked by the guest and cannot be cancelled once it starts.

[Anonymous]

@Nanxing0  Yes, that is exactly how it should work under the normal circumstances that apply the vast majority of the time. And it would be really weird if we had to adjust our concept of how the duration of a stay worked around the possibility that guests might always be cutting it short halfway through.

But on the other hand, 1-and 2-night stays are a very easy thing to program our calendars against if they're causing too many weird experiences like this. Many hosts live in a place where they're important, like an airport suburb, but if this type of stay is something you can do without, you might consider setting a different minimum stay.

Although I see where you're coming from, I still think that it's responsible on the guest's part to cancel the reservation if they are finished with it and have no intention to return. Airbnb doesn't offer a simpler way of conveying that you no longer accept any responsibility for the property. I would be fighting in your corner if the guest left without notice but still demanded a refund, but I don't believe that the guest should need your permission to terminate the booking if they simply wished to leave and forfeit their payment.

Similarly, I don't believe that you should need the guest's permission to terminate their stay, if they have violated your rules and you no longer feel comfortable hosting them. In my opinion we are monetarily bound to the cancellation terms we agree on, but nobody should be forced to maintain an active reservation (and all the responsibility that entails) against their will.

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous I guess you probably misunderstood what I described the situation. The guest booked a ONE-NIGHT stay from Nov 22nd and checks out on Nov 23rd. And then he checked in in the evening of 22nd, stayed for a few hours and then cancelled this reservation IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAY. I honestly don't see any ethical reason to allow such cancellation since the guest essentially stayed for this reservation, although he didn't stay overnight, but it doesn't make any difference to me.

It's perfectly fine to discuss about shortening the stay if the guest booked like 3 nights and find out he only needs 1 or 2 nights, but that's a different story than this. And even if that's the case it should be based on mutual agreement, not one-sided decision.

Similarly, if the check out time is 11am, and the guest checks out like 8-9am in the morning, should the guest be allowed to cancel the reservation since there's still a couple hours till the check out time?

[Anonymous]

@Nanxing0  What you describe is exactly how I'd interpreted your account of what happened. But the guest does have a right to cancel the reservation at any point during the stay, even in the middle of the night. They just don't have the right to continue to stay after the point that they cease to have an active booking. 

It would be super weird if someone chose to cancel a booking an hour before checkout time, but it wouldn't have any actual impact on the booking in practical terms. You'd get the same payout, you could both leave reviews, etc. This kinda tastes like a nothingburger.

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous Still, I don't see any right to cancel the reservation from the guest side, both legally and ethically after check in. The guest essentially took possession of the listed property and made use of it, no matter if he/she only needs it for 20 minutes or 20 hours. If the guest wants to avoid liability after leaving, he can simply leave the host a message saying he already checked out and that would serve enough purpose as a valid record evidence.

For hosts, there are a lot of potential liability issues associated with such guest cancellation. Yes we will get the payout and leave reviews, but what if the guest causes any damage? Can we claim the host guarantee for any damage if the reservation is cancelled? Also there's another possible liability issue. If the guest is greedy enough to cancel the reservation and refuses to leave at the same time, and if he/she gets injured in my property, who will be responsible for that? To my knowledge according to the laws in most US states the guest can claim against my homeowner insurance in such case and Airbnb is apparently not going to cover it since the reservation has been cancelled.

[Anonymous]

@Nanxing0  If a stay is cancelled before the scheduled check-out date, the "booking period" under Airbnb terms is from the time of the guest's arrival to the time the booking was terminated. A cancellation doesn't retroactively nullify the Host Guarantee or the Host Protection scheme for the date on which the booking was active. Same would go for if you as the host needed to terminate a 1-night booking midway through because you caught the guest breaking your rules. 

Of course, that's all hypothetical - in practice, your results are going to depend much more on your case manager than on whatever technicalities apply. 

[Nanxing0]

@Anonymous Yes that's my concern as well as Airbnb has been known to side with guest and tries to find all excuses to escape from being liable. I remember at least before the pandemic Airbnb used not to allow guests to cancel after check in time. I have had a couple of guests needed to cancel around that time and we observed that. Since the pandemic this policy has been changed apparently.