Welcome back, hope things go well for you!
I took a break for just over a year, a couple of years back, and was surprised by some of the changes to policies that had been made when I was not hosting. This was back when this forum was lively and active, and other hosts did a good job of updating me, which I much appreciated. 🙏
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Support-with-your-bookings/Back-in-business-Anything-I-should-kn...
So my advice to you is make sure you update yourself, to make sure you don’t miss any changes in policies that may cause you issues.
For instance, if you as a host cancel a confirmed booking, you will be penalized (fine, deducted from your next payout). Unless you have a very good reason for cancelling (basically, your listing would have to have been severely flooded, or have burned to the ground…).
Please note that this goes also for Instant Bookings, you no longer have ”3 penalty free cancellations/year" when using Instant Book - which has made many hosts skip Instant Book.
Quite a few hosts have experienced that blocked dates in their calendar are opened up. I don’t mean when the calendar automatically opens new dates to stay open x months ahead, but manually blocked days within an open period seem to be mysteriously opened up. Hosts using Instant Book have then experienced receiving bookings for dates that were supposed to be blocked, having to cancel these bookings, and beg Airbnb to not fine them for cancelling. Some have succeeded, others have had to pay the fines.
Also, there are new rules regarding cameras. Indoor cameras are now banned completely. They need to be taken down - de-activating or covering up is not good enough, apparently. For some very strange reason, Airbnb decided that this ban also included alarm activated cameras… The ones where the host/owner cannot watch the footage, the cameras are only activated if the alarm goes off due to fire/break-in - and only the alarm company can see the footage. Go figure… Outdoor cameras are still allowed, and must be disclosed in the listing. These cannot film any outdoor area where guests might ”expect more privacy”.
I should mention that I personally have not experienced blocked dates opening up, I never had indoor cameras in my listing, never needed to cancel a confirmed booking and I don't use Instant Book - so all of the cases I mention above, are cases I've read about here/in local FB groups, or that my Airbnb friends have experienced.
Good luck!
