Time for Airbnb to post guests’ cancellation rate before booking

[Marjorie213]

We’ve been hosting for almost one year. We’re enjoying it very much. I think it would be very helpful for Airbnb to show guests’ cancellation rates BEFORE booking. It would, I think, cut down on flaky guests. Anyone else think this would be a helpful metric for hosts? 

[Huma0]

@Marjorie213 

Yes, I agree, this would be useful. When a host cancels a reservation (unless it is a penalty free one allowed by Airbnb), that cancellation appears in the reviews on their profile. So, that should also be the case for guests. 

Unfortunately, Airbnb doesn't like to penalise guests and scare them away but seems to have no issue doing that to even long standing and committed hosts. 

[Helen3]

I believe a guest is penalised if they make more than three cancellations @Huma0 

[Huma0]

@Helen3 

Yes, I remember hearing something about that. It was that the guest no longer automatically got penalty free cancellations if they cancelled more than three times within the same 12 month period. 

That, however, is not the same as hosts who get their cancellations flagged up on their profile/reviews every time they make a cancellation that is not 'penalty free', i.e. almost every cancellation that a host makes if they do not use instant book.

[John-and-Heather0]

@Marjorie213  There is another approach.

We purchased an identical listing to one we already had on the platform (cute beach A-Frame) and decided to "test" a more generous cancellation policy to see what happened (we are old school, so we have always used "strict" like every other traditional vacation rental at the beach).  We found that our listings are so popular, people would hoard our dates so they'd have a place at the beach "just in case" and then strategically cancel when they still would lose no money.  After crunching numbers, we'd have to raise our prices 150-200% and make STAYING guest pay MORE to cover the CANCELLING guests to have the same income at the end of the month.

So,

-adopt a strict policy
-include in your rules that your policy is "strict" and guests need to buy trip insurance for any change in plans.

-enforce it and don't apologize.
If  you want to be nice, you can explain that the only way to cover cancellations is to raise your price on the guests who do stay, and that isn't fair to your actual customers who actually show up.

[Islam24]

if the note is full then no harm done yet

[Jamie934]

Yes, I agree that cancellation policy should be shown before booking. I actually thought it was until I learned from guests that didn’t know my policy. It would help the host and guest if policy was shown before booking.

[John4704]

New Cancellation Penalties:  I received today Airbnb's new "Terms of Service" containing a new punitive Cancellation Policy.  I have registered my strong opposition to your new cancellation policy that punishes and wrongly penalizes your entire HOST Community.  (You can easily identify the "rare hosts that cancel" and penalize them, or remove them.)  But no, YOU (Airbnb) chose to punish the ENTIRE Host Community.  It's bad policy and it will NEGATIVELY impact your relationship with all Hosts.  As for your "Request to Agree" with your 'new terms', this is an "Adhesion Contract" and is unenforceable legally (I am an attorney)--Hosts with guests on the calendar ahead have no alternative but to be forced to agree to your terms.  If challenged in court,  you are exposed and lose.  Airbnb seems determined to alienate it's most valuable asset... your Hosts. Your arrogance is repulsive, but you have set the course. "What goes around, will come around"

[Robert6319]

This comes from a guest's point of view. I totally concur that "guest cancellations" should be enumerated as well. We as guests, are just that, "guests". Hosts should have a clear understanding as to who they're "accepting". Now, having said that, I've been an Airbnb guest since 2013 and have been 95%  satisfied with all my stays and Airbnb support. Maybe I'm just fortunate because only 4 in all of those years have been-BOOKED/ACCEPTED & CONFIRMED and then CANCELED (I, myself, have never canceled). And 3 of those had legitimate reasons: reached their cap on stays due to local ordinances, honest mistake on their calendar and did not remove "availability" and a plumbing issue (and a very apologetic host response). The FOURTH cancellation is what I take issue with and ask YOU as hosts, "when a more lucrative 'message' is sent to you after you have CONFIRMED a booking and removed 'availability', do you CANCEL the original booking and lie low in the weeds as your BOOKED guests attempt to find out WHY lodgings they depended on are now gone and with no reason or reply except for a cold text from Airbnb". For those of you who would honestly acknowledge to yourselves that you would NEVER cancel for the better offer, even if you could financially benefit, I continue to support you and hope one day to be a guest in your properties. And for those of you who take the money and leave guests stranded, you bring this entire branch of the hospitality tree down. And I hope I remain just lucky enough not to cross your 4.82 rating on Airbnb.

[Huma0]

@Robert6319 

I am sure you have genuine reasons to be concerned but your concerns are not related to this post, which is about guests cancelling and then arguing about the cancellation policy they signed up to.

That has nothing to do with hosts cancelling on guests. There is an entirely different system in place for that and hosts do get very heavily penalised for doing that (fines that increase depending on the value of the stay and how soon it is, loss of Superhost status, a black mark in their review etc.) So, if you aren't happy with that set up, well, that's a different discussion.

I think the OP was referring more to making the cancellation policy clearer to guest when they make a booking so that they understand what they ware signing up for.

[Helen744]

@Robert6319 If calendars are synched as they should be then this cannot happen as the booked days are no longer available on the calendar. There are other reasons for cancellation, either people not reading or complying with rules or answering communications, or days accidentally opening at the three month automatic rollout , which many guests seem to 'fish for ' because the future dates are generally priced at older lower rates. Many reasons even if you are not aware of them .Not to say that some hosts are not unscrupulous and consider that guests who really cannot travel need to 'pay them ' the whole of the stay for 'the privilege ' of being able to book in the first place.Some people as in all businesses ,are unscrupulous. Its a flawed system and pressure to function as hotels and the losses many hosts have had to eat have maybe made them more wary but my suggestion to you is the same as to your host . communicate.H

[Debra300]

@Helen744,

The iCal calendar syncing feature  isn't a reliable tool to avoid double bookings for listings that have a lot of booking activity.  Syncing is a scheduled function that occurs every two to six hours, depending upon the timings that the platform has implemented, and it isn't done instantaneously when there is a change to the calendar.  This leaves windows when calendars are out of sync where a booking has occurred on one platform, but the listing will still appear as available on other platforms until the sync occurs.  Very active listings that are on multiple platforms should use a channel manager which will immediately update all of the connected calendars.

[Helen744]

@Debra300 I do mine manually after each booking but as I am currently winding down and not taking bookings after September , the calendar keeps opening December days as it rolls around and those who fish for these days are jumping in to try and grab a couple of December days at a cheap rate. So I have had two cancellations but avoided a penalty by simply letting them know we will be gone and guiding them to some other lovely host.To this I would say the issue of double booking was not blocking the available days by doing a manual synch which works immediately unlike waiting for it to do itself once every twenty four hours. Also remembering to block the days that you need to and do the manual synch then . this has always ,mostly , worked for us . cheers Debr a and keep doing what you do in your lovely island paradise and all the best , Helen

[Sudsrung0]

I think it has something similar on BDC