cancellation and refunds

[Sally737]

A guest requested a 1 night stay on a 2-night minimum booking. I accomodated it. My cancellation policy is strict - 5 days, no refund.

3 days before, she tells me she has covid and asks to change dates. I hedge because I know that at this time, I will be paid in full if I do not change. But she says if I allow it she will book 2 nights and I'll make more money and then I can even possibly re-rent the room. So I accept. However, she doesn't pay the upcharge for 36 hours and until she does, the room isn't cancelled and available for re-rent.

Finally 24 hours before, she does it and I respond, "yes but now I only have 24 hours to rebook the room". Based on that comment, she went ahead and cancelled the new 2 day booking. 

I'm out all the money. I am asking Airbnb to execute on the original cancellation policy. Anybody can do this and accomodating hosts will be made to look like fools and lose money over and over. I have been on this platform as a host with multiple accomodations for nearly 10 years with 100s of review and this woman has 1 review.

Furthermore Airbnb should not allow date changes which occur within a cancellation period to eliminate the "no refund" until the hosting has actually taken place.

[Huma0]

@Sally737 

Either this guest has played your or she is just an unreasonable person. You can try to escalate this to Airbnb but, seeing as you accepted the date change, I am not sure they will help.

In future, another way of handling this would be to tell the guest to cancel the first booking and you will refund them IF the dates get rebooked. Sure, that means they might not rebook but if the guest is an honest and reasonable person, they should understand. Whenever I've been in a situation where the guest wants to cancel last minute or shorten their stay and are not entitled to a refund, I tell them that I will refund them if I manage to rebook the dates, but they need to cancel asap to increase the chances of that.

I've only encountered one guest who was not happy when I told her she needed to cancel rather than change the dates (I was 100% sure she was going to cancel the new dates given the circumstances). She became irate and abusive, but fine. It made me realise I had dodged a bullet because I wouldn't have wanted that sort of person in my home.

I do agree with you though that the policies allow for this loophole that guests could take advantage of if they were minded to.