New strict cancellation policy update

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

The Airbnb team heard feedback from you and the host community about the upcoming change to our Strict cancellation policy. In order to address your concerns, we’re delaying the change until May 1, 2018.

Before the change goes into effect, we’ll share more about what we’re doing to address your concerns, particularly around protecting your listing details from being shared with guests who cancel. But for now, we’d like to clear up some confusion and help you better understand the new policy and how it will benefit the whole community:

Here’s how the new grace period policy will work—and some of the protections we have in place for hosts:

Limited-time refund within 48 hours after booking when the check-in date is at least 14 days away

Guests must cancel within 48 hours after booking and can only cancel if their check-in date is 14+ days away. This means that no matter how far out your guests book, they only have 48 hours from the time they book to cancel for free. We want to make sure that if guests change their mind, you have enough time to get another booking.

Three refunds per year per guest

To prevent abuse, guests are limited to three fully refunded cancellations a year.

No full refunds for overlapping bookings

To make sure guests are not making multiple bookings and then cancelling, any booking made by a guest when they already have an active booking for those dates will not be covered under our grace period policy.

Your hosting success is top of mind for us, and tests of this policy—including among hosts with strict cancellation policies in place—strongly suggest the change will result in increased bookings and successful stays. With this grace period, not only do guests book with more confidence, but they also have the ability to resolve booking mistakes without requiring your valuable time and intervention.

We value your feedback, and will follow up shortly with more insight into how your ideas are shaping this policy.

Thanks,

Lizzie

----------Update April 24th, 2018----------

Hello everyone,

Just to let you know there is now an update regarding protecting your listing details, as mentioned above. 

Here is the link to take a look: An update on the Strict Cancellation Policy

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Zvonimir8]

All these host's comments I find highly  valuable. With the most of them I agree and some situations mentioned I even could not think off .

Speaking of cancellation time of 14 days  can be good and bad. If the guest booked 2 daya and cancells it

14 days beforer arrival, it looks fine. But if guest booked 7 days, than it is too short.

I prose something like formula. 

1 day of booking X 7 days cancellation prior arrival.

Each next day of booking X 4 days cancellation prior arrival

For exp:

5 days of booking  gives 23 days cancellation prior arrival  ( 1 X 7 +4  X 4 ) 

10 days of booking gives 43 days cancellation prior arrival ( 1 X 7 + 9 X 4 ) 

Regarding free of charge cancellation , I would be ok with 24 h.

I would not like my contact data to be shared with guests before 24 h expires.

I hope my proposal could help..

Best regards,

Zvone

[Margaret518]

The problem is that these are policies designed for hotels with multiple rooms - not single properties. If someone books my aprtament in March for 2 weeks in August, that is then blocked for other views. If they cancel 30 days before, in July, most people will already have booked their summer holidays, but did not see mine because it was not available. The website wants to increase volume, so want free cancellations, but I want bookings, so I would like to see a penalty for people who block a property for months and then cancel.

[Connie-and-Chuck0]

Before worrying about the cancellation period and etc. You need to take a look at how your reservations are working.

We just had customers that didn’t pay for anything. We charge $175 a night, $80 cleaning fee and $35 dog cleaning fee. The customers over Memorial weekend paid $155 a night, no cleaning and no dog fee. Please explain how these mistakes are happening and do something about it. We lost our ass on this one. I just noticed there is someone else booked very similar to this. You want to put a restriction on how many cancellations we can have, then charge them correctly.

i would like to know who I contact for covering these mistakes.

Unhappy in Wisconsin

[Connie-and-Chuck0]

Oh yes by the way, where is all our taxes going you are collecting?

Where is all my money going in the last month?

Please help me to understand this site🥴

Unhappy in Wisconsin 

[Dennis16]

Well I have a strict policy and just had a guest cancel their reservation that is 5 days away.  They booked me in April.  No penalty to the guest and no way I can book the rooms again.  What the heck happened?

[Pilar1]

This is similar to what happened to me over the Christmas period, I had a booking 2 months in advance which was cancelled around 10 days after making the booking, well over 48 hours after the free cancellation period (I also have a Strict policy). Apparently Customers Servuce agreed to a totally free of charge cancellation when they called and said someone else had decided to join them and I could not accommodate 3 people (I might have been able to do so by the way) without consulting me or even telling me, I just found out when I received a booking request for other dates and saw a big Booking  cancelled in my inbox. What’s the point of letting us choose the cancellation level if it’s going to be superseded by AirBnB decision each time someone asks?

[Dvira0]

I agree,  only give details once the grace period is over.  And yes 48 hours is much too long, it almost lets someone book something at a whim with the thought that they can always cancel.   And usually people travel together, so if someone used up 3 cancellations in a year they can always book through someone else's account.  airbnb will not know. 

12 hours seems more like it.   I personally gave back money after someone already arrived and realized that they made a mistake and left after 5 days,   I refunded 3 weeks and didn't have to.  

My personal policy is  that there is a 50% non refundable deposit.  if for any reason someone cancels, I put the property back on the market.  if I am able to re rent during the reserved time, then refund the money minus 10%.    It goes both ways,  once someone reserves I don't go rent the apt. to someone else,  I tell them it is not available.  So if someone cancels and am not able to find another tenant the most they would loose is 50% of the rent.  

[Mike246]

Well .. too bad, clearly they still don't care about revising this horrible policy change.

[Maria2953]

i need help in spanish, can you explain me any matters personally?

[Helen427]

Hello @Maria2953 

There's a translate option on Google that sometime's comes up on the top right hand corner to Translate from one language to another.

You will find that as useful as others do to translate another language & share knowledge & learn amongst each other.

You may also like to read the latest Host newsletter as it features a topic on Hosts from primarily English as a 2nd language country & Spanish links are included.

There's a Host forum here in CC you can access to connect with locals & Spanish speakers/contributors.

All the Best

Central To All Home & Location, Auckland, New Zealand

[Debbie-and-Leon0]

We are very concerned about the "strict" cancellation policy update. Under the policy, guests currently receive a FULL refund if they cancel the reservation 14 days prior to the reservation. We have large homes that we rent to families and in our area families will plan their trips (or weddings) a year in advance. These are high cost rentals due to a very limited season. If we start getting cancellations in the middle of the Summer that would absolutely destroy our season as we would have a very hard time filling those cancelled dates.

The strict cancellation policy is fine in principal as it offers guests flexibility but why not offer hosts the option of stricter policies and leave it to guests to decide?

Here are the current cancellation policies (as of 9/11/2019):

https://www.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies#strict-with-grace-period

You'll notice the following policies:

-Flexible: Full refund up to 24 hours prior to reservation

-Moderate:  Full refund up to 5 Days prior to reservation

-Strict:  Full refund up to 14 Days prior to reservation

-Super Strict 30: Full refund up to 30 Days prior to reservation (not available to regular hosts)

-Super Strict 60: Full refund up to 60 Days prior to reservation (not available to regular hosts)

The 30 or 60 day policies would absolutely work for us. In fact, other hosting platforms offer similar if not identical polices. However, in the case of Airbnb these are only available if you are a "software connected host"...meaning you must list your property through a third-party software in order to apply one of those stricter policies. Note that those third-party solution often charge very high fees per booking (15% in most cases).

I really don't understand the logic as to why this artificial barrier exists? Why are these policies allowed for "software connected hosts" but not for regular Airbnb hosts? Why should we have to pay an additional 15% fee and go through another platform to enable these policies? Shouldn't Airbnb allow us as hosts to dictate the cancellation terms of our reservations, display the policy on our listings, and then leave it to guests to decide whether or not to book our homes?

Why not let us choose those stricter policies...seems like it would be very easy to do software-wise as the feature already exists.

Seems a bit shady to me. Would love Airbnb to reconsider this entire thing as it will only take one or two last second cancellations for us to be affected enough to completely abandon this platform.

Would love Airbnb to chime in here.

[Ray107]

Debbie, this seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I use all other booking resources to book out everything then last effort goes to Airbnb. They probably lost 120,000 from us when they changed to a 2 week cancellation. Airbnb is just good for last minute guests, they are not a good long term secure portal for hosts anymore.

Ray

[Alice595]

I agree that 48 hours are too long for strict cancellation policy.

Two days ago I had a guest booked for 9 days in November. After one day, the guest canceled without any explanation. I had a hunch that the guest most likely would cancel. 

It seems that she was shopping around and found something else. I did not see her message after her cancellation. A few hours later, I did send her a message and mentioned that I could be of any further help and let me know. But she still did not answer. I would not expect any message from her if she canceled due to shopping around.

[Nancy458]

I agree with all of you. I have decided that I do not want guests who "just want the cheapest place in town". I have a moderate cancellation policy now--but I changed my requirements for instant booking--so guests must have at least 3 positive airbnb reviews. I raised my rates--lowered my cleaning--and I am still booked for about the same amount--just with guests who are experienced travelers. Airbnb will do what it will do--as hosts--work with them--set boundaries and I do not listen to all the  "airbnb prompts". I do not want the "motel six crowd at my condo". (Reno, NV) Did you know that there is setting where you can require all guests to correspond with you BEFORE they book. I am not there yet--but I could be! Travelers who plan ahead will have no problem with communication!

[Patricia1008]

Where is the payout from my guest who arrived more than 24  hours ago on Tuesday?