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
