@Peta7 ,
Sorry Peta7,
I believe that you mean to be helpful when you are offering this warning to other hosts.
However your summary of how the current policy works for guests and hosts contains a number of significant errors and may cause unwarranted distress.
Just for the record; I personally preferred the way the old Strict reservation conditions applied, and at times I had these settings on both of my listings. So I have experience hosting under both policies.
However, in part due to the sometimes, overly-strict, unreasonable, inflexible, and uncompassionate application of this policy by a growing number Hosts worldwide, Airbnb wound back the amount of control and flexibility they offered to hosts. And so, we now have a revised version of what had been a very simple, clear policy which offered a reasonable degree of prediction and forward planning.
But the old policy was very skewed towards the host, with a lot of upfront financial commitment by guests and not the same degree of commitment by some hosts.
I have sometimes had long term bookings withdrawn after sitting on the books for months, but if they are still months away from the reservation dates, it really is not unreasonable for a guest to hope for a significant refund.
Previously, there were too many stories from guests saying that they had lost all their money on a long term booking, which they had cancelled with a decent amount of notice.
Plus, there were examples of hosts [even in these forums] with a too-sad_too-bad attitude who chose to retain access to funds they weren't morally entitled too. This sort of behaviour was always going to damage the Airbnb brand and drive traffic away from the website. Particularly when those funds were withheld by hosts on bookings which were barely a day old.
We all stood to be damaged by this type of financial activity.
In the long term Airbnb would have collapsed as quickly as it arose, if hosts got a reputation for taking money that the general travelling public felt we were not reasonably entitled to.
Airbnb had to go some way to meet public expectation in order to continue to serve hosts as well as guests.
While this forum is definitely for the exchange of experiences and knowledge, I think that a more detailed reading of the FAQ section via the HELP icon would better explain how the Strict with Grace policy works, and the limitations which apply to both Hosts and Guests.
Seriously, there is so much misinformation out and about.
For sure, the website still has glitches, and there are deficiencies in some of the policy and subsequent software development and roll-out, but the knock-on effect of these Strict cancellation policy changes are not as extreme as you have described.
Sorry to be contrary, and definitely no offence intended.
IME, once Hosts fully understand how each policy works, they can better manage their guest communications and booking transactions. This is the way for hosts to restore a sense of predictability, and confidence in forward planning and existing bookings.
Here's a link to some of the FAQ's in the Help centre, there are always new articles being added, and updates too.
The link might be handy for newbies and oldies, like me.
https://www.airbnb.com.au/help/topic/1084/guest-cancellations
All the best regards,
Peace and Wombats,
Christine from Wombats at Glenbrook
@Peta7 wrote:
Reference for all new forum contributors and platform users:-)
Airbnb use to have a choice available to Hosts wishing to implement a Strict cancellation policy (without any grace period) and this policy was changed on May 1, 2018 as part of the platform infamous policy shift and was introduced to enable Guests to cancel within a certain time frame without penalties applied.
Experience has taught that the new contradictory termed ‘STRICT Cancellation policy with GRACE period’ has little if any impact on our high turnover City listings as most bookings are Instant or made within a day or two of Check in, however Listings on the platform depending on Seasonal bookings will be impacted on hugely as the reservations are usually all made far in advance.
Guests have subsequently learnt to use this new Tool in hand to shop around for listings once a foot is in the door as it is easy to cancel one or many bookings penalty free should a more suitable or likeable listing be discovered while blocking the already reserved listing calendar making any other bookings impossible for probably the entire season.
As all the other recent Policy shifts, like obscuring the guest’s Profile, allowing bogus reviews by guests, the rating methodology etc should be seen as favoring the guest only and does not benefit the Host in any which way.