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

[Mark3227]

Hello Pilar, thank you for your follow up and sorry for my confusion about posting my current thoughts on an outdated thread. What I was referring to was Airbnb's recent change to the Strict Cancellation. I found this change to be very sneaky, but perhaps I missed this update in one of their email communications. The new Strict cancellation policy does not work for me because it makes no sense for me to rent to guests who can cancel their reservation with as little as 7-days notice prior to check in and I would only receive 50% of the rental amount.

When I originally selected the "Strict" cancellation option, I understood it meant that I would receive 50% no matter when guests cancelled and 100% if the guest cancelled with less than 30 days. Not sure when this change to the Strict cancellation policy took place.

I have now moved my listing to the new "Strict or Non-refundable cancellation policy terms: In addition to Strict, offer a non-refundable option—guests pay 10% less, but you keep your payout no matter when they cancel. More details.

However, am not not sure what this means. When I select "More details" I am redirected to Airbnb's standard cancellation page, with no information about what "Strict or Non-Refundable" actually means. They show a "Super Strict 30 days" and Super Strict 60 days", but they don't allow me to select either of these options in their drop-down menu. If they gave me the option, I would select the "Super Strict 30 days" as I believe this was what the “Strict” cancellation policy used to be. Unfortunately, this policy is by invitation only to certain hosts under special circumstances.

Perhaps it is just my opinion, but Airbnb should stop pretending they care about hosts. They are full of talk about how important hosts are to them and their success. Yet, time and time again they make unilateral decisions that negatively impact hosts. During this COVID crisis, VRBO has been a dream to work with because they consider guest and hosts equally. Unlike Airbnb who favors guests at the full expense of hosts. Airbnb’s lake of transparency and mixed messaging to guests and hosts is not just frustrating. It is very poor business.

[Mark3227]

lack or transparency....not lake of transparency. Sorry

[Caesar5]

As usual, Airbnb chooses to pander to "Guests" rather than protecting "Hosts".  When will Airbnb, as a "travel agency", stop biting the hands that feed them?

' 

[Charlotte332]

To Airbnb

I want to know whether hosts concerns are going to effect change

[Justin-And-Anna0]

You answered your own question.  When you stop feeding them.

[Evan83]

Hi all, i think 48hrs grace period is ok oitside of the 2 weeks full refund limit.

The one thay i want to discuss is if guest can have a 50% refund on their unused remaining nights. What kind of rule is that?

Let say they booked 5 nights. Everything running smoothly and no complaints. And somehow on the 3rd night, they suddenly said they want to go to other cities earlier, so they will not use the 4th and 5th night. And demanded for 50% fee refunds on those unused 2 nights. Really? We lost opportunity bookings and income for those 2 unused nights. Seriously unfair.

Can any other host mates or Airbnb host relations discuss on this matter? Lately i got 2 or 3 of these kinds of cancelation already.

And also I hope Airbnb also did not pro to the guests right away without discussing the matter to the host first. When guests requested for a full 2 nights refund after staying for 1 night, it is unacceptable by just saying my place is dusty. I am a superhost and we know our responsibility. Dusty has many versions and very subjective. And you easily approved the claim without asking me for once for the sake or good relations with the guest. Wowww.

Maybe those problems above are the things we need to clarify and get better solutions. Thank you. Other than that, awesome Airbnb

[Charlotte332]

A guest was already in our apaprtment, the guest contacted me to ask if they be refunded for the last night of their stay I said no. No argument.

[Charlotte332]

I had ppl in my apartment & l was contacted by the guest that booked it, saying they won't be staying the last night and asked for a refund. I said no. No argument.

[Peta7]

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.

[Christine1]

@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.

---

[Peta7]

Hi Christine1,

Thank you for this well written contribution offering much insight and needed by many.

We actually offered our pennies worth not intended as a warning to others nor to cause any distress but the contribution should rather be seen as a quick 'catch up' for all of the many new users agreeing with the new cancellation policy without having any knowledge of the old 🙂

We definitely do not see your post as being contrary and believe we actually agree on most points you mention, as stated, this policy shift is not impacting much on our fast paced City listing but from the overwhelming  negative sentiments voiced by others on this forum we believe it is evident that the more season depending hosts are severely impacted  on by the infamous changes.

From the high volume of anti-platform sentiment on the web it is clear that the reasons for the policy changes offered are 100% legitimate,  however when we consider the Global volume of transactions, it is believed that the negativity stems from a small minority of disgruntled users only and should perhaps not have been seen as reason enough for these drastic policy shifts and further believe there were softer approaches available to impact on the platform abusers only and not on all platform users alike?

Now this is where we may differ slightly from your stance in as far as we firmly believe that "nothing succeed like success" and the well proven old Airbnb platform were considered by us as the absolute best and being an extremely well thought out system and in our opinion should have been left unchanged as it was evidently working perfectly well for us and the vast majority of other platform users.

After saying all of this; we have finally come to realize that nobody forced us to join this, still highly esteemed booking platform and we should all accept the now long standing changes made to the platform terms, policies and guidelines and use the available listing tools to continue hosting by choice as we have been for some time now:-)

[Vanessa89]

To remove the strict cancelation period is a terrible decision!!! For us who do long lets form 14 days up of up to several months, it would be impossible to find a suitable guest on a short notice! I plan my whole life around finding long term guests for each upcoming summer. (I have doen it for more than7 years). I will be in deep deep trouble if guests start cancelling after 48 hours. I also find that 48 hours is too long. 24 hrs should be enough.
At the checking-in, guests are shown everything thoroughly. Here they have the chance to see that the flat is what it said on the listing.

If I can not have a strict cancelation fee, i am considering laeaving airbn becaue I need to be certain of a fully booked summer period.

[Heather85]

why isn't it up to the host? We should have the RIGHT to hold bookers accountable. 

[Fuchsia-Lodge0]

I am also considering the same. 

see my update below

[Jamie629]

HI everyone

This situation is devastating for all of us, hosts and travelers but Airbnb is NOT at all supporting hosts.. how on earth are we supposed to survive is this is how we support ourselves and our families? due to many cancellations, we don't have enough money to pay our rents for the airbags, so not only are we not earning anything but now we are also losing money evvery month. what can we do as hosts so that Airbnb supports us as well during this time?