HOW MUCH OF A DISCOUNT???????

[Sammy-L-0]

i have our AirBnB nightly rate currently set for $92 a night, with no discounts. I got a reservation tonight, already confirmed by AirBnB because of Instant Book, for 28 days at ... get this ... $29 a night! WTAF??? That won't pay the mortgage and the electric bill. Has AirBnB gone completely off the deep end?

Has anyone else had a problem with this? It's a 68.4 percent discount, when I clearly have no discounts set. I could make more in 10 days.

[Sammy-L-0]

I called support and partially figured out the problem. There was a page in the pricing that I swear to you I had never seen, and it had set the monthly price at $900. I didn't set it, and I'm the only one with access to the account. This was cutting our rate so low, there was no way we could survive. Hopefully ABB will do away with their draconian penalties for cancellation. We just qualified for Superhost if we could keep our current rating another month, and now ABB may not give it to us because I cancelled a reservation that would have cost us as much as $1,700 dollars.

[Colleen253]

@Sammy-L-0 There are other reports on this forum of this happening. Keep in mind you have some leeway to cancel IB penalty free.

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/2022/

[Sarah977]

@Sammy-L-0  You are allowed 3 penalty-free cancellations per year for Instant Bookings. However, I don't know that Airbnb considers their un-user-friendly site issues to qualify for a penalty-free one.

Check all your settings on a regular basis. Hosts gave found their settings "mysteriously" changed on their own, always to guest advantage.

What you could have tried was messaging the guest to explain what happened and ask the guest if they would cancel, giving them a full refund, including the service fee. If they had agreed, you would have avoided cancelling and any asssociated penalties.

[Sammy-L-0]

I did. The guest was. Unwilling to do that because he was afraid he wouldn't get refunded. It all finally worked out. I sent a message, called twice and talked to three different people at AirBnB. They finally removed all penalties "as a one-time courtesy because you're a great host" (Rolling my eyes so hard I can see my own brain.)

[Karla533]

@Sammy-L-0 

I also have a hypothesis that hosts who tweak their listings regularly get placed higher in the list of available places. So every few days I review and fiddle with things slightly.

[Sarah977]

@Karla533  That is something I have heard before, but its validity is questionable. When I experimented with that, it didn't change my ranking at all.

[Emilia42]

For future reference:

 @Sammy-L-0 Under trip length, reduce your maximum night stay. Then click the box to manually approve longer stays. This way any stay over your maximum nights will come through as a Request to book and you have the opportunity to check the pricing then approve or decline it. Month-long stays are too risky to approach any other way.

This is a good feature that you should use.  

[Sammy-L-0]

Thanks! I'll try that.

[Gillian166]

oh actually something weird happened yesterday that has me going through my listing looking for clues. 

this part less relevant: Guest messages morning of 2 night Friday/Sat stay, says booking is now for 2 people, not 4, Can we adjust. I say sure. (grumbling mildly, but a 2-night booking is still nice for us, gives us a break). So I approve adjustment down to 2 people. 

Then she cancels.  oh! silly me didn't think of that, but at least she didn't know to do the trick of moving the booking a month forward. So i'm like, aaargh, now i have Friday/Saturday not booked but at least i get to keep her booking$. then i look at it and something is wrong, the first night is charged at $180 and the second night was $90. what??? I think I had a small discount applied for a night stay but 50% off your second night?! that's not a thing. 

Still not sure what happened, and have been too busy to investigate further as I did thankfully snag another 2 night booking to fill the gap. 

edit: is it something to do with the cancellation policy?
"

• Moderate cancellation policy: Guests can cancel up to 5 days before check-in for a full refund, and you won’t be paid. If they cancel after that, you’ll be paid for each night they stay, plus 1 additional night and 50% for all unspent nights.
  
  trying to work out the meaning from this statement, as they didn't stay any nights i get "1 additional night and 50% for unspent nights"  [except, it's not additional, is it, ha]
  is that how that's been calculated?

[Sarah977]

@Gillian166  Yes. They didn't stay at all, so they got charged in full for the first night  (the "additional" night) and 50% for the second. 

[Gillian166]

thanks for clarifying. 
seems a bit unfair that they can cancel the morning of the trip and still get 50% back.  But apart from grumbling about it what else can we do. 

I'm not quite willing to go to the next level up as we get a lot of late bookings and people who visit for weddings, or random reasons. 

[Sarah977]

@Gillian166  I've always used moderate myself and never found it a problem. Only once did I have a guest cancel after the 5 days, and that was an odd circumstance. She was coming from Europe, had booked a few weeks ahead and she wasn't answering any of my messages asking if she had received the map I had sent her (my place is impossible to find without it) and asking for ETA. Finally I asked Airbnb to try to contact her and it took another 2 days until they managed to. Then I got a very apologetic message from her, saying a close family member had died and her whole trip and bookings were off the table- she hadn't even had her phone turned on and her bookings were the last thing on her mind.

Otherwise, most of my guests are international and have flights booked, maybe booked surf or sailing lessons here- there are too many things in play for them to  cancel last minute.

I also considered what policy I would be willing to commit to if I were a guest, and moderate seemed reasonable to me. And I wanted to avoid pleading or irate messages from guests who had booked with a strict policy, upset or angry because they wouldn't get any refund at all.

Your guest didn't get 50% back, they only got 25% back- they had a 2 night booking, paid in full for the first night and got half back for the second.

[Gillian166]

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@Sarah977 wrote:

I also considered what policy I would be willing to commit to if I were a guest, and moderate seemed reasonable to me.

Bingo! that's how i operate too. i only changed mine up to moderate cos i had a few people who were selfish #$%^@s with last minute cancellation, something I've never done, so I thought that the moderate one was tolerable. 

Your guest didn't get 50% back, they only got 25% back- they had a 2 night booking, paid in full for the first night and got half back for the second.

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well, don't forget, it was originally for 4 people, (i charge extra after 2 guests) and she tricked me into dropping it down to 2 people, then cancelled.  I don't budget on future earnings though, so it's fine.  

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Gillian166 Yes that is how it is calculated. Flexible and moderate cancellation policies effectively let guests go home early if it is raining and get refunded for some or all of the remaining nights. This is why we have a strict policy which, while not perfect, is way better.