I don't want to use my travel credit yet

[Mihal10]

I had to cancel a booking because of COVID-19 (In fact, no one is even allowed to travel to the location in question) but because the host declined to refund me, AirBNB instead gave me a travel credit. Fine. But now and it's automatically applying the credit to a new booking I'm making elsewhere. Is it possible to choose when to apply the credit? The cancelled booking was for a group function - it's not my money to use.

[Anonymous]

@Mihal10  Did you try editing the Payment Method settings? I'm not entirely sure if it's possible with this particular kind of travel credit, but that's the first place I'd check.

If it doesn't work, and your upcoming trip is with another person, you could organize the booking through their account (all the better if they don't have an account and you can get the referral bonus). But what I would do in your situation is use the travel credit now to make sure there's no risk of it expiring, and then transfer the appropriate amount to the group on whose behalf you placed the original booking.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Mihal10 

If it were me, I'd just use the credit and give $$ back to the group. 

I'm sure the "group" will prefer to have even a portion of their money back, rather than as credit under your account. 

[Gordon0]

Assuming this booking fell under the EC policy, @Mihal10, you would have been presented with a (more trickier) option to get a cash refund which meant submitting documents. As it is, I imagine you clicked the 'accept immediate credit' button.

Anyway, moot points aside, this particular type of credit is applied automatically to the next booking, and - as I recall- isn't a physical credit, ie. you don't have a code?

I'd be using on my next booking and paying some back to the others (unless it's more than your booking is for?).

[Mihal10]

Update: My travel credit temporarily disappeared, so I called Airbnb. They gave me a code, so I have that now. Also, apparently you can switch off apply credit, but it's not where you'd expect it to be (it's in the centre container, and you can't turn it off until you get to the final step - not very intuitive). Anyway, problem solved. Thank you for the tips!