Should I accept longer booking in the fall

Should I accept longer booking in the fall

Right now we don’t have many bookings due to the Coronavirus and I have a request for July 20, 2020 to Sept 20, 2020. I don’t know if I should accept this booking or if I should reject it and hope people are traveling again in 3 months in the hopes of more money and shorter term bookings. What’s your thoughts?

4 Replies 4
Nanxing0
Level 10
Haverford, PA

Not sure what your setup looks like but as long as it's not the house you are living in then why not? Do screening more rigorously by examining the guest's profile and ask them what the purpose of the booking is and see if it makes sense. You can choose to reject those with no review or profile incomplete (like no verified ID, etc). I would also tell the guest that it's subject to the long term booking cancellation policy and there will be no exception to that, unless Airbnb extends the EC and overrule it.

Yadira22
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Hi @Justin999 
hope you are well. 

i would also look at laws regarding tenant rights surrounding your location, this would be in addition to above. Also, do educate yourself on the cancellation policies and processes associated to longer term bookings. 
Good luck to you and stay safe! 
Yadira 🙂

@Justin999  I'm going to assume your Community profile is genuine, even though it's not linked to an account with a listing. Perhaps you are using multiple accounts on this platform. Anyway, since it's not clear where you're located, you're biggest concern is going to be what the local laws and directives are in your location. There's nowhere in the world where there's any certainty that normal tourism as we know it will be possible as early as July. Maybe you'll be allowed to accept bookings, but will your guests be able to experience your region in the way you advertise, with all the goods and services they might need? Knowing full well that a vaccine for Covid-19 is over a year away, are you in any position to guarantee the safety of guests who are dumb enough to be traveling, or of yourself or whoever is in charge of cleaning the space after these guests?

 

I personally think that if you're not feeling 100% certain of your ability to safely and legally host in these circumstances, you should not only decline this booking but also block your calendar off for all future dates until the situation has changed enough that travel makes sense. The only exception I would make to this is if your guest is a front-line worker whose services are essential to battling this pandemic, and the property you're offering is fully self-contained and safe for them to use as a base for an essential function. 

 

Otherwise, why on earth is your listing even available? What  (presumably Murdoch-owned) television channel are you watching that's convinced you that everything is going to be totally normal again as early as July?

All very good points. I recently heard that we should be hitting the peak of the outbreak in a couple of weeks. Trying to guess what the status of the country will be 3 months from now is a lost cause. I don’t think it will be recovered neither will be outbreak be contained.