Sorry for the long post, but I am going through the process of selling our condo to someone who will list it on ABB and thought I'd share my experience including mistakes and successes.
We have a very busy condo on Maui. As of closing, we have 20 guests we need to cancel and redirect to the new owner. (As someone else mentioned, it's correct we have no idea whether or not he will be a good host. He does manage other properties and has purchased ours as a vacation rental property. Since Maui is very impacted and unfortunately there is a lot of price gouging, I wanted to at least give our guests the option to re-book at the location they are happy with having discovered it through ABB search and reading all of our great reviews.) The co-host method mentioned elsewhere seems like a good way to do this, but I opted out of that so we would not have to deal with transferring funds to the owner AND did not want have income (that really is not ours) to report to Maui county, state of HI, and the IRS. Yes, there would be write-offs at tax time, but why complicate things?
Anyway, once we had a clear closing date, the purchaser of our condo created a duplicate listing of the condo. I sent a of list of guests that would potentially contact them as well as dates and rates he said he would honor. This way he could adjust his rates and calendar before the requests came in. He thought he had turned off instant booking but unfortunately soon discovered that was not the case when he got a booking from someone else. He had to cancel that person and then had to get ABB support to unblock the dates. (If a host cancels a guest w/o notifying ABB first, as a penalty the dates get blocked. You are also charged a fee.) He set his rate at what he thought was a high nightly thinking that would discourage bookings, but that didn't work. It really was a timing issue on getting the site up and getting requests from our guests BEFORE others request for those slots.
A month or so ago when we listed our place for sale, I turned off Instant Bookings on our site. I continued to get booking requests for the very few openings we had but created a canned response that the property was being sold and unknown whether a new owner was going to list. In the response, I urged them to retract their request so I did not have any penalties or blocked dates by cancelling them. This is what the new owner should have done to avoid some grief. I discovered after the fact that I could have changed my booking options so NO dates were available, thus avoiding the requests altogether. (You can find this setting at menu / listing / pricing and availability / Calendar availability / availability window). I wanted to leave our listing available so potential guest could get referred to our listing from the new owner's listing and see our reviews.
Prior to all this when we knew we were going to sell, I contacted ABB (initially by phone but then continued via email) to alert them to the fact we were selling. (Contrary to what you may read, ABB support is very good and responsive via phone or email, as long as you have superhost status.) There is no mechanism to "transfer" guests and this really is how it should be. Guests book due to reviews which "belong" to the listing. Support told me that they would help to cancel our guests and send a link to the new owner's listing. Just in case, and to be more personal, I drafted a canned message for each guest explained we were selling but not to worry. They would get a full refund and a recommendation to book with the new owner at the same condo. It was a darned good thing I did this! When we were ready to pull the trigger (new owner supposedly had his listing ready), I contacted ABB support to tell them I was planning to cancel all. I was told there would be not penalties (fees and blocked dates.) Unfortunately, without notifying me, they cancelled ALL of my guests with no explanation to the guests. I only discovered this after numerous guests contacted me asking about the cancellations. I also checked my calendar to see it was empty! Of course at that point I also started to get booking requests from new guests. I called ABB right away. They responded immediately with many apologies but they could not get everyone re-booked with us. It was time to forge on. So, I modified the canned message I had earlier created to explain the mix-up but also included the link to the new owner so they could request to book with him. Everyone was very understanding and glad to have a place to go with the same rate and dates. Unfortunately due to the suddenness of the situation, the new owner did not quite have his listing ready so I heard back from guests that the rate was much higher or dates not available. I got hold of the new owner to inform him so he could resolve issues on his end. I then replied to guests explaining he was working on the listing, please be patient and contact again. (Quick replies is super hand for this so you don't have to duplicate your effort and can use shortcodes to personalize.) So, it has been a scramble but after 2 days, almost all guests have been taken care of.
To recap here's a process that works. 1) contact ABB ahead of time alerting them that you will be cancelling guest due to a sale. Be sure to state approximately when that will happen so they don't jump the gun. They will want documentation. (I sent them page 1 of our purchase agreement.) 2) When you have a rough closing date and sure sale, turn off Instant Booking and adjust calendar availability so you do not receive any more bookings. 3) Have the new owner set up a duplicate site but de-list it until ready to receive booking request. Have them turn off Instant Booking. 4) Prepare a message to send to guests explaining the sale, that they will be cancelled, and provide the new owner link so they can re-book. 4) Contact ABB and have them cancel all appropriate guests on a certain date and be sure to have them explain why and provide the new listing link. OR cancel everyone yourself and send the notification to them. 5) Have the new owner activate his listing and respond to the guests booking requests. If something is wonky on their end with pricing, they can offer a special pricing that reflects the rate they are expecting to pay plus the cleaning fee. 6) De-list your site.
Again, sorry for the length of this but I hope it is of value to anyone else in the same situation.
