Cancellation or not

[Dorit5]

Hi All

I had a reservation for 19 days. I had conversed with the guest a few times prior to the date of arrival. 

On the date of arrival (thursday) - I had stayed home awaiting his arrival - a no show. 

No email, no phone call, no message. 

At around midnight - i sent a message thru airbnb to make sure the guest was ok

the next morning I received a text message from a relative (in my country) - the guest was delayed - they are with the relative they will be in touch with me shortly. 

3 hours later- i received a text message - they will stay the weekend with the relative and will arrive sunday

the next day - i recieved another message asking to cancel the reservation - because of distance (I am 10 minutes away from the relative). 

I was offered 5 days payment as a comfort payment.

I feel I am owed more than that since the reservation was not cancelled - not even on the day of arrival - but actually 3 days later. 

[Annette33]

@Dorit5 , you have a flexible cancellation policy in place. that means any night not spent 24 hours after the official cancellation gets fully refunded to the guest. So they were pretty accurate in offering 5 nights of paid lodging, no more.

Who did the cancellation? I hope it wasn't you!! Even if you agreed to "guest asks you to cancel", that also gets turned by Airbnb into the cancellation coming from you , and you get slapped with stiff financial penalties, and the dates of that booking remain blocked out. So I hope you didn't agree to that! But I worry.....The last posting on your review page indicates another cancellation , attributed to you. I hope you educated yourself, and learned about the penalties involved. If not, please do so now.

[Jonathan6]

You are under no obligation to give a refund under the ABnB terms, but you may need to understand the law where you host.  In most places you have an obligation to "mitigate" your damages, meaning that you need to relist the place and see if you get another renter.  A court could order the return of some portion of the rental regardless of the agreement through ABnB.  

From a customer service standpoint you need to decide if you do not want to see this guest again.  If you want to be accomidating you could offer a credit towards the next stay.

It's not your fault that the person cancelled and chose not to have travel insurance.

[Helen3]

Contact your guest through BNB and let them they need to cancel. You can tell them that when they do, if you get another booking you can consider a partial refund based on how many days you can relet minus any expenses such as cleaning.