Guest cancelled after check-in

[Nora36]

I'm completely confused. My guest cancelled after two nights of a two-week stay due to sudden illness. She cancelled via Airbnb after they left. All good. Except - my cancellation policy is Moderate, which means they would get 50% back of their unused nights. But do I have to manually initiate that refund directly or does Airbnb automatically take that back from the payment made and credit the guest? I can't tell because when I look at Refund, it says I can refund the guest up to the amount I was paid, which looks like the adjusted amount. It's very confusing to me.

[Cynthia-and-Chris1]

Let Airbnb take care of all the refunds.  If the guest is owed a refund, Airbnb will process and pay it automatically.  You are not obligated to refund anything additional to what Airbnb will already take care of.

[Nora36]

Thank you! I wasn't sure as I couldn't see anything had been initiated from the Airbnb side. The guests did correctly Cancel but all I saw was the option to refund them, nothing about how that process actually happened. It seemed from the Airbnb site that I had to initiate the refund myself. Does Airbnb take the money out of the bank account tied to my Airbnb profile/account? Not having had this happen before, I just want to be sure things process correctly. I do appreciate the response!

[Cynthia-and-Chris1]

@Nora36 Airbnb will deduct the payment from one of your future payouts.  Again, if the guest is owed any refund, Airbnb will automatically process this and you won't have to do anything.

[David126]

They may be able to obtain a full refund under Extenuating Circumstances, but any cancellation is up to them to initiate.

[Suzanne161]

I had guests arrive at my farm from the city and they left later in the evening as they said they were afraid of the blackflies and some bees that they saw outside.  I think they already found another place and made this up to get out of paying.  I have had dozens of guests and this has never happened.  It looks like Airbnb is giving them a full refund because I didn't specify in the listing that there are bees and blackflies outside.  REALLY??  Airbnb told me I needed to specify that there are bugs outside in my listing... Does this mean a guest can cancel because I didn't tell them about the trees, the sun or the rain? The bugs are OUTSIDE - we find them everywhere outdoors.  Thank god for the bees, they don't bother anyone and support our entire eco system.  All of these critters were there before I was and they are harmless.  I am totally disgusted.

[David126]

@Suzanne161

Do not try to rationalise it, the way to madness.