Guest cancells early in booking and discounts should change

[MaryAnne54]

hi, I had put some discounts in for length of stays and had a guest take advantage of biggest, 40% if booking more than 12 weeks. She chose to make payments in monthly installments through airbnb and now, just at end of 3 weeks in, she said she has cancelled, and has removed all her belongings. Returned my key.  Email rec'd from Airbnb advised banking issues on my end?  The weekly discount at time of her booking was only 20%, or monthly at 25%. This was my first booking. Questions about those remaining 3 months and a week show blocked,  as well as the smaller discount she would have received if she is was only staying 3 weeks, she should not get the 40% discount. What happens to these things. ?

[Emiel1]

@MaryAnne54 

If a reservation is 28 nights or more, the monthly discount applies and the "long stay cancellation policy" is applied automatically. So if the guest cancels after 3 weeks, she will not be refunded the next 30 nights. But if the guest does not pay the second installment, airbnb can not charge the guest for it.

Then you will only have the first installment (for first 30 nights).

[Debra300]

@MaryAnne54,

What the guest did is a frequently mentioned scam, and new hosts are often targeted.  The guest books a longer stay to get the larger discount, and then cancels the reservation early.  Airbnb will not charge them the rate for a shorter stay, and the guest has a significant discount for the stay.  The way that I avoid this is to only allow individual reservations that are no longer than 30 days. 

[Sarah977]

It's not a great idea to take long-term bookings, especially for a new host. You should aim for shorter bookings so you get a chance to learn how to vet guests well before accepting their bookings, and you also need to build up reviews, which you won't get many of with long-terms.

Airbnb doesn't guarantee the payments, either. If the guest doesn't pay up for following months, you'll just get a notice saying that they couldn't collect payment from the guest and you could be left with trying to evict someone who won't leave,  which could get ugly if they've stayed long enough to be covered by landlord/tenant laws.

Although Airbnb is now encouraging long-term stays in the wake of COVID, their platform isn't set up to provide safeguards for hosts in those situations. 

@MaryAnne54

[Jessica2355]

I just had a similar although more innocent/non scammy version of this happen to me! It’s incredibly frustrating that Airbnb does not revert the longer stay/ weekly discount in the event of a cancellation or even alteration. What makes it especially frustrating is that there’s no mention that they won’t revert the discount in their own cancellation policy guide.

my situation: guest arrives Saturday for a full week stay at 15% discount as is relocating to the area. Furniture arrives earlier than anticipated so no longer needs the full stay. Asks for an alteration midway through stay to take 3 days off the booking while already checked in and having stayed almost 2 days. I find the alteration unfair because unlike the cancellation policy, it doesn’t penalize the guest an extra day, even though once you’ve checked in any “alterations” at that point should be treated as canceling the remaining days. 

So I ask the guest to cancel, believing that the guest would either wait and cancel the next morning or be able to choose to cancel just the few extra days. Ends up canceling the entire stay right away even though still needs an extra night and opening up all the nights on the calendar. Of course, even though the guest canceled and is now staying only 3 of the original 7 days, 15% discount is still applied! Absolutely ridiculous. I called airbnb customer service but they can’t actually ever control or change anything or revert the 15% discount. It ended up working out because the guest still needed an extra night and my policy is two nights min so I charged two nights but then sent the guest some money back to cover cleaning and half a night (the other half night I’m using to cover the 15% discount that shouldn’t have been applied). But really what a hassle and waste of time over something that could’ve been so simple.