Guest coming from Covid-19 Hot-Spot - Reservation in 2 days!!!

Angie520
Level 2
Albuquerque, NM

Guest coming from Covid-19 Hot-Spot - Reservation in 2 days!!!

Reservation is for this Fri - Mon.  I just learned at 7:30 pm this evening from my guests they are coming from a Covid-19 hot spot.  They never mentioned it until I sent them their Check in Instructions yesterday morning at 10 am. I want to cancel the reservation, but read if I do I could be penalized $100 and my calendar would be blocked!!!  This is the holiday weekend and my rate is $125 vs $75. 

 

What can I do??? I'm high risk for Coronavirus also and I do the cleaning

 

I contacted customer service 2Xs and no one has gotten back to me.  Why don't they have help for new hosts also??? Time is running out.  I sent the guest a message telling them they should have told me when she was booking, because I would not have accepted the reservation and that I will cancel the reservation but that I'm waiting for Customer Service to call me back.

 

The wife is a professor and teaches they are coming from Arizona which is a hotspot, she said they both were working on Fri and would leave after work to drive to New Mexico. In the news, in the last few day Arizona universities & college have had an up tick in cases of teachers and students with coronavirus.  She never mentioned they were in quarantine either. Their profile says they are from Canada.

 

I'm new to hosting and have 5 - 5 star ratings to date - I do not want to lose all my hard work to get to Super Host.

 

What can I do???

 

HELP

 

Angie

(Angie520)

Angie
11 Replies 11
Cormac0
Level 10
Kraków, Poland

@Angie520 

 

Did you ever wonder why Airbnb, that purports to only being a listing site, can block your calendar based on their decision alone?

 

With regards to cancelling Angie, you'll have to make the decision which you value more, your health or your wealth.

Angie520
Level 2
Albuquerque, NM

That's whats upsetting, because they were the ones who withheld the info from me, why should I be penalized.?

 

I'm going to wait until tomorrow, if I don't hear back from Customer Service.  I'm going to ask the Guest to cancel the reservation and not me. 

 

The kicker is they are both Microbiologist and one is a professor.  They know better than anyone the dangers of Covid-19.  I feel like I should be paid for the reservation because they withheld information and important facts.  It appears they are not even living in Canada...they live in Arizona! Which I just learned...

 

Thank you for replying.

Angie
Mike-And-Jane0
Level 10
England, United Kingdom

@Angie520 The question for me is 'Is the guest doing anything wrong?' If they are obeying any regional/national laws re covid and are not breaking your rules then I don't think they are.

Not disclosing to you where they are coming from is like saying they didn't tell you they eat nuts constantly - Useful to know but irrelevant unless your house rules forbid nut eaters due to you having an allergy

There is a mandatory 14 day quarantine for all visitors from out of state. Their reservation is for 4 days.

 

Angie
Michelle53
Level 10
Chicago, IL

@Angie520    First of all, you have to put the star rating aside, and try to deal with the facts as you have them.  Don't let Superhost status drive your thinking.  Do the best you can as a host.  Ask yourself what a reasonable person would do, in this situation. 

 

First - Airbnb support is very, very slow right now, and probably won't be able to help you in time.

 

Second - does New Mexico require a quarantine for travellers from hotspots ?   The answer to this may help determine if you can have any penalties removed later (Bear in mind the first thing - support is slow, slow, slow) e.g. Chicago has a documented Travel Order mandating travellers from certain states to quarantine for 14 days. 

 

Third - are you going to have to enter the space soon after the guests depart, or can you leave a buffer of 3 or more days, before the next booking, and have at least 24 hours after they depart before entering to start cleaning ?   If it is a self-contained space, and you can avoid entering right away, or coming into contact with the guests, you have some time for any potential viral contamination to be reduced. Also, you should, anyway, be wearing personal protective equipment to go in and clean - mask and gloves at a minimum, and some kind of overall that you can remove after exiting the space.  It is also recommended to disinfect surfaces. There are a lot of threads you can read relating to Covid cleaning here in CC. 

 

I'm not condoning that the guests gave you formerly undisclosed information, but you have a difficult situation to think through, and, given the facts, you are stuck with making the decision on your own.    If you are hosting during a pandemic, you have to have a plan, irrespective of whether the guest is coming from a hotspot or not. You have to assume that every guest could be a potential Covid carrier.

@Angie520   Are you aware of the current travel restrictions for the state of New Mexico? My understanding is that all out-of-state visitors are required to self-quarantine for either 2 weeks or the entire duration of their stay, whichever ends first. Link: https://www.newmexico.org/covid-19-traveler-information/

 

Unless I am mistaken, this would imply that if you are not offering a suitable location for self-quarantine, you can only host guests from within the state.

 

Regardless of whether that is the case, it's not realistically possible for you to manage your exposure risk based on which part of the US your guests are travelling from. Globally speaking, the entire country is considered a hot spot, and an outbreak in any location can take weeks to register in confirmed cases. Rather than attempting to conduct your own Foreign Policy, I think your best options would be to either a) not host during a pandemic, or b)  change your cleaning and check-in/out procedure to mitigate your risk. If you leave a few days between bookings, that should (in theory) give you enough time after the guests have departed to safely enter the house for inspection and cleaning. 

 

But if you are committed to selecting your guests based on where they're coming from, you have to leave off Instant Book and ask about this before you confirm a booking. You don't get to penalize guests for failing to disclose something that isn't really any of your business in the first place.

Thanks Andrew see reply below.

 

Angie

Angie
Angie520
Level 2
Albuquerque, NM

Hi @Cormac0 @Mike-And-Jane0 @Michelle53  @Andrew0,

 

Thank you all for your advise.  I'm new to Hosting since the end of July.  I've been reading books, blogs, prepping to host.  I obviously need to do more research and educate myself on dealing with Covid, what questions to ask up front, assume that every guest could be a potential Covid carrier.

 

I currently don't do Instant Booking. I am doing the Airbnb Enhanced Cleaning, wear gloves, mask, etc. and more. I will definitely ask more questions, put in my booking request response - the mandatory 14 day quarantine for NM, install key pad for self check-in, ensure I space my guests out between bookings if I continue or I'll need to stop doing Airbnb.

 

I'm sorry I disagree, I think the guest should disclose they are coming from or live in a Hot Spot. I guess I'm being naive. The guest's, profile said Canada, but they actually are living in Arizona.  I asked if they were driving or flying and from where.  They initially did not answer the question.  I have another guest scheduled later this month.  He was up front and informed me they would be self-quarantined in Northern NM prior to coming to stay at my condo.

 

I just heard back from Airbnb Support.  They are going to cancel the reservation for me and I will not be penalized.

 

Thank you all for your help & suggestions, much appreciated.

 

Angie

Angie

@Angie520 fwiw, guests are often unaware of the home location shown in their profiles; they may have created the profile a long time ago and not updated it after relocating. If you care where people are coming from, you must ask.

@Angie520 I'm not really sure why coming from Canada is any safer than Arizona? The Candian border is currently closed so these guests would be flying thousands of miles probably through multiple airports. I would suggest you only open bookings to those traveling within NM.

Kia272
Level 10
Takoma Park, MD

@Angie520  After giving this careful thought, I'm not sure what the problem is. The whole concept with social distancing is to assume that everyone is infectious, so no matter if somebody is coming from a Covid hotspot or it's your neighbor or your grandmother. 

Granted, breaking quarantine restrictions is a different matter, but it's unrealistic to expect any kind of enforcement, because that's just not realistic. 

If you can safely allow guests no-contact access to your listing, and you are implementing the enhanced cleaning protocol, then what exactly is the risk, or why is it greater depending on where the guests are coming from?