Hurricane Dorian

[Patricia2143]

I am not a host.  I am a guest.  The airlines recommended that I cancel my flight for Wednesday due to the hurricane.  I took their advice.  However, Airbnb doesn't want to refund my money (almost $1000) because my flight MIGHT be able to land on Wednesday as scheduled.  They will decide what to do on Wednesday.  Mandatory evacuations, National Guard being called in, Governor is requesting that no visitors come at this time.  Yet Airbnb says that if my plane can get there, so can I.  Seriously?  When does common sense take over and people do the right thing.  My host won't authorize a refund because he won't be able to re-rent on such short notice.  Really?  

If this is SOP for airbnb, I won't use it anymore.  $$$ seems to be more valuable that people's safety.

Any advice from hosts on how to resolve this?

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Patricia2143 

and what was your destination?

[Patricia2143]

Orlando Florida

[Susan17]

Sorry, haven't got any advice on how to resolve your current issue, @Patricia2143, but for those travelling in hurricane season, who wish to take their own responsibility for their own travel mishaps, (as opposed to expecting total strangers to foot the bill and be out of pocket instead), there's always Travel Insurance with Hurricane cover. 

https://www.travelguard.com/travel-insurance/weather-faq/hurricane-questions

Q. How can travel insurance cover my vacation investment in the event of a hurricane or other unforeseen severe weather?
A. In the event of a covered hurricane or other unforeseen severe weather, travel insurance provides coverage under the Trip Cancellation and Interruption benefit. If your trip is cancelled for a covered reason, we will refund the pre-paid, forfeited, non-refundable trip costs trip up to the limit of coverage.

[Brenda328]

I'll join this conversation because I am a host and last week Airbnb arbitrarily approved a cancellation with a full refund for my guests who were supposed to arrive last Saturday and depart again before Hurricane Dorian ever even got to Florida - and Hurricane Dorian was never expected to get anywhere near my property when it did hit Florida. 

The weather was actually hot and sunny for all the scheduled days of their stay; the guests were driving and so had no worries about airplane schedules; and they were coming from an area that was completely unimpacted by the hurricane so they met none of the criteria of the extenuating circumstances policy.  

Airbnb unilaterally made this decision without consulting me and I am the only person out of any money - the guest had absolutely no skin in the game.  They just went somewhere else for their Labor Day weekend holiday with the full refund that Airbnb issued to them out of my pocket.  I had a strict reservation with them that they made two months ago for a holiday weekend that I could have easily booked with another guest if not for their last minute cancellation.

My theory is that if Disney World (which is located five minutes from my house) is open guests are probably safe!

When will Airbnb start applying their policies fairly?  And when will Airbnb stop making hosts responsible for the financial impact of every thing that happens.  If a property is in California and a guest could not travel to California because their flight was cancelled out of Florida, that is not the responsibility of the host in California.  Their property is available; that financial impact should fall solely on the guest. With Airbnb's extenuating circumstances policy, the host in California takes the entire financial loss.

I have to agree with the other commenters who recommended purchasing travel insurance.  Airbnb, stop making arbitrary decisions (especially when you don't have the facts) and start offering travel insurance to make this fair to everyone.   A host never benefits from travel insurance; only guests benefit from it so they should be responsible for purchasing it.  

Finally, I live where it snows and I travel for business.  I can't tell you how many times my flights have been cancelled and I have hotel reservations that have to be cancelled by 4:00 PM on the scheduled day of arrival or I am charged.  When my flight doesn't get cancelled until after that time or I get stuck in some random city, I have to eat the cost of the hotel room in my destination city.  No hotel has ever refunded me because of any extenuating circumstances policy or because they felt sorry for me - and in most cases because they are a hotel, they were probably able to resell my room later that night when I didn't arrive.

[Patricia2143]

I totally understand why you are upset. There was no reason for those guests to cancel.  My situation is a little different, though, and that is what I don't understand.  I'm supposed to arrive on Wednesday.  Even if the hurricane hit on Monday or Tuesday, the damage would be so extensive that it would be unwise for tourists to be there and be in the way.  Reports are that stores are selling out of non-perishable food and water.  We can't bring those items on the plane, so where/how would we eat?  I would totally eat it if I was planning on traveling a week or 2 before/after the hurricane, but I was planning on being there during.  

Again, common sense needs to prevail.  

The governor says for tourists to stay away and now is ordering residents to evacuate.  I guess Airbnb knows better than them.

[Lisa723]

@Patricia2143 the point other hosts are making here is that if you are refunded it will come out of your host's pocket, not Airbnb's. With its extenuating circumstances policy Airbnb essentially forces hosts to provide travel insurance to guests, gratis. So you're not likely to find a lot of sympathy in this forum. That said, given Airbnb's general record of favoring guests in these situations and roll-of-the-dice customer support responses I'd hazard a guess that if you try again with a different CS agent you might get a different result.

[Sarah977]

@Patricia2143  I'm actually very surprised to read this, as hosts from areas near there, but who aren't in the path of the hurricane at all have been writing in here saying Airbnb has been allowing penalty-free cancellations. I would suggest you contact them through Twitter or call again and maybe you'll get a response you consider appropriate.

[Patricia2143]

I just got off the phone with a supervisor. Their extenuating circumstances team will update the system for Wednesday on Wednesday. At that time, they will consider giving me a refund. My flight has been cancelled. I provided proof, but it got me nowhere. 

I called hoping to talk to someone with some common sense. The supervisor kept saying that she will refer this to my case worker. There is no common sense anymore. 

[Nicky109]

Hi Brenda,

I am now on my third round of supervisors and thought I would check the community blog and see how many other people are going through this.  Airbnb continue to hold the line that they allowed guests to cancel if they were frightened about the hurricane - yes this is what the last supervisor said!  So rather than reassure the guest that our home was not in the cone that was due to be impacted they just gave them their money back.  

When I read your post it was exactly what I went through right down to the email from Airbnb asking me to give my home for free having canceled my guest with a full refund.  

I am situated on the  south west coast of Florida and to be honest our local forecasters made it quite clear from the outset that we were never going to be impacted.  

This was thread I posted under -

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Hurricane-Dorian/td-p/1123840

My issue continues to be that Airbnb are not following their own EC policy which is very clear on this issue.  How on earth can we be expected to take reservations during the 6 month long hurricane season if they are now going to allow every guest to cancel every time a hurricane appears in the Atlantic.  

I am extremely mindful of my guests safety and it is always my primary concern - we canceled guests with a full refund during Hurricane Irma.  What I am also aware of is how sensational the media can be during these storms.  Dorian was an extremely powerful storm as the Bahamas bore witness too but it was also a very small storm in diameter so it meant that the whole of Florida was NOT going to experience a category 5 storm as they were insinuating at the outset.  I have now seen several threads where everywhere from the Keys to Virginia  guests were allowed to cancel with a full refund even though these homes were not in the cone.  In our case we experienced perfect weather the whole week of the storm - our guests would never have been in any danger.  Sadly they missed out on having a wonderful vacation due to Airbnb's over reaction.  Please note that Airbnb allowed my guests to cancel 6 days before the storm was even due to make landfall.  Flights were never canceled into our local airport - in fact they were diverted from Orlando and Miami INTO our airport because it was safe.

Anyway my reason for replying to your post, aside from letting you know that I think there may be a lot of hosts in this position, is that I am still extremely angry that I cannot get beyond a 'supervisor'.  So I am going to invoice Airbnb head office for the lost rental and if they don't pay I am going to take them to Court.  This is not just about the money.  This is about them following their own EC policy, not making it up as they go along and however they feel like it.  It's also about them getting some professional weather forecasting services before they blanket a whole area.  And I feel as hosts we need a judge to make it very clear whether we as hosts have any rights at all because if not I will just de-list for the 6 months of hurricane season.  And yes I totally agree with those that have mentioned that Airbnb should offer guests insurance - we wouldn't even be having this conversation if they did.  At the moment there is no incentive for a guest to take insurance if Airbnb just allow every guest to cancel anyway.  VRBO have an insurance policy they offer to guests.   

As to Patricia in TX - I am shocked to be honest that they refused to let you cancel.  Because as you can probably now see they were allowing virtually every other guest to cancel!

[Nicky109]

Adding link to another thread where I posted as did others experiencing the same thing.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/quot-Extenuating-Circumstance-quot-for-hurricane-a-thous...

[Brenda328]

@Nicky109, please keep us updated.  I have a full email chain (that I have taken screenshots of as I hear that email chains sometimes conveniently disappear) of my conversations with customer service.  The customer service representative cancelled my guest's reservation on August 29th.  The supervisor I escalated this issue to told me that on August 30th after an 'exhaustive analysis' the decision was made to allow guests to cancel in 'impacted areas'.  Customer service had already cancelled my guest's reservation a full day before this Airbnb decision was made - for a guest who would have completed their trip before the hurricane reached any part of Florida.

When I asked the supervisor to provide me with this list of impacted areas and dates so that I could determine whether any of my other guests might be impacted the supervisor closed the case with no further conversation.

On a side note, I have a ski property/mountain cabin.  If Airbnb is going to continue this policy I will have to remove this listing.  I get about 1/3 of my bookings on this property from Airbnb so they are most certainly not my only source of guests.   I cannot take the chance that snow might be forecast over the Christmas holidays and Airbnb arbitrarily cancels a reservation (that has been booked for six months with a strict cancellation policy) on the day before the guests are scheduled to arrive and gives the guests a full refund.   

[Brenda328]

Oh, and by the way, within less than 48 hours after cancelling my guest's reservation and giving them a full refund Airbnb contacted me asking me to donate my property for those dates for persons who might be displaced by the hurricane.  I guess my property is only safe for non-paying guests.

[Lisa723]

@Brenda328 good grief.

[Sally221]

A really clever company would have an travel insurance policy available  as a highly recommended option for travelers, Brenda that was insult atop injury- my heart's bleeding for Abaco and the season is just getting started