First of all - the calendar is blocked out and no further bookings are being accepted. These are bookings from about 6 months ago, a couple months before the Melbourne lockdown and before we knew how bad the pandemic was really going to hit us.
Any guest will be given at least a month's notice that we will not be able to honour their booking - so no one will be left scrambling at the last minute. I agree that would be really unethical, and just a bad move to out someone in that position.
The original plan was to try out AirBnB for 1 year (with a 6 month booking window) and see how it went from there. I was confident it would be successful - and in fact we even made superhost at the first possibility - but then COVID threw a wrench in the works!
@Helen3 Can you tell me more about the time they turned someone down for penalty free cancellation due to sale of a home? Was it someone you knew, or a post you saw online...?
@Jessica-and-Henry0 Thank you for the link to the article, that is definitely something I need to check out! As you said, the sale of the property is indeed out of my control - I have tried to talk him out of selling it as I still believe the place is beautiful and has a lot of potential - but the fact of the matter is that I said I could make him some money, and it is unfortunately not making any.