My guest asked me to cancel the reservation, which I did and now by calendar is blocked.

[Isobel18]

How to I unblock my calender?

[Yulianna0]

@Isobel18, some guests really don’t know how to cancel, but the majority just try to save their fees asking host to cancel the reservation. Never do it! In any strange and unusual case contact support team. It is much more safe:)   Hope your guest asked you to cancel via Airbnb messenger? Contact CS and tell them what really happened, I think that they will unblock the dates and you will not get penalties. 

[Susan17]

There's obviously some confusion here. It looks as though @Helen3 is assuming that the guest simply asked @Isobel18 to cancel, via the regular message thread or whatever, and that Isobel duly cancelled through the regular host cancellation procedure. 

On the other hand, the cancellation process that @Sarah977 and @Mark 

are referring to is indeed the nasty, underhand tactic that Airbnb employs in encouraging the guest to send a sneaky  "guest wishes to cancel, do you agree to this?" notification to the host, and as soon the unwitting host clicks "Accept", then, bingo!! -  the cancellation is automatically on the host, penalties and all (The penalties for cancellation are not flagged to the host in this instance)

To be fair, 99% of experienced hosts are blissfully unaware of this little wheeze too, and are getting caught out by it every day of the week. As for new hosts educating themselves on how the platform works - I've been on Airbnb since 2010, and with all the never-ending "tweaks" and "updates", even I still struggle to figure out what's what most of the time 😉

[Helen3]

Thank you @Susan17 . You are absolutely correct. That is what I assumed.

I agree that if the guest had sent the host a cancellation notice stating the host had chosen to cancellation, that would be disengenuos. 

@Isobel18  - can you clarify.

[Isobel18]

Thank you for the comments everyone, I'm in discussion with the support team at Airbnb now so I'll let you know the outcome. 

[Helen3]

Thanks for keeping us updated @Isobel18 

Did the guest message you to ask you to cancel?

or

Did you get an automated message through Airbnb saying the guest had indicated that you wanted to cancel the booking and asking you to confirm that this was the case?

[Sarah977]

@Helen3 

"Did you get an automated message through Airbnb saying the guest had indicated that you wanted to cancel the booking and asking you to confirm that this was the case?"

But that's not how it reads. It reads that the guest wants to cancel and does the host approve it. Nowhere does it say that this would go down as a host cancellation. As @Susan17 says, one would have to know this, and it's extremely difficult for even experienced hosts to keep abreast of all the Airbnb policies, which are forever changing and being added to.

[Mark116]

@Sarah977   Exactly.  It reads like you are just agreeing that it's okay for the guest to cancel.  It's a dirty trick.  I wonder how often airbnb actually reserves the host penalties when this is done?  I would assume it must still be a benefit to airbnb or they would have changed it long ago, but it's hard to say w/this company.

[Helen3]

I don't know the precise wording @Sarah0 I was just summarising my understanding of what it said

It sounds like you have a better knowledge of the correct working than I do. Can you post it?

[Marlou-and-John0]

What if the guest initiated the cancelling but the calendar remained blocked?

[Sandra856]

Hi @Marlou-and-John0 🙂

If the guest sent you a request to cancel and you accepted it will look like you did the cancellation. In the future make sure guests cancel from the guests side alone. You don't need to confirm a cancellation. You will need to call or write to Airbnb ASAP as they are the only ones who can change it so it doesn't look like you cancelled on a guest. It looks bad from upcoming guests perspective as it currently says on your profile that you cancelled on a guest and the dates on your calender will stay locked if you don't contact airbnb.

It is set up in a sneaky way so it happens to many hosts :-). Contact airbnb and they can fix it 🙂

Best, Sandra 

[Sandra856]

@Marlou-and-John0

United States and Canada

+1-415-800-5959 +1-855-424-7262 (toll-free)