What to do if a guest may be putting themselves at risk?

[Ross634]

Superhost here, with a conundrum AirBnB seems unable to address.

We recently contacted AirBnB and asked them to cancel a booking a few hours before the guest was due to arrive because a bridge required to get to our place became too dangerous to cross. We could not contact the guest (nor could we cross it ourselves to warn anyone approaching).

We were acting in accordance with AirBnB's own policy (https://www.airbnb.com.au/help/article/2022/can-a-host-cancel-a-reservation-without-adverse-conseque...) which says in such circumstances it is OUR RESPONSIBILITY to contact AirBnB and ask them to cancel and we can do so without adverse consequences. This is exactly what we did. But then we got hit with a cancellation penalty. Why? We can't figure out what we did wrong, or what we should have done instead.

Even the guest agreed (later) that we had done the right thing in the circumstances. We have asked AirBnB for advice on what we should have done in case a similar situation occurs again, and had zero response to this question in almost a week now. They just keep saying the penalty cannot be waived. Ok, but that's not actually answering the question we asked!

So, I will ask here ... what SHOULD we have done?

[Ross634]

"It seems like the moral to this story is that if you have to do any kind of cancellation that could or should be considered neutral, never do it yourself and expect things to work out according to the policy, always involve Airbnb in real time. "

We did that. It was actually AirBnB who did the cancellation. We had no internet at the time, and had to do everything over the phone.

If there is any moral to this story it may be that you have to make your own decisions and be prepared to suffer any consequences AirBnB decides to throw at you.