Why not give hosts the flexibility to offer tiered rates for different levels of certainty. eg - Strict = guest pays me $300 per night, Moderate = $350, Flexible = $400. Airlines and hotels already work like this so guests completely get the concept.
Because it explicitly links price to a perceived benefit or detriment, it reinforces the guest's acceptance and agreement to the terms, which means they'd be less likely to feel aggrieved if they lose money with a cancellation. It's a win all round.
Also, CX creates work for themselves by not holding the line with cancellations. If they simply washed their hands of it and didn't meddle, it wouldn't chew up so much of their time. Get rid of the whole Extenuating Circumstances nonsense. We're accommodation providers, you're a booking facilitator. We're not insurance underwriters and you have no place make line ball decisions regarding often subjective circumstances. Guests are adults. Let them sort their own **bleep** out.
At any price level, this is a good option. I agree that the strict policy is a deterent to the multi-book and cancel crowd, but the one week notice in high season is always a pita, and sometimes very costly. If it was 2 weeks notice, we'd hav a better chance of filling a slot, or of using ABB to go somewher else in th down time.
The most spot-on part of @Louise0's post is "We're accommodation providers, you're a booking facilitator." ExACTly!
The spread between the three current policies is way too wide, yet altering the spread or (worse) adding finer and finer-grained policies would only confuse. Going to a "choose your price by choosing your cancellation options" would be an improvement.
Either that, or add one (or, at worst, two) more levels of cancellation, AND (this is critical), let hosts selectively apply different cancellation policies to different date-ranges. (For example, when I open music-festival dates up 6 months in advance, at high rates, I want to use the Strict policy instead of my usual Moderate policy.)
