Beta: Make guest stays non refundable for 10% discount

Shou-Kee0
Level 2
Glasgow, United Kingdom

Beta: Make guest stays non refundable for 10% discount

Just noticed on my host admin page today a new beta test by Airbnb - 

 

They have added a new Flexible vs Non refundable policy for guest bookings.

- If they choose the former, your current cancellation policy applies.

- But if they choose the later their booking becomes non refundable but they get 10% off the listed price.

 

Just to pick your brains what do all of you hosts think of this?

Many thanks!!

112 Replies 112

I am a big fan of the option personally! We have been hosts for about a month now and we've had 2 different 2 night reservations that guests cancelled but had booked nonrefundable and we got to keep the payout!  

If the prospective guest contacts me about cancelling I just tell them "airbnb handles all our reservations, please go through the website for any cancellations or changes to your reservation". Havent had any angry guests to deal with using this method so far. I mean we are paying airbnb a percentage for something: marketing and a reservation system- let them handle those elements.

Robert571
Level 2
Toronto, Canada

I have had a near complete fall-off in bookings since I turned this feature on.  I cannot say if it is related, but I am going to turn it off.  My apartments were booked 80% before, and now its 10% and we are well into the high season here in Vietnam.  I will report if anything changes once it is turned off.  If anyone has seen similar please alert me.  Thanks!

Ginny40
Level 2
Lexington, KY

I didn't notice the non-refundable beta but all of a sudden it was turned on for my property without me asking for it.  I don't like this, and it was confusing.  I turned it off.

 

Zojka0
Level 4
Skopje, North Macedonia

It seems it aplies even to bookings who are already nonrefundable according to the cancellation policy. i am turning it off until Airbnb fixes this discrepancy.

Macedonia and Beyond
Tim605
Level 1
Alexandria, VA

I would only do this if I raised my price by again least 10%.  We still haven’t found our price ceiling yet, so I don’t want to discount 10%. We keep raising our prices and people keep booking.  We get a lot of last minute stays for business in this area, and it’s because hotels aren’t available and not many allow last minute bookings in our neighborhood.  If I followed AirBnB’s smart pricing, we’d be priced 50% of where we are at now, 59/night vs 119/night. 

Paul1818
Level 1
London, United Kingdom

Does the guest choose this new policy or the host? In other words, is the new policy automatically turned on by the host for all future bookings? Or does the guest select between the refundable and the non-refundable cancellation policy?

Louise-And-Martin0
Level 2
Faro District, Portugal

I’ve had 2 bookings confirmed this evening.  One of them has my normal moderate cancellation policy and the other has this non refundable cancellation policy and has been discounted.   I did not change my settings and on the air bnb app, my cancellation policy is still showing as moderate! I’m not a happy host.  

Stanton-and-Beth0
Level 1
Greenville, NC

I there is an unexpected side-effect of this as well. Our AirBNB apartment is in a city that shares a name with a much bigger city and is often confused for the bigger city. As a result we’ve had a number of non-refundable booking in our place. And we feel terrible for the folks who book this way. We’re considering either a partial refund. AirBNB keeps their portion regardless, or just turning the feature off. But in principle I do like the idea because we were able to increase our base reservation and make the discounted rate what we originally had our base rate set to. 

Stanton & Beth