Covid-19.....lets help each other

[Robin4]

Reading many of the posts on this hosting board almost all correspondents are critical of the way Airbnb have handled this current pandemic situation.

What disturbs me is, some are trying to whip up hysteria by creating scenarios of their own which is not helping.

One host here  @Sheila22 has claimed she as a guest has double dipped on her travel insurance and also got a refund from Airbnb and then goes on to talk about price slashing, guests cancelling and rebooking at cheaper rates and even looting!! She then backtracks and says she is a host and just trying to put different ideas in the mix!

Sheila, I appreciate that you are simply trying to play the part of 'Devils Advocate' with your comments, but this is seriously not the time to be doing it! 

The hosting community are going through hell at the moment......as it stands this will cost me $20,000 this year if there is no short term remedy to the current pandemic. And all 3+ million of us hosts are going through the same thing.

I am also concerned that this pandemic could spell the end of Airbnb! To suddenly lose $94m in invest-able funds is not something a service company with few tangible assets can handle. Airbnb depend on cashflow and, that cashflow has stopped. The company may quite possibly not recover from this.

We are a community of hosts who collectively have a mass of experience and ideas to draw on. This is the time to be constructive and support each other and think of alternate ideas that may help us get our hosting wagons back on the tracks again once the worlds medical brains get on top of this. 

Please folks, can we be creative, not destructive!

Cheers........Rob

[Linda108]

@Sheila22  So you have hijacked this discussion in which all the hosts who are expressing a different point of view from yours are labled as Air BNB apologists.  You have a point that you and many others continue to express in multiple discussion threads and yet you do not want to allow another point of view.  Why?

@Robin4 @Helen350 

[Sheila22]

@Linda108  I'm OK with all points of view.  Go for it.

[Sarah977]

@Sheila22  Then it would be nice of you to stop trying to turn threads in which hosts who have another point of view into yet another ranting thread about how Airbnb has screwed over all the hosts and how this forum censors posts (it doesn't) and how the cancellations are illegal (they aren't) and how you're all going to start a class action suit.

None of us really agree with how Airbnb has handled this, but just because we aren't hopping mad doesn't mean we are apologists, just realists. 

There are about 50 threads with like-minded hosts to you over in the COVID19 forum- please carry on over there and allow those who are handling this with a different attitude to discuss our views and feelings without interjecting your agenda.

[Sheila22]

K

[Kim2339]

How can host help Airbnb?  They are working half staff an some from home. Could we help with calls? Anything?

[Stuart70]

Totally agree with this. Thrown under the bus.

[Sarah977]

@Sheila22  I thought you had agreed to stop interjecting your agenda on this thread.

[Sheila22]

I agreed to something with you?

It is obvious what I am doing here.  I've made it pretty clear.  Since you say I have "an agenda" then you also know why I'm here.

[Wende2]

Hey guys......Question...I happened to look at my calendar for April, which at one time looked Great, every weekend and 1 weekday, all booked several weeks ago.  I looked at it the other day and there were 2 bookings, and since then one other has cancelled.  Just wondering if they don't notify us if the cancellation happens an amount of days before the arrival date, just thought WTHell when I seen them all missing.

[Sean433]

It is sort of like a airbnb driven purge of hosts. Just like the economy is resetting, so is airbnb. Hosts will leave during this purge. Supply has decreased and will remain suppressed until both the virus goes away and when the economy turns around. In the end, the hosts who survived this time will make it out better as there will be less hosts to compete with. After all of this, who will ever glorify hosting again? At least not for a while.

This could all be a good thing for some hosts who live to see the other side. A lot of us were complaining how there is so much competition these days which was causing less and less bookings year after year. The stocks were also overvalued. Maybe this is a reset some of us need.

[Ian-And-Anne-Marie0]

@Robin4 

I thought I had a creative moment this afternoon, turns out it was a long winded solution causing more problems than it solved.

I've been most moved by many new Hosts posting on this forum and have followed them and helped in the conversations over on the 'Airbnb Hosts United' group on FB. When some Hosts who rely on their income from Airbnb to pay their mortgage, feed the kids and pay the bills and then the income just stops, dead, with no other income - you can surely not want to help.

One case in particular, a host had a whole month of bookings obliterated due to the EC policy - and then, a guest who cancelled prior to the EC policy active dates was refunded too! Thats like being given a paycheck then having it taken away.

So how do you help? The Airbnb community is massive, you could set up a Host relief fund... Guests who cancel could voluntarily donate a % of refund to the relief fund to then help the Hosts most in need. But, how is that collected and distributed? What are the requirements to provide aid to Hosts? Who manages the fund? It would be a massive and complicated undertaking just to get cash to Hosts. Too big to handle, too complicated to administer and too slow to be effective, it needs to be small.

It comes down to this; Don't give a 100% refund to guests. The Extenuating Circumstances policy does NOT specify that a 100% refund will be made. A tiered refund could be provided, a block refund could be provided, but those Hosts relying on Airbnb income NEED something. For Hosts who don't really NEED that something, they could have an option to donate all or a portion of their share to more needy Hosts. The pot then gets shared equally amongst the other Hosts. Almost like a dividend payment.

66% refund to guests would do it I reckon.  I think 50% might be too much. To start, thats simple ! Some Hosts might elect to only receive 10- 20% leaving a greater amount for more needy Hosts. More needy Hosts will survive by getting near 50% and we will prove actually to be a real community.

[Robin4]

@Ian-And-Anne-Marie0 

Ian, I so like and respect what you have to say, and it's people like you that we need at this time.....people who are prepared to float commonsense, constructive ideas.

Look, I would be the first one prepared to put $100 or so into a compensation fund but, once again that bull in the China shop (Airbnb) would deem such efforts as working outside the platform if they didn't control it! And if they did control it they would want a slice of it!

It's probably too late now because bookings have dried up and the rout of guest penalty free cancellations is almost complete but, your idea has merit and it might be worth putting to the company that all future reservation cancellations would result in a 5% withholding which would be separately audited, transparent and distributed  for unusual hardship situations.

I think that's a great idea and I would be in that Ian.....with certain limitations.

Cheers......Rob

[Mark116]

@Robin4  Many corporations are doing pro active things, like Netflix just created a $100M fund to help people in their industry, sports owners and players are working to pay employees.  NOTHING is stopping airbnb from creating something similar to help help their hosts.  I don't know how far $100M would go, but it would go a lot further than zero. 

[Wende2]

@Ian-And-Anne-Marie0   After today's email from ABB, I'd say someone was listening to what you had to say.  I'm not on FB, but it's a Great idea you've laid out right here.  Hope the powers that be have figured out how to make it as easy as possible to get the $$$ to the hosts who really need it the most.

[Thomas977]

Message to Airbnb management: I expect, demand and plan on the basis that Airbnb will honor the current Covid-19 policy !!! :

«The host’s cancellation policy will apply as usual to reservations made after March 14, 2020, and to reservations made on or before March 14, 2020 with check-in dates after April 14, 2020.»