Guest booked three months ago for nine days (included two weekends). Our typical guest season is very short; it includes 16 weekends. I sent a message to guest two days before their arrival asking them their approximate time of arrival. Guest called me the day before their arrival and said they were cancelling because of a sick mother. The guest is a grandmother and told me that her mother (who is in her 90s) was failing for a while and that they had been communicating with airbnb about their options and told me that she should have let us know sooner. I communicated our sympathy and told her to cancel the reservation and then I would reimburse her for any days that I was able to rebook. Since we have a strict cancellation policy, we always offer to reimburse guests who cancel. We did NOT know that airbnb had an extenuating circumstances policy. So when 12 hours before her arrival we received a "form letter" announcement from airbnb telling us that the guest cancelled and our payout was $0.00, we were very upset.
Why should a guest be allowed to communicate with airbnb for a week regarding cancelling and then wait until the day before arrival to cancel without any penalty?
Why doesn't airbnb share any of the risk? Airbnb shifts 100% of the financial loss to the host.
The policy creates a loophole for the guest to cancel at the last minute. We are now wary of booking with airbnb and our relationship with airbnb. Airbnb told us that guests exercising the extenuating circumstances policy is very uncommon but based on the hosts to whom I have spoken and those who have communicated on the community page, it is not uncommon. And all the hosts did not know about the extenuating circumstances policy until a guest cancelled and used it.
We had to cancel on a guest at the last minute due to a water main break. A friend of ours and airbnb host had to cancel for a heating/water failure and airbnb financially penalized them and removed their superhost status. So, when we had to cancel, we communicated directly with the guest, told them not to cancel and booked them directly a week later and gave them an extra free night for their inconvenience. We practiced good customer service.
We suggested to airbnb that 99% of hosts do not know about the extenuating circumstances policy and there should be a footnote to the strict cancellation policy that lets the host know that airbnb can overide the strict cancellation policy.
Instead of turning off instant booking, we suggested that instant booking be limited to three day or less stays so that we have the option to turn down long term stays. We also suggested that long term stays be subject to a shared risk between the host, guest and airbnb in the event of extenuating circumstances.
Other hosts suggested trip insurance. Is there renter insurance available through AAA or other organizations to protect hosts? If so, I would build the insurance fee into the fee.
So what did we protect ourselves from airbnb's policies? We of course communicated to airbnb. They did not respond to our suggestions.
We turned off instant booking. We removed the airbnb icon from our website so guests book directly with us. Our cancellation policy is on our website and we ask all guests to read it when they book. For back up, we enrolled in Glamping Hub and Home Away. We advertise our farm stay on Instagram and Facebook and have a rack card about our farm stay which we distribute at farmers markets. We are practicing direct marketing.
We have always had good experience with airbnb. We would like to continue working with airbnb as they do a much better job marketing our farm stay than we do. Does anyone have any other suggestions how to further protect ourselves?