Guest cancellation

[Anonymous]

I operate a 5 day cancellation policy, my guest who is due in two days just cancelled and airbnb have notified me that they will receive a partial refund, can you help me understand why?

[Susan151]

@Anonymous

https://www.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies#moderate

If the guest cancels less than 5 days in advance, the first night is non-refundable but 50% of the accommodation fees for remaining nights will be refunded.

[Anonymous]

That doesn’t make sense, surely the point of chooseing 5 day cancellation policy is so that if a guest cancels at last minute you the host doesn’t loose out? I can sometimes get another booking with five days, but cannot with 2 days, are you sure this is correct reading? I read that link as referring to guest not host?

[Anonymous]

It seems very unfair, if I had a lot of guests cancelling like this there would be no point in doing airbnb. My understanding was that when I book as a guest, as I recently have, if I cancel after the cancellation policy comes to an end, so after the 5 day window, I will loose all the payment and my host will keep it?

[Nusa-Lembongan-Villas0]

Airbnb cancellation policies are hugely in favour of guests and penal to hosts. Yours is a good example of the inequity @Anonymous .  Thankfully we get lots of bookings from other platforms and also direct bookings where we can control the cancellation terms in a more equitable manner.

[Anonymous]

Thanks mark, I shall look around at other options if this starts to become frequent. I see the cleaning fee is returned and for now have reduced my charge but added a cleaning fee, it feels too unfair the way it has been set up, it supports people who book for more than a day to cancel, I think airbnb need to rethink it, I rely on my weekends being booked up. I guess people don’t cancel too often so this is why it hasn’t been looked at as something that matters. Thanks for your support.

[Rob406]

I had a similar situation and did not understand the policy properly. When I contacted Customer Care they sent me a link (which I cant copy link to for some reason) which explains it better. Basically they will get a refund for 50% of time not spent at the accommodation, if they cancel within 5 days of booking.

Mine cancelled on the day of check in, so she had to pay for that day but all other days were 100% refunded under flexible cancellation policy. I have subsequently changed to moderate cancellation 

[Anonymous]

I am using moderate cancellation of 5day window?

[Sandra856]

Hi @Anonymous 🙂

I think you have misunderstood the 5 day window. The cancellation policy says :

If the guest cancels less than 5 days in advance, the first night is non-refundable but 50% of the accommodation fees for remaining nights will be refunded.

I have strict (with grace period) policy which means that if guests cancel within 7 days of checkin they won't get any refund. Change to strict it works perfectly fine for me. It is your job to choose the cancellation policy that will work for you. You can chose between flexible, moderate or strict (with grace period) if you are an ordinary airbnb host. 

Best, Sandra

[Anonymous]

 Hi Sandra thank you for this, I shall go take a look, I didn’t see the 7 day option, and you are right I did misunderstand, unless it has changed since I began 3 years ago. Thanks again

[Rob406]

Here it is

https://www.airbnb.com.au/home/cancellation_policies?_ga=2.137934387.2073753584.1543469540-944281459...