Hurricane Cancellations - Can We Just Fix this???

James165
Level 10
Atlanta, GA

Hurricane Cancellations - Can We Just Fix this???

I came here hoping to see a standard procedure for canceling an upcoming visit due to a mandatory evacuation that has just been issued for the entire coast due to hurricane Florence. Nothing in the help screens and nothing but discouragement here on the discussion board! What the heck? If I cancel, I am going to be penalized and still charged a fee due to a friggin hurricane???? I have asked the guest to initiate the cancelation for that reason, knowing I can then do the full refund option. But it should not be this way.

 

If there is a known major event like this, there needs to be an easy way for hosts or guest to do cancelations with full refunds to everyone. It should be easy - when evacuation orders are made, map it out and add a button or send instructions with links to hosts. I hate to burden my guest with having to initiate this - she is new to Airbnb and understandably fearful since according to stated policy, she isn't due a penny in refund, even though I've promised I will request it. 

 

This should be easy to fix and lord knows, this should not come as a suprise to Airbnb!!! In fact, you could even have a slick way where you could allow the cancelation, then suggest dates and give the guest the option to rebook on the spot for a future date.

 

Jim

44 Replies 44

I agree it should be a high bar. But it just seems to me that areas that are specifically named for mandatory evacuations should not require the process. Remember, those same hosts are also dealing with the possibility of major property damage and gearing up for the storm - they don't need to be trying to make extraneous phone calls and walk through processes. Just seems like a no-brainer to make it an easy option in these cases. Anyhow, just a suggestion - they'll do with it whatever they want anyhow. But I think a lot of angst on the part of guests wondering if they'll get a refund and the part of hosts trying to keep up with lots of stuff could be avoided.

Alice and Jeff,

 

I agree.  Airbnb is making it very difficult for hosts to operate a business when guests are abusing the cancellation due to extenuating circumstance policy.

Roger103
Level 2
McDonough, GA

It should be tied to counties that are under mandatory evacuations.  If the area is being told to be evacuated then any and all reservations are cancelled.  The host is notified and the traveler is notified that the area of travel is under evacuation.   

It should not be allowed for a state that is 400 miles long that any and all reservations would be covered under the "extinuating circumstance" rule.    I just had a guy cancel who was traveling from Charlotte to Asheville,(125 miles) get a full refund for a hurricane that is over 300 miles away and at an elevation of over 3000 feet.  

Paul154
Level 10
Seattle, WA

Day of and it's now a Catergory 1.

We should be able to sue the media for fear-mongering!

@Paul154   Have you seen the live videos and read that over half a million homes and businesses are without power and people who were too clueless or arrogant to evacuate are now waiting to be rescued? Water above first floor windows and large billboards, etc crashing down? 

I don't call that media fear-mongering.

I'm glad they're only having to fish 350 people out of New Bern from their attics rather than who knows how many if the media hadn't reported the threat. Remember, it isn't the wind, it's the flooding that causes the most damage and deaths. As much as I hated to lose our guest this week, I'd rather them not be at risk.

Andre261
Level 2
Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Canada

Wow, reading some of the replies in here really makes me realise how much people are so self-centered. There's flooding, stores are closed, evacuations (evacuees who will be returning all at once back home and create quite a commotion), heavy rain for days etc.. and yet people are complaining because some guests cancelled their rent in these conditions... Wow...But, it's just a cat 1 hurricane? I'm speechless..

Paul154
Level 10
Seattle, WA

Yes I will admit I am heartless and self-centered.

But this thread is not about me, it’s not even about those poor people drowning as we speak.

 

This thread is about what is a reasonable business decision before a disaster hits. Should rebates be easy in general and when should they be given?

To sell newspapers,  newspapers will gladly predict the worst possible scenario. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. If you want to base a business decision on the media, you are more than welcome to give your rebates freely. But I believe it is more prudent to wait and see.

A Category 1 is significantly different than the Category 3 predicted. Heartless, but true.

@Paul154  The dire warnings for this particular disaster were not drummed up by the media, although of course the media loves to have sensational news to report. The warnings were issued by the National Weather Service, federal and state govt. and emergency organizations, etc.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

Now people are dying because they were too stupid to heed the warnings. I heard an interview with one woman 2 days ago, who said she wasn't going to heed the mandatory evacuation order because "there's safety in numbers".

Here's the latest casualties. https://abc11.com/weather/hurricane-florence-mother-and-infant-killed-when-tree-falls-on-their-home/...

Not only are hosts who were upset that their bookings were cancelled self-centered, why should emergency response teams have to risk their lives, and financial resources go to rescue people who are this clueless and stubborn or said they were relying on God to save them? 

@Sarah977  @Andre261,

People who actually LIVE in these areas have seen this kind of blathering before about the intensity of the storm, the casualties, the flooding and all the other fear-mongering that makes businesses close prematurely, stops trucks with supplies from coming, and energizes people outside the area to call people who actually LIVE here heartless. Airbnb cancelled 3 reservations here in Durham from my property alone. As a small example, my guess is that they cancelled hundreds - that is thousands and thousands of dollars lost to the areas of the Triangle which is more than 2 hours away from the coast. It's akin to cancelling reservations in Sacramento because of a weather event in San Francisco. Too foggy to drive and everyone should stay home, guess every reservation in Sacramento applies. It's bull**bleep**. It's rained for less than an hour total here today. We had worse storms this summer with NO hurricanes resulting in more flooding, more damage and NO CANCELLATIONS. Our friends across the street had flights cancelled to Vegas because the Airlines wouldn't bring in the planes because of the fear mongering. Those folks in New Bern, the birthplace of Pepsi, they've heard this Peter/Wolf story before so of course they stayed. There have been 5 deaths, tragic by all accounts, but statistically  if we had gone about our regular business, 5 deaths would have occurred in the area regardless, we just have a tidy common reason to say these are resultant from the  now TROPICAL STORM. It's not even a hurricane. We came upon the HUNDREDS of utility vehicles parked in a Greensboro shopping mall today just waiting for the call from Duke Energy to ship them in to repair power lines. They are just hanging around, doing nothing in their own hometowns to improve service or repair issues under the guise of the big payoff of contract work, Federal relief pay, and overtime. It's insanity and Airbnb falls victim to this over and over. Governors in all the sea-states declared emergencies and filed for federal aid well before the storm hit.As American taxpayers, this should be a giant problem and as an American company, Airbnb should be more aware of what their contribution is to this behavior, waste, and fear.  Wait until it happens to you - this is our 4th time in 4 years! 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Alice-and-Jeff0  I totally understand that feet on the ground can tell a very different story than what is reported in the media. But please- of course deaths occur whether there is a natural disaster or not, but I doubt if the woman and her infant would have died from a tree crashing down on their house if there wasn't a storm or if they had evacuated.

As for "wait until it happens to you", if there were major hurricane or storm warnings for anywhere near my region (even 2 hours away), which there have been before, I would totally understand if Airbnb cancelled my reservations. I consider the saving of lives, even if it's a remote possibility that a situation would be bad exactly where I live, to be more important than making money.

As they say, better safe than sorry.

James165
Level 10
Atlanta, GA

I didn't intend this thread to be an argument over who is caring and not. I assume none of us want people to suffer. The main purpose was simply to suggest that Airbnb create a means that hosts can OPTIONALLY initiate a cancellation in cases of clear, natural situations such as hurricanes or forest fires without having to go through the hassel of the approval process. Airbnb could determine what triggers the option - mandatory evacuation seems a logical starting point! It could even only be available to hosts since they are on the ground and can determine. If a guest wants to cancel and the host disagrees, then let the process require an Airbnb rep to determine the refund level.  I personally would never refuse a refund if a guest genuinely is worried about safety, even if I thought it was overly cautions. But I agree we all will have different threshholds. Because in such situations, hosts often have A LOT to deal with, why not streamline it for the re-assurance of both host and guest?

@James165  While I disagree with many, many things about Airbnb's dealings with hosts, I just don't see how Airbnb could be expected to respond differently in the case of a natural emergency situation like a hurricane. I'm sure their phones were ringing off the hook with guests who wanted to cancel their travel to the area. It would be a logistical impossibility to have every guest send in verification of their travel route, then cross reference with which airports and highways are closed, then determine if any given host's physical location may be possibly affected (Oh, their house is at a high elevation, not near any waterways which could flood, should be okay.)

 

No one, even someone who has lived in an area all their lives and have experienced many false alarms, mass panic at media reports that ended up being a non-event, etc. and is confident that a major disaster won't affect their listing, can really predict "acts of God". Hurricanes and tornadoes can abruptly change course, rain can fall in massive amounts causing flooding, landslides, etc. Just because "It's never happened here before" doesn't mean it never will.

 

So essentially I'm agreeing with you that hosts should be able to have a streamlined process to cancel wthout penalty in such cases. But the other way around, which many hosts have suggested here- that Airbnb shouldn't automatically allow guests to cancel just because a host doesn't "think" their area will be affected by a major weather event, no. 

So, I think we are agreeing. An easy way to for a host to initiate a penalty-free cancellation with certain triggers (like mandatory evacuation of the region). Most hosts are going to do it, so will not be an issue for the guest. Then in cases where the host does not the situation warrants a cancellation and the guest does, the current process where the guest would have to appeal to Airbnb would kick in. To me that would be workable and would enable 95% of the rentals in such situations to be handled without a need for customer service intervention.