Nudge, nudge...the recent nudgings of Airbnb

[Pat271]

Hello, all,

For bookings made before March 14th for check-in dates after April 14th, it seems that Airbnb is steering both guests and hosts towards the “future credit” cancellation option.  I say this for the following reasons:

1) The “Ask host to cancel” option seems (anecdotally) to cause the host not to receive the 12.5% cancellation payout.  The more hosts know about this, the less likely they will be to accept.

2) For the guest, accepting a credit is more straightforward than going through the Extenuating Circumstances option, which for these bookings seems to involve providing documentation, etc.

3) It isn’t working when the guest calls Airbnb and references a message in which the host approves a 100% refund.  Airbnb is redirecting these requests back to the host for resolution.

So, the above actions are “nudging” both hosts and guests towards the “future credit” cancellation option.  

The “future credit” should be redeemable with the original host only, but other than that, maybe this is the option that should have been in effect all along.

- Pat

[Anonymous]

@Pat271  You caught it. Airbnb has a cash flow problem, and they're trying to steer as much back into their coffers as they can while still showing a more benevolent face for the marketing. Honestly I can't blame them at all; they're a company whose entire valuation is based on intangible capital that has just collapsed. They can't borrow against a future that they might not have.

A lot of hosts are talking about wanting some equivalent of a stored-value system, in which guests can convert an existing booking into some credit they can apply to future travel. I see where they're coming from, but this just doesn't seem realistic to me. We don't know how long these lockdowns are going to last, so any revised travel dates are purely speculative. And hosts who are reliant upon rental income don't have the luxury of holding out for an indefinite number of months until their early 2020 guests can finally take a holiday; they'll have to convert those properties to long-term rentals or sell them off. As painful as it is to take this in, the odds are not very good that a typical Airbnb host can expect to be able to redeem an old locked-in credit at some indeterminate time in the future. 

But if you're an exception to this - if you're willing to hold out for what might be many months of lockdown and move a booking date around at the guest's whim - this is a feature you still have at your disposal. Either party can still initiate a date change in the booking itinerary if you mutually agree to a specific future date that you can at least tentatively hold the booking for.

But what's better than a shaky, speculative gamble on future dates that might not work out? Cash. When a full refund is on offer from Airbnb, any guest would have to be a total idiot not to go ahead and take it.