@Carrick0 - We have never turned to Strict because we don't feel that it is appropriate for our type of listing or our area. Our guests are typically here for a purpose - wedding, interview, event of some sort - not a vacation spot per se (typically a stop en route to somewhere else when people are on vacation). Every year we've been doing this our cancellations have tripled and now we're seeing a big uptick in cancellations on night 6 - the last day that the guest can get a full refund.
Given the timing, we suspect it is the problem of any number of things: (1) a guest wants to make sure they have a nice listing and are willing to hold it up until the last minute while they continue to shop other listings - especially as the price drops and drops and drops via Smart Pricing: (2) as more hosts come on board all the time because they think it will be easy money, a property that wasn't even in the search results may suddenly come on line - at a cheap introductory price - and since the host isn't experienced, guests can take advantage or worse, complain when the host is in over their head (read: discount or free stay); (3) there is no down-side except losing their Airbnb fees for doing this (which they now get 3 freebies a year!) - no impact on their reviews, no impact on their profile, no downside to the guest at all; (4) the vast majority of guests have no idea what the impact is on my small family business when they leave us high and dry - we're not a hotel, we only have 1 bedroom to list and when a guest holds it for weeks or months and then cancels 6 days before - they've pretty much screwed us (because, as I've said, we're an event-driven location and anyone attending said event typically doesn't wait until day 5 to make a booking). Not to mention, as we have all experienced, a last-minute booker can frequently be a problem guest - so the cancellee has screwed us 3 times - price, quality of guest, and opportunity cost.
For those guests that do know the impact on a cancellation, we've had 2 extortion cancellations this last year too which is horribly disturbing. One guest held a week-long booking for 5 months on the 2nd busiest week in Durham (Duke Freshman move in) only to write me on day 7 to say, "Oh, I forgot I also had a reservation at the hotel in town. I'd hate to cancel and impact your business but the convenience of being near my friends means I won't have to pay for as many Ubers. We're moving to Uganda and the budget is very tight. And we'd still like to come by and see the space since we'll be traveling to Duke often to see our daughter and will need a place several times a year." Um, NO, I'm not going to beg you to stay with us or try to explain that we're not any farther away than the hotel, and I certainly am not going to start discounting my location because you are "promising" additional bookings. I actually had to fire this guest and tell her we wouldn't accept a reservation request from her in the future because Airbnb has eliminated the feature where I could have blocked this guest from booking with me in the future. BTW, it's not lost on me how "tight" the budget must be to send your daughter to a school where the estimated cost of attendance is more than $75,000/year and you are already planning multiple flights from Uganda to visit her. My request for a paultry $335 for a 5-night stay when I KNOW the hotel is going to charge you $150/night is not a good choice for your "budget". No thank you!
We recently had an Airbnb employee stay with us who asked what Airbnb could be doing better and this was my #1 suggestion - a better cancellation policy for Moderate and the ability to change the policy granularly on the calendar. So for big events like Graduation Weekend (the #1 busiest), we book a year in advance and that should absolutely be a strict cancellation weekend. Actually, for us, since we book up our weekends so far in advance, I would love to have EVERY weekend at a different cancellation policy than during the week but I think Strict would still be too strict for this.
Personally, ideally, I'd like to see a "sliding policy" of cancellation refund at 6, 4, 2 weeks and 6 nights) before reservation start. Cancel 6 weeks prior to reservation start: 100%; Cancel 4 weeks before: 75%; Cancel 2 weeks: 50%; Cancel before 6 nights before start: slight modification to what it is today - First 2 nights non-refundable and 50% on the rest. But I'd be really happy with the Moderate policy pushing out the date to cancel for 100% to 14 days prior to give us 2 weeks to rebook.
