@Ian-And-Anne-Marie0 Hi Ian and Anne
I have discovered that if you add the link to the person you are replying to on this community, as an edit after first posting the reply, they stem loses the reply as spam or inappropriate.
I had only just changed the property description you referred to on switching back to pricing net of guest service fee, to see if that changed things for the better.I had forgotten that you can't include a hyperlink URL or anything that might pass as one on and Airbnb listing. I had mention B'com and G**gle that resulted in the system generated messages :(Website hidden by Airbnb)". This automatic policy means that you can't link your listings for the same property effectively on the Airbnb site. You can at least include their URLs but not as a hyperlink. Anyway, I have now changed the property descriptions to avoid any issues like that.
As for the issue of cancellation fee. We have always had a moderate, 'free up to 5 days before arrival' cancellation fee. We have not changed it when we switched to a channel manager or when we set our pricing on Airbnb as gross of service fee as recommended. So, I owl discount that as a factor in whether we get bookings. We have the same universal policy with all other OTAs. In or experience guests accept that a small property has to have some cancellation safeguards. Besides most guest travelling to a rural location normally plan their trip. We don't look for or get passing trade.
As I replied to Sarah977 above we don't need Airbnb but we will persevere to see if we can re-generate business through them.