cancellation made by Airbnb on behalf of the host

[Lucienne2]

Dear All,

Very recently I received a reservation for 1 person from a guest who only told me after the booking had been confirmed etc that it was for his mother. As I understand it booking on behalf of a third party is against Airbnb rules and that hosts are running a risk if they accept such bookings. I got on to Airbnb immediately and they explained that they could either cancel the reservation for me OR I could keep the reservation. Since they appeared to be waiving the rule in this case, I asked for reassurance that I would be covered under their host protection policies should anything untoward happen. The Support Assistant wasn't able to reassure me...! so I felt that I had to ask them to cancel the booking.  What exactly is going on here? Am I missing something? Has anybody had a similar experience?

Thank you

Lucienne

[Clara116]

@Lucienne2 I think you did the correct thing to cancel.

You could also ask that the guy make an account for his  mother. And then it is all cool. I had a father want to book for his daughter and I said once she had her own account I'd certainly consider.  Her Dad made the account for her as he was paying and it all worked out perfectly. 

I think you got a super rookie with ABB customer service and they don't know much about ABB and that is really not a good thing. 

Perhaps other hosts know more to this - I'm indeed curious. Happy hosting, Clara

[Lucienne2]

Hi Clara,

thanks for your comments.

Actually the same thing happened to me some 2 years ago for a 2 month booking and Airbnb really helped with getting the 3rd party to set up their own account...so that was fine in the end. This was only a 2 night booking so perhaps 'someone' wasn't prepared to take the time....actually am still waiting for some final comments from the Support Assistant.

Thanks again

Lucienne

[Lucienne2]

PS..you are right I should have spoken to the guest at greater length.

[Allison2]

I had an almost identical experience calling CS about a third party booking. The CS rep said it was okay because the guest had traveled on business before. (It's true that a business account CAN create reservations on behalf of others and are covered separately in TOS, but there was no business coordinator involved in this res...just a friend booking for another on a pleasure trip.) I asked him to verify that their TOS didn't cover 3rd party and he came back with "well they're not recommended..." Like you, I asked to have an e-mail from legal saying that insurance would cover in this case, as it clearly wasn't covered under TOS. He backpedaled pretty quickly. I gave him a bit of a dressing down for giving bad advice against TOS and leaving both the guest and I without insurance or Airbnb support if things went south.

Hosts really need to read TOS backwards and forwards - IME many of the CS agents are NOT well educated on TOS - they mostly fly by the seat of their pants on what sounds good to them. It's easy when they don't have skin in the game.

Whenever 3rd party reservations come up I ask the guest to get in touch with customer service and re-book under the profile of someone who is staying.