I am host of a property at a ski resort. The resort is considered "year around" but the prime ski weekends of January and February create a significantly higher demand and allow a significantly higher nightly rate than the remainder of the year. I have always had a flexible cancellation policy because I believe that this overcomes what I consider to be the biggest hurdle to someone putting together group gatherings (i.e. golf weekends, girls getaway weekends etc.) - namely having someone step up and get the ball rolling months in advance. Once the place is booked by someone, others want to be included (or not excluded) and the momentum builds. For most of the year my nightly rates are not so high that a last minute cancellation is very painful. But for ski weekends during January and February, particularly the holiday weekends, a last minute cancellation is a big financial hit. I recently had one where the guest and I began communicating about check-in 10 days before her arrival, as usual. She was fully engaged throughout the week asking question about my place, the resort, the shuttle bus..etc. She gave every indication that she was enthusiastic about her upcoming trip ... except that she said that she hoped her son will get over his cold before the weekend. This was still more than a week in advance and I had to resist the temptation to ask her to cancel to allow at least a week for someone else to pick up this high demand mid-February weekend. But I did not ask because she was enthusiastic about the weekend and because I am guessing that this kind of pressure from a host is contrary to Airbnb policy. Twenty-six hours before the arrival date she texted me saying that she had to cancel because her son might or might not be 100% and she wanted to be sure to get the full refund. She said she might rebook the next day if her son continued to feel better (or possibly if we happened to get a big dump of powder I presume, LOL). After all, she had all the check in info and could change her mind at a moments notice. I was cordial and told her to rebook if she changed her mind but I was struck by her casual attitude about the cancellation...almost like cancelling a room at a large hotel versus cancelling a townhouse of a single property host like me. I immediately took action (relaxation of my 2-night minimum stay and offering a deep discount) to recover at least some lost revenue. And I sent a request to Airbnb support to consider adding some feature that would allow a host to set a date or season specific cancellation policy that differs from their base cancellation policy. Their initial response was that they currently cannot accommodate this but they would give it consideration. They suggested that I could change my cancellation policy at the end of the Autumn season to a strict cancellation for the winter but this does not work since many, if not most, winter guests will book their ski weekends months (or even a year for New Years Eve) ahead of their arrival.
My question to the Airbnb host community is ... Does anybody else feel that they would benefit from this kind of a feature... e.g. having a "flexible" cancellation policy as their base policy but being able to over-ride this for certain specific high value dates or seasons with a "strict" cancellation policy? I am not an IT professional but I am an engineer and this gives me a feel for the practicality and do-ability of certain programmable changes to systems. I don't believe that the kind of functionality that I seek would be an insurmountable challenge.
