Full refunds in June

[Graeme48]

Just got an email from air, to advise that guests who wish to cancel bookings in June, will be getting a full refund and me.... zilch.

The new policy of being “better partners” didn’t last long.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Graeme48- Thats not quite what the email said. 

1) Guests can only cancel if 'travel continues to be disrupted, the Extenuating Circumstances policy may cover 3 of your June reservations that were booked before 15 March.'

2) ALSO Hosts can 'Cancel penalty-free by 30 April. Whether you’re unable to host or you want to open your calendar for longer-term stays, you can now cancel any upcoming reservations this year booked before 15 March. You won’t pay a fee, have your calendar blocked, or have your Superhost status affected'

I don't see that its unreasonable for guests who cannot get to the property to cancel and get a refund. Equally, for those hosts who want certainty or to move to longer term rentals the free of charge cancellation is what they have been crying out for.

3) The email also says 'There are no perfect answers right now, but we hope this update gives you clarity.'

All in all I feel Airbnb are doing what they can to help guests and hosts alike. They would go under if they continued to refund both hosts and guests which would not help anyone.

[Graeme48]

Nor is your post quite what the email said. I am merely pointing out that hosts are yet again being asked to shoulder all the financial loss. 

[Jonathan1257]

You must be joking. Full refund to guests is making sure you keep the guests. They ain't made a profit on a yearly basis after 10 years. I know we live in times where growth beats profits but as of today they are a bust model that can't  make it to IPO. Their demise opens up opportunities. If you're using them as your only marketing tool then that's a risk. It's actually got a shabby image of room with a view. The blow-back from the general public is aimed at Airbnb listings. You get no aggro from the public if you operate your own booking system but as soon as the word Airbnb is mentioned you're under attack. They need to make the move to a serious listing site that is higher than the Airbnb Plus standard. Ditch the crap listings. 

[Anonymous]

@Graeme48  What thing do you believe will happen between now and June that would make it safe for guests to travel to your area?

[Graeme48]

I don’t believe anything will happen to make travel safe, nor did I mention that it would be? That was not the point of my post. 

[Anonymous]

Then it does beg the question of why you believe you should still be paid for bookings that you can't realistically fulfill.

[Graeme48]

Actually it doesn’t ‘beg the question’? It’s simply a question of fairly allocating the financial burden between parties, where cancellation has been brought about by outside forces.

[Anonymous]

So when you, as a customer, have a contract with a service provider, but outside forces beyond their control render it impossible for them to provide the service, do you believe it's fair that the financial burden is allocated between you? If your flight is cancelled due to bad weather, how much of the financial burden do you wish to share with the airline? If a valuable package you ordered gets lost in the mail, do you intend to split the burden with the seller?

For what it's worth, I've always found the Extenuating Circumstances to unfairly shift the burden onto hosts when the cause of the cancellation was solely on the guest's end of things. As a guest, if I get sick and can't travel, it's on me to either have appropriate insurance or accept the loss.  Even before the lockdown orders, when a stay was possible but the guest felt nervous about travelling, I felt the cancellation policies should be upheld. But when the circumstances prevent the host from hosting or offering the property as advertised, it's always been the case that the guest gets a full refund. I think we're now way past the wait-and-see point: we have to accept that tourism is not going to be happening this summer, and that we've lost a big gamble if we staked our livelihoods on it.

[Graeme48]

You clearly haven’t read the email from air. It’s obvious we won’t agree on sharing the burden of cost, where it’s apparent that neither side are to blame. We will just have to agree to differ. I operate a small self catering business and am appalled at how air have treated me as an owner, as have countless others. I clearly shouldn’t have aired my view on here and having looked through this forum, it looks pretty obvious that there are a number of contributors who are working with air to condone and mitigate their behaviour. Some people not a million miles away have contributed well over 2000 posts.

Hopefully in the fullness of time, history shows that air have not had the best interests of hosts at heart.

[Anonymous]

@Graeme48   We probably disagree on what is owed to you as an owner, though fortunately the fact remains that as an owner you still have assets to leverage. Does Airbnb have the best interests of hosts at heart? Sure, when that's profitable. But fundamentally Airbnb is looking after its own interests as a company. As an independent business owner who is free to take your assets elsewhere, I trust you're also looking after your own interests rather than Airbnb's. The current market has a severe shortage of customers and an extreme excess of hosts. So who's expendable? 

Assuming you received the same email whose text is posted below, I would say that it does at least address one of the earlier criticisms from the host community:  when the crisis began, Airbnb very abruptly overhauled key terms of the agreement between hosts and guests with no warning or consultation. Now that it's clear that the refund eligibility period is likely to be extended, they're providing something resembling notice. Hopefully this gives you an opportunity to get out of a losing game and find an income stream more viable for these circumstances.

[Susan17]

@Anonymous @Graeme48 

By law, burden cannot and should not be placed entirely on one party in any contractual agreement.

Hosts stood ready and willing to provide the service in question, as per their part of the agreement with their guests. It is no more their fault, than it is the fault of the guests, that the service they agreed to provide, was not/could not be availed of, due to circumstances beyond the control of both parties. Consequently, it is both unfair and unlawful that one party (hosts) should be/have been forced to assume 100% of the burden. 

"It is trite law that it is, in any event, impossible to assign "the contract" as a whole, i.e. including both burden and benefit. The burden of a contract can never be assigned without the consent of the other party to the contract in which event such consent will give rise to a novation"

(Novation - the transfer of contractual obligations)

Also.

" Neither at law or in equity could the burden of a contract be shifted off the shoulders of a contractor on to those of another without the consent of the contractee.'"

Furthermore.. 

"The principle that the burden of a contract cannot be transferred so as to discharge the original contractor without the consent of the other party means that, as a general rule, the assignee of the benefit of a contract involving mutual rights and obligations does not acquire the assignor's contractual obligations"

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Susan17  I  suggest you look at the law with respect to frustrated contracts. In summary if, through no fault of either party, a contract cannot be fulfilled it is effectively cancelled. 

The interesting bit is then the allocation of any monies but I suspect that if the host has not actually supplied a service there would be no monies payable to the host. Clearly it would take several court cases to determine if my suspicion is correct.

[Susan17]

@Mike-And-Jane0

All laws are open to interpretation, particularly with exceptional, unusual and complicating circumstances involved. 

The most interesting part - by far - is that vast amounts of the monies involved in these contracts have neither been allocated to the hosts, nor returned to the guests, but are instead languishing in Airbnb's accounts.

Now that's what you'd (politely) call frustrating. 

[Sheila22]

@Graeme48   Stopping responding to him. He's a troll.