Suicide Incident at My Property & No Response from Airbnb on Upcoming Reservations

[Bethany149]

Hello fellow hosts,

I’m writing to share a difficult and tragic situation I’m currently dealing with. Over the weekend, a suicide occurred at my guest house. As part of the investigation and cleanup, the police had to remove a portion of the wall to retrieve a bullet, and a biohazard cleanup team had to remove a portion of the floor. Because of this, my property is uninhabitable, and I will be unable to host for at least two weeks while I work on repairs. With the holiday I have been unable to receive a police report yet. I have however submit what I could find in the form of a press release. 

An issue I’m facing along with everything else is that I have few upcoming reservations, one of which is in just a few days. I have contacted Airbnb Customer Support multiple times to explain that I cannot honor this booking due to the damage and current state of my guests house. However, these reservations remains active, and I have not received any response from Airbnb regarding canceling of the reservations. Obviously I cannot make these cancellations myself without penalties. 

I’m really worried because I cannot host in these conditions, and I’m unsure how to proceed. Has anyone else faced a similar situation, or can offer advice on how to handle this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Helen3 · Accepted solution]

This is appalling and the last thing you need in such tragic circumstance's is for Airbnb to be so unhelpful .. @Bethany149 

ask the police to email you a copy of their report and share with Airbnb insist they cancel the upcoming bookings and if they refuse post publicly about this on their social media.

in the meantime reach out to the affected guests and let them know directly .

also contact Airbnb or your insurance company to cover the costs of the repairs .

[Bethany149]

Thank you for your advice. Airbnb has opened a resolution for me in regards to cost of repairs. We shall see how it plays out in regards to reimbursement of repairs. I

[Bethany149]

I’ve requested a report regarding an incident that occurred, but since it happened over the weekend and it’s a holiday, I’ve been told I won’t receive any updates until Tuesday.

I’m torn about how to communicate this situation appropriately to the upcoming affected guests without going into too much detail. Any advice on how to handle this would be greatly appreciated.

[Bethany149]

Airbnb contacted me shortly after this post and canceled the upcoming reservations.