@Airbnb @Catherine-Powell
Well at first glance, this all sounds like a slight improvement in terms of the loathed Extenuating Circumstances policy, but the big question remains - if the purpose of these changes truly is to further prevent hosts from having to act as guests' personal travel insurers by being routinely forced to fully refund those who can't travel due to 'unexpected personal circumstances' (as we are now).. why not just eliminate EC altogether, and require guests to take responsibility for their own travel mishaps by offering them the option of purchasing travel insurance before completing their booking, as hosts have been suggesting (begging) for years? And providing a link to a bunch of random brokers after booking has been completed - as you're already doing anyway - doesn't really constitute "helping guests find travel insurance"
Given Airbnb’s track record for punishing hosts for every little thing that might possibly displease or inconvenience guests in any way, one would have to wonder what penalties will apply to those rebel hosts who do choose to hold the guests to the terms of their cancellation policies? Threatening emails? Pushed down to the depths of the search rankings? Ghosting? Suspension if we opt to uphold our cancellation policies more than twice or three times a year? It's hard to believe there won't be a 'behaviour modification' catch somewhere. There always is.
You once again claim that guests "will not be able to cancel under the Covid-19 EC policy unless the host or guests are sick with covid and are able to provide the correct documentation" - but the written policy still contains the "attest to the facts" verbiage, meaning no evidence or documentation required. Why might that be?
Also, hosts have already been deprived of more than enough desperately needed income this year alone as a result of both the COVID and regular EC policies, so why not instigate these changes with immediate effect, rather than make us suffer another four full months of being robbed blind by a policy Airbnb clearly now accepts is abusive/unfair (otherwise they wouldn't be amending it, would they?) Why wait until Jan 20, 2020? Could it possibly be that this is just a strategic ploy to keep hosts pacified and placated long enough to get the IPO out of the way, before they discover that these new changes are not all they're cracked up to be, and start kicking off again?
And as for your statement that "We, Airbnb and hosts, must work together to earn and retain the trust and loyalty of our guests" - the fact is, the vast majority of hosts have been going above and beyond to earn and retain the trust and loyalty of our guests (your customers) from the day we started hosting. It's first and foremost Airbnb's behaviour, incompetence and duplicity that has done so much damage to guests' perception of the platform, and caused serious decline in host/guest relationships, particularly in the past 7-8 months. Don't insult our integrity and our hard work by tarring us with the same brush. And make no mistake, it's Airbnb who must work to earn and retain the trust and loyalty of both hosts and guests. If it's not already too late.
Penelope