If you cancel a confirmed reservation or Instant Book reservation the penalties can be significant ($100 Penalty, Loss of SuperHost eligibility for one year, impact to search results ranking, blocking of days on your calendar so you can’t re-book those dates among others. In a few limited situations AirBNB will allow you to cancel without penalties due to extenuating circumstances.
The best way to not get hit with any cancellation fees is to NOT CANCEL. Here are some options to deal with that double booking, or other situation that does not fall into the “extenuating circumstances” bucket and or encourage the guest to cancel. I ranked them in order of the best options to least attractive.
- Contact guest and offer alternate dates. Offer discounts on future booking or whatever it takes!
- Find alternate accommodations on AirBNB; by working with AirBNB you will avoid having the guest have to pay the AirBNB fees if they agree to cancel. I had no problem transferring the reservation the one time I tried this trick and there were no cancellation penalties of any kind.
- If guests travel plans are not flexible, and you can’t find a comparable on AirBNB, explain the situation to them and they may be willing to cancel and find other accommodations. Again the carrot (bribe) of future discounts may be an incentive and could cover any AirBNB fees.
- Find alternate accommodations outside of Airbnb and work with the guest to HAVE THEM CANCEL the booking with you.
Last Resort if you must cancel, DON’T CANCEL USING THE ONLINE CANCELATION PROCESS as documented by AirBNB. I recommend ALWAYS CALLING AIRBNB so if you have a sob story and/or will be hoping for a one-time exception you will get it considered immediately and you will get a support case open that will allow you to communicate with AirBNB resolution team via email till things get sorted.
This is based on current cancellation policies AirBNB is changing things up and next year the cancellation policies are epxected to be changed and the penalties could be much worse. However, one fo the changes is that guests will be refunded the AirBNB booking fees if cancelling more that 30 days out. this will make it much easier to implement options 2-3 as there will not be any penalties for guests cancelling and you want need to get AirBNB involved to faciliate the transfer to another property if you go with option 2 and it will make option 3 an easier sell with your guests.
Hope this Helps! Following these tips can keep your guests happy, AirBNB Happy and avoid any nasty host penalties.
Happy Hosting
Andrew
Related Help Articles
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/990/how-do-host-cancellation-penalties-work
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1320/what-is-airbnb-s-extenuating-circumstances-policy