All Forum Posts by: Valerie Rogers

@Anand S. can you tell me where the screenshot came from?

When they started fully refunding cancelled bookings with no regard to my cancellation policy and without my consent I immediately blocked off all of the high season dates for all of our properties. Going forward I will only use Airbnb to book my off seasons. 

It’s not that I would not have given the traveler a full refund; we gave full refunds for every cancelled booking in March & April. I just didn’t like that they took the decision out of my hands.

I may discontinue using Airbnb completely once I see what this whole “cleaning protocol” is going to look like. 

Thankfully VRBO allowed owners to control the refund process for Covid-19 cancellations. 

Travelers may decide they prefer using Airbnb over VRBO since Airbnb so clearly supported the traveler and VRBO supported the owners in this situation.

Historically I’ve always received the majority of our bookings from VRBO. 

Maybe it is time for me to start learning how to use social media marketing more aggressively than an occasional post now & then. 

Actually, this is not a quite correct interpretation of the Strict Cancellation policy. I had a conversation (via messaging) with an Airbnb agent to clarify this, and she said that BOTH things must be true in order for the guest to receive a full refund under the strict cancellation policy:

• the guest must cancel within 48 hours of booking AND

• (it must be) at least 14 full days prior to listing’s local check-in time (shown in the confirmation email)

If both of these things are not true then a full refund to the guest is not possible; the normal strict policy refund applies (50% refund up to 7 days in advance of check-in and 0% refund 7 days or less in advance of check-in).   .

Just to clarify....Airbnb is offering to reimburse hosts 25% of what they would have normally received according to their cancellation policy. 

For instance, if you use the "Strict" policy you would normally receive a 50% refund if a guest cancels up to 7 days in advance of the check in date, and after that you would receive 100% refund for the cancellation.

In this situation Airbnb's offering to hosts whose bookings cancel due to Covid-19 is 25% of that amount, so you will actually be paid only 12.5% of the booking's room rate up to 7 days before check-in and 25% of the booking's room rate if the cancellation occurs within 7 days of the check-in date.

Also, their Super-Host/Experiences Covid-19 fund that is offering $5000 grants only applies to Super Hosts with 2 or fewer listings and is by invitation only. 
 

In the 5 days since I posted my first response in this thread things have changed so quickly and drastically that we've had to be flexible and make changes to our original stance.

As of the writing of this post my husband & I have decided to allow our guests a full refund less a slight cancellation fee (to help pay me for my time in handling the booking and then the cancellation) OR allow the guest to reschedule their booking to dates in the future.

I've done little else the past few days but handle cancellation/refund requests. It is taking a toll on our finances, but we feel this is the right thing for us to do. 

We have a "no refund" policy except for Airbnb bookings, which are covered with their "strict" cancellation policy.

At this point in time our response to guests who are wondering if they can cancel & receive a refund because they don't want to travel during the coronavirus situation is "Sorry, no refund."

But, if there are certain circumstances (such as a member of the party is a senior citizen or the conference or event was canceled due to coronavirus precaution) then I would consider making an exception.

At all times we would refund the guest's payment if something should happen that would prevent the guest from accessing or using the property, such as it becoming inhabitable due to fire or flood, or a mandatory evacuation due to a storm or hurricane, or roads or airports being closed that would prevent the guest from accessing the property, etc. In these situations then yes, a refund is in order (in my opinion).

This article on the Homeaway Community might help:

https://community.homeaway.com...

Make sure you add an "Internet Abuse" clause in your rental agreement. Ours describes what comprises Internet Abuse and says if we are contacted by our Internet Service Provider that our IP address has been used to commit Internet Abuse during the dates of their stay we will seek reimbursement from them for any penalty that we, the owners are charged with. It also urges the guest to make sure everyone in their party understands what is considered Internet Abuse (including children) to avoid problems.

The guest has signed this rental agreement. It would still be a pain in the neck to have to pursue them for this but at least I have their agreement to this policy if I should ever need to do so.

This may not prevent illegal content from being downloaded using your IP address, but it might help if you ever have todealing with an issue, and it may also act as a deterrent if the guest knows they have agreed specifically to our Internet Abuse clause by signing our rental agreement.  . 

Jeffery Minnich

Try posting in the Homeaway Community. You might see other conversations about the same issue or maybe one of their CS monitors can help:

https://community.homeaway.com

You may have to create an account in order to submit a post, but I think you can at least read the posts in the forums without having to create an account.