If your Airbnb host asks you — the guest — to cancel your reservation, DON’T DO IT. If you do, you will lose your booking money. Instead, it would be best if you ask your host to cancel the reservation, as he is the one who has a problem hosting you. We are going to show you how you can do that and get a Full Refund in this article.
On various occasions, Airbnb guests questioned what they should do if Airbnb host tells them to cancel their reservation. First, we want to make this clear. It’s unusual. If a host has any problem hosting an Airbnb guest, then the host needs to cancel. If a host asks a guest to cancel the booking, then the following things are happening behind the scene.
If a host cancels a reservation, they get penalties from Airbnb. These are the following:
- Their rating drops, sometimes; as a result, they may lose their super host status.
- They get a monetary penalty that Airbnb takes out from their next paycheck.
- Reservation dates that he/she canceled get blocked from Airbnb for another future booking.
- Host accounts get deactivated if they cancel 3 or more bookings in a calendar year.
If the host is asking you — the guest — to cancel, it means he is trying to avoid these penalties from Airbnb. If you cancel the reservation upon the host’s request, the host gets benefitted in the following ways:
- The host gets to keep the booking money which you lose.
- The host can accept another booking for the same dates and earn more money.
- The host does not receive any penalties from Airbnb.
Notably, this can happen before a major holiday. Due to dynamic Airbnb pricing, the hosts Airbnb rental could get a reservation filled with lower prices than the host expected. Now, the Airbnb host gets greedy and wants more money for those dates. Legally, he can’t ask you for more money because he has already entered into a contract with you — the guest. So, he is playing dirty and asking you to cancel the reservation. So, he can book his/her Airbnb again for a higher price for those busy holidays.
Remember, always communicate with your host through the Airbnb platform. It will keep a paper trail as your proof if anything goes wrong.
If you have proof to show that the Airbnb host asked you to cancel, DON’T CANCEL, instead, send a CANCEL REQUEST to the host through the Airbnb platform. This way, your Airbnb booking will get canceled, and you will get a full refund. To send a cancellation request, follow these steps:
- Go to “Trips” and find the trip you want to cancel.
- Click on “Show trip details.“
- Click on “Change or cancel.“
- Click “Cancel reservation.“
- Please select a reason, choose “My host needs to cancel.“
- Next to “Did they say they can’t host you anymore?” choose “Yes.“
- Click “Ask host to cancel.“
It will send your host a message with 24 hours response timeframe. If your host accepts, then your reservation gets canceled, and you get a full refund. But if the host rejects, then it means he/she can still host you.
If an Airbnb host tells you that he can’t host you because there is a problem with the Airbnb rental, then you — the guest — need to contact Airbnb immediately, because the Airbnb host is trying to host a guest in an unsafe property which Airbnb needs to know.
Conclusion:
Traveling is not easy. When a host asks you to cancel the reservation, it adds a lot of mental stress to the guest. If you follow the guidelines we provided in this article, you will get your money back, and all the problems would be solved.
Airbnb Source: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1250/what-should-i-do-if-my-host-needs-to-cancel