Like any transaction done with your credit card, final resort is a chargeback. That's much easier than fighting with VRBO or Airbnb. The card providers are neutral parties, if you're due a refund and any merchant is stonewalling, you'll be getting your refund. Professional merchants know chargebacks affect their worthiness as a vendor in the eyes of merchant services. A host can lose the privilege of accepting cards if they lose too many chargebacks. It's a several year moratorium.
As a guest, I'll choose a professionally run, highly rated listing with a few hundred reviews over anything else. I'd prefer my funds are between myself and the host so adjustments and refunds or add ons can be done easily.
Running your business "isn't worth the risk?"
It's newbie hosts that make rules they refuse to enforce that make it hard on the rest of us.
"I got away with it last time, so I'll give a professional host who expects me to honor a contract I've agreed to, a one star review."
If I see you give mostly four stars on air review, I will not host you. That's as much my choice as your choice to give four stars when I've lived up to everything I promised. In the Airbnb community , if what I promised and what you got are aligned, that's a five star review.
As AI becomes more prevalent in business decision making, previous reviews will be an even more important factor in not just accepting a booking but also in offering discounts and perks. What you do today, how you conduct yourself in the marketplace today, some software company is gathering that information to sell to business owners of the future.
See you then.🤷♂️
If you bring your checkers game to a chess tournament you will look like the dumb shit that you are.
You cannot ensure a guest with a record of never expressing appreciation will suddenly grow up and express appreciation. This guest enjoys being mean and over critical and there's no reason to even try to "earn" a five star review. I'd rather be vacant than deal with shitty people.
It's likely this guest KNOWS darn well they're shitting the bed for every host they stay with. I sincerely doubt they haven't gotten feedback after numerous poor reviews. Just cancel with a plumbing issue and move on. There's a very small, but impactful percentage of the general population that enjoy hurting people. Three stars for Ikea silverware? No matter how hard you work, a four star review is negative and if you're just starting out you're better off cancelling. Also who wants to host a shit stain like this guest?
It's not a challenge. It's a deal breaker.
Not that Airbnb is live or die for us anymore, but actions have consequences. I'd have a plumbing issue shortly before arrival and cancel this guest. Or I'd call and legit cancel because I'm not comfortable. Whatever the current excuse is to get out of an unwanted booking.
Who needs the headache? Even when things go super well, it's a four star review? I'd be on pins and needles during their stay, and I don't earn enough anymore for that shit. I'll do what's best for me and my family and offer no apologies. Not any chance I'm hosting someone mean spirited like that consensually.
I'm not ok hosting an impossible to please guest, and will not try. If I know ahead of time someone has been impossible to please previously...."three stars for Ikea flatware," I'm noping out, any way I can.
Hosted on Airbnb for ten years. Send link.
Everyone who has hosted for even a short time knows Airbnb can and will override cancellation policies that the host agrees to. A host that "has no idea," has to have hosted for a mere nanosecond. Get on any forum, the extenuating circumstances bullshit with Airbnb is regularly commented on. You'd have to be in North Korea to be unaware.
I hosted through covid and do not recall Airbnb "spelling out" the vulnerabilities of hosting. Never. Send a link.
It's not something they require, no shit. Airbnb markets directly to large management firms, all of whom are full time organizations.
They collaborated with multiple API connected software firms like OwnerRez to facilitate full time, professional owners, hosts and management teams to list and integrate with Airbnb.
While I agree, Airbnb in particular is an unreliable marketing partner, and no one should put all their eggs in that poorly run basket, I sincerely doubt they're admitting that in a legal contract such as their TOS.
Can you link that? I've been hosting on Airbnb for a decade and I have never seen that as a TOS. Good advice, but a requirement?
I don't think there's a law about over booking. Check out the reddit sub Takes From The Front Desk.
There really isn't much difference between the two. The industry as a whole considers VRBO to be slightly more professional and it attracts more seasoned travelers in my experience.
VRBO was owned by a couple and was the original whale in the vacation rental industry. It was sold to Expedia and is now a mess, as is Airbnb.
Such a knee jerk comment. I can think of dozens of reasons a host has to cancel last minute. As a host, I just recently discovered vomit all over a two bedroom unit at check out. No way could we remedy that mess same day. There's also utility outages, with or without warning, plumbing and septic issues and the very occasional guest refusing to check out.
Unlike hotels with hundreds of rooms, a vacation rental owner may only have one property, and the owner may be a total professional, or a bit of an idiot.
I myself have been cancelled last minute for a thanksgiving stay only to find the newbie host relisted it for more money.
Best practices are to use seasoned hosts only, direct book only, require 100's of reviews and never use a vacation rental on the first night of international travel.
Airbnb, BDC, VRBO and Expedia all have varying levels of hideous customer service in emergencies, I really think none are set up to handle emergencies.
I got burned by Expedia decades ago in Hawaii and never booked through them again. I use them as a search engine, but if I can't book direct, I move on. Especially problematic are the add ons. Hotel, car and flight. Ooof. If the reservation is messed up, you may be spending the first day or two of your vacation on hold.
As a host, when a guest cancels the refund is done within minutes of my receiving the notification. I stick to my cancellation policy and put in my rental agreement I'll be sticking to my cancellation policy so there's no incentive to try lying. Lying DOES work with Airbnb (extenuating circumstances without proof) but not with VRBO. I used to believe the lies myself and would refund outside of my policy but no more.
Dont agree to a policy that doesn't work for you, and buy travel insurance without fail.
In summary, there's no perfect world, every booking option has its risks and annoyances. Mitigate the risks by doing your due diligence, working with seasoned professionals with good track records and avoid depending on newbies entirely unless you're young and reckless.
$300 sheets? No chance that works in a typical vacation rental. Even 100% cotton sheets are stolen or barfed on. Luxury sheets are for home use not where a damaged set is seen as "the cost of doing business."
With eleven units you can work on direct bookings via your own website and SEO.
Yeah, those 11 rentals caused the economy to shit itself, home insurance to double or triple in some parts of California and multiple other states, energy costs to sky rocket, job starts that aren't minimum wage to crater, evictions for seriously unpaid rent to be the highest ever, squatting to become a household word, and home repair costs to be the highest in recorded history. It couldn't be that household appliances that used to last ten years minimum now are jack shit worthless and out of warranty in two years and the warranty service is off shore anyway.
Couldn't be any of those pretend issues. It's some guy with vacation rentals on Airbnb we need to blame.
There's reasoning and then there's Reddit logic.
You're making this way too complicated.
You haven't returned the rental car if you don't return the keys and you haven't checked out until you've returned the keys and relinquished access.
The other complaints against this guess are typical B quality human stuff and not worth mentioning in a review or even to your fellow hosts.
Because you people pleased yourself into the corner and handled this poorly, i recommend you mentally thank these guests for the learning opportunity and move on.
A better practice would have been, "Oh, if you'd like to retain access to your shared space I'll have to charge you for another day, otherwise I'll need the keys at checkout for the next guest."
Best practice would involve a smart lock that deactivates at check out. Each guest gets their own code. "I'm sorry, to maintain privacy and safety of our guests in a shared space listing, your smart lock code activates during your stay and deactivates at 11 am at checkout. We're not able to store luggage or allow entry after checkout."
Someone in Nigeria has access to water quality in Lake Arrowhead in California. No one is gatekeeping information about any lake, anywhere.
Here's the problem with requiring a host or hotel manager to know why each and every visitor is visiting and then hire someone to maintain real time knowledge of anything that might impact the visitor's states reason for travel: it's requiring the wrong person to provide travel insurance, and demanded they do so for free when it's a product that is an add-on, and is an entire industry that doesn't provide its services for free.
A host that cancels frequently is going to be delisted pretty quickly. The logarithm is going to bump a host down even after the first cancellation.
Host says their canceling
vrbo