Mark Simpson describes an Airbnb notification that let guests cancel free regardless of the listing's cancellation policy, costing hosts thousands. Direct bookings worked better: hosts could call guests and reschedule them instead of losing the booking entirely.
And the notification was Airbnb pushed out to everybody with a booking saying, you can cancel for free. Doesn't matter what the policy is. Doesn't matter what the cancellation policy is. You can cancel for free. And just like that, people lost thousands. I know people that have lost tens of thousands because of this. But we are in control of the data. We're not in control of a third party because it's the direct booking. We could take stock of what was happening. We could reach out to every guest directly. We could call them, and we're able to adopt a change not cancel policy. We saved thousands. We saved our business by being able to do this, to be able to pick up the phone and have a real conversation with our guests and just say, hey, I know you can't travel now. We're super honest. We're super transparent. We'll just say, you know, we would love to see you at some point this year. Let's move your book.
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