This is a short segment from a YouTube interview ("Pivot Your Business 🚀", recorded April 15, 2020) where Mark Simpson and another speaker discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly wiped out short-term rental reservations. The speaker reports that Airbnb removed hosts' ability to choose cancellations or set refunds, leaving property managers unable to offer partial refunds or manage bookings. The conversation probes whether accepting new guests was allowed and how rules were changing day-to-day.
The US in particular, like, how is it affecting the hospitality and the rental world?
It was like in one week, it really hit hard where all reservations were completely wiped off of our calendars. There wasn't much to prepare. And then with, you know, the drama that's been happening with Airbnb, basically not giving hosts the option to be able to cancel their reservations, not giving the choice. So for managing for other people, we didn't have the luxury of, you know, the ability to be able to say, hey, you know, this guest wants to cancel. Should we refund them or give a partial refund? Airbnb just kind of stripped that away from us.
But can you accept bookings? Can you welcome in guests, business guests, whoever? Is that allowed where you are right now? Or is it changing day by day.
Step by step, really is changing, you know, day by day, state by state? And that's one of the big things. If you were just listing on Airbnb, even some locations, like, I just, I just talked with a host in the St. Petersburg, Florida area where, you know, she, she had to quickly change her whole model to doing long term stays because people were, you know, trying to, you know, everybody was canceling. So she was saying, okay, you know, what we're going to do is we're going to book long term. But the listings on Airbnb guests weren't even allowed to book long term stays because Airbnb was saying that the location is unsafe and you should stay at a hotel or somewhere else. So not even giving the option, you know, she, she's listed, I believe, on, on some other platforms. So that isn't as big of an issue for those Airbnb bookings. But the majority of bookings are coming. You know, majority of the bookings in a lot of these locations are through Airbnb. Airbnb is the sole provider of booking.
