You are a business traveller who has booked an airbnb flat in London for a week. Except that five days before your departure, you receive a message cancelling your reservation. With all the wasted time and energy that entails in finding a new place to stay... Does this misadventure sound familiar? Of course. It seems that this type of problem is frequent according to a study based on 127,183 twitter complaints from Airbnb hosts. A detailed analysis of the site Asher & Lyric in cooperation with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the UCCS School of Public Affairs. Over a period of two years, the study will sift through complaints on twitter between 1 January 2015 and 1 September 2020.
The results speak for themselves. The results speak for themselves, 10.4% of hosts offering accommodation cancel the booking while 22.3% of people believe they have been confronted with a scam. The most common scam is that of renting the same flat several times over on several rental websites, only to confirm it to the person paying the highest price. It is said to constitute 41.1% of all scams.
New rules from 22 August
Airbnb has decided to do something about it. Visit 22 Augustthe American company will be setting up new, more restrictive cancellation rules. The minimum cancellation fee will be increased to 50 $ and the maximum fee may reach...1000 $.. The amount of the penalty will vary according to the date of cancellation in relation to the stay booked.
- 30 days before arrival: 10 % of the cost of the reservation.
- Less than 30 days but more than 48 hours before arrival: 25 % of the cost of the reservation.
- Less than 48 hours before arrival: 50 % of the cost of the reservation.
Airbnb hopes first and foremost to drastically reduce duplicate registrations of accommodation on different sites. The penalty of $1,000 (or the equivalent in local currency) will certainly act as a deterrent.
Above all, this provision will give users of the airbnb platform even more confidence. This will certainly make it possible to avoid further tedious searches, which often turn out to be less favourable than the first reservation...
