How are the Airbnb Cancellation Policies going to change?

With an email sent on the 15th of September, Airbnb has informed Italian hosts that it will soon make big changes to the rules that define when and how guests can cancel a reservation.

Airbnb is planning to introduce an update to the Cancellation Policies and a corresponding increase to the host service fees.

Unfortunately the pages explaining the pages on Airbnb are only visible to Italian hosts... However, a detailed explanation of the changes is available here.

In short, what is going to happen is the following:

• - Each cancellation policy will have a grace period, i.e. a set period of time before a reservation when a guest can always cancel and receive a full refund.
• - The Moderate and Strict policies (less favourable to the guests), will be accompanied by an increase in host service fees, from 3% to respectively 4% and 5% to keep into account the extra protection from cancellations
• - Guests that cancels pre-trip will not be charged the guest service fees, making cancellations truly 100% refundable

The rationale that Airbnb is putting behind this is that by having more relaxed terms, more guests will book, and that this will compensate a likely increase in cancellations.

>> HERE a comparison with the Old Policies

** PLEASE, SIGN THE PETITION IF YOU WANT TO SAY NO! **