Say: refund + 50%, or a hotel you both agree on at cost + 25%. It's in the host's best interest to find a replacement, and they're locals so they're likely to be more capable than the visitor. Either way the host is penalized for late changes, and the visitor gets to choose which deal they think is better.

Hotels are expensive to run, and with the booking sites pushing for cancelable bookings, hotels have to make them cancelable as well.

When you cancel a room at 5:55PM, the room stays empty pretty much 100% of the time.

They're very fast to issue refunds, but only if requested... I wonder how many people just never notice the fraudulent charge! One reason I minimally trust Uber and keep checking all their charges...

No, the one being scammed has the weakest odds. The "traveler" could in fact be a local scammer who sabotages a property and then has various ways (which I won't detail) for turning a profit on it if the rules favor the "poor traveler".

I'm not saying the rules shouldn't favor the traveler, I'm cautioning against assuming that the traveler would always be the victim in case of a scam. This assumption is often the result of projection by an honest observer who can easily picture himself as the traveler but not as the property owner.

Better than biasing the outcome, in my opinion, would be for AirBnB to require all communication about "changes" to go through the corporate system. If both parties agree "it's fine", the event is noted but not investigated until it happens repeatedly. Top N% of repeats plus others at random get investigated. But if either party says it's "not fine", there will be no reviews allowed (so no threat of bad review), and AirBnB will investigate and do the "reviewing" themselves, with the investigation escalating in vigor with repeats. They will also make it clear that any evidence of intentional fraud they uncover will be promptly taken to law enforcement.

Of course this would raise costs for AirBnB, which would be passed on as fees, reducing the cost advantage of AirBnB vs traditional hotels. But if raising the trust level to hotel level eliminated the cost advantage over hotels, the cost advantage would be an illusion.

Disclaimer: I have never used AirBnb so I have no clue how it all works.

FWIW, the only contact I've ever had from hosts outside the system is emails (which I believe were actually relayed from Airbnb, not sure) and actual in-person contact upon arrival (75% of the time, the host has met me for check-in to hand-off keys, answer questions, and show me any oddities in the home).

Respectfully, I don't see these ways. Could you please at least a bit elaborate? Changes request always go through the host approval process. Are you talking about intentionally damaging the property?

The availability of affordable and decent listings in Paris is testament how badly they need the existing hosts. Who, by the way, are limited by regulations that limit the number of days a host can list per year, as well as tax registration requirements. None of which I'm complaining about; it's just another factor that makes me predict the situation with quality and honest listings will go down.

> And if the host's place did burn down for real then a few hundred extra to pay for the guest's hotel for a few nights will surely be a negligent cost.

is a very narrow view of someone who just lost their house to a fire. Even assuming nothing irreplaceable was lost, I feel my upcoming AirBnB guest might not be my top priority.

They pay other hotels to take you in, and have insurance for the worst case (house burning down).

Also most hotels do a lot of corporate business. This mutual five star crap from the "sharing economy" doesn't fly in that world. Somebody's PA has a bad experience at your hotel? No more bookings from that whole company. So shady nonsense just becomes bad business anyway.

New scam: post a listing for a very high-end place you don't own, cancel the booking once you've been paid and book the client a cheap hotel, and pocket the difference