"The Metropole Hotel hastened the international spread of the 2003 SARS outbreak by the index case infecting visitors from Singapore, Vietnam, Canada as well as local people via close contact with the index case and the environmental contamination. The one-week quarantine of more than 300 guests and staff at the Metropark Hotel during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu exposed gaps in the partnership with the hotel industry. The subsequent guidelines for the hotel industry from the Centre of Health Protection focused largely on the maintenance of hygiene within the hotel premises."
https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...
"This hotel is infamous as ground zero for a SARS ‘super spreader’ in the 2003 outbreak—here’s what happened"
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super...
However, I don't get why cancellation policies will be a major reason of the spread. Your explanation on sunk cost fallacy and cancellation seems to be missing. Airbnb has a clause to refund under "Epidemic disease or illness"
So any trips to Italy, Iran, Washington State etc can’t be refunded. It encourages people to still go.
Sunk cost fallacy: people might not take a free trip to italy now, but they may go if they previously paid for one.
The only way to be protected is to stay home and not follow the herd.
You only need to book somewhere to stay for downtime/private time.
Wait what? Is there more to this?
I imagine it's sort of akin to that.
I haven't worked through the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if these were among the highest-efficiency ways to spend government emergency health funds, especially in the early days before a vaccine has been developed.
> OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do,
Also, huh? I think more people in this society think that "money is the root of all evil" than what you're suggesting.
The end result usually is the same, someone else will pay. Which means business big and small for which some litigant finds a twist which a jury is sympathetic to.
Asking individuals to bear the financial risk related to these types of emergencies seems wrong to me on all levels, moral, pragmatism, effectiveness, social fairness, etc.
These types of risks should be borne by corporations in the form of strictly less profit for executives and shareholders. Not by raising prices, not by cutting staff, not by reducing employee benefits. These are risks that have to absorbed by classes of people with extreme financial reserves to cushion the blow, not by classes of people without those means.
Or the pricing of refundable tickets vs non-refundable tickets. It turns out if you agree to take on the risk of cancellation, most corporations are willing to give you a lower price on the ticket. Constraining the conditions that they can factor into non-refundable tickets will impact prices, so you can't just ignore consumer behavior, which for things like airplane tickets is to pay as little as possible...
This is a common fallacy that we can use the pricing mechanism to account for the risk. But whether it’s food poisoning (cheaper prices for expired goods), labor externalities (cheaper prices for goods made with slave / child / exploitative labor), or geopolitical risks (cheaper prices for travel that can be cancelled for reasons that regular citizens simply cannot adequately prepare for), across the board it’s a failed idea.
The information asymmetries and burdens are simply too lopsided against regular consumers. Pricing as information aggregation (thus reflecting correct understanding of risks impounded in prices) is not a thing. It is theorized but fails to exist.
And risks of insolvency are far worse for individuals than for corporations, on multiple levels.
I'm not arguing against regulation, I'm arguing for regulation that acknowledges that certain regulations have an obvious impact on pricing.
There's plenty of middle ground. Bed and breakfast regulation could include a provision allowing the government to make public health the higher priority and require refunds during some declared period of time, and let operators set their own terms otherwise.
I addressed this in my original comment above. These risks must be borne by shareholders and executives and not passed on to customers or employees.
Price increases to maintain the same level of profitability is inherently predatory. Rather, it’s simply a cost of doing business borne by the corporation and its shareholders. Airline prices are not higher in response to the airlines bearing the cost of cancellation risks. Instead, airline profits taken by executive bonuses, equity, c-suite perks, and shareholder returns are just lower, while prices, wages and benefits remain the same. Any other outcome where the corporation tries to deflect its responsibility to bear that cost without impacting consumers or employees is immoral predatory behavior that must become illegal, like lobbying, deceptive pricing, price gouging, extensive contractual fine print that consumers are not equipped to read or understand, offering consumers tiers of lower pricing that does not include necessary protections, layoffs or benefit cuts to preserve executive compensation hundreds of multiples above average employees, etc.
If this causes a business to fold, it only means they did not have a viable business. Consumers don’t want the product. Figure out how to bear the cost of these risks or else you haven’t got a business.
If Airbnb cancels the reservation, the person renting out the room has an empty room and doesn't get paid. The housekeeper they hire to clean up after each guest doesn't get hired. The guy in the sandwich cart the guest would have bought from doesn't get paid. The corporation doesn't make a profit from the transaction (that was the one we're supposed to want, right?), but that wasn't most of the price to begin with, and the profits go to "shareholders" which are mostly the retirement accounts of ordinary people.
They should cancel it anyway.
Airbnb will not refund you a stay unless your flight has been cancelled by the airline. Unfortunately the airlines are giving options right now, Delta for example let's you rebook or get refunds to some countries that are trying to shut down this virus at it's source. But not feeling safe, along with being given a refund on a nonrefundable ticket does not matter to Airbnb at all. My recommendation is if you have to travel in the next three months to somewhere in Asia or the Mediterranean is to make sure your booking is fully refundable or get in contact with your host prior to booking and see how leniant they are.
If you thought you could get trip insurance to cover the risk you are also going to be in trouble. Your trip insurance will not cover pandemics, read the fine print.