I was actually going to make a comment about the refund part. That sounds absolutely terrible and doesn't match the tone they were trying to go with by saying "Only on Airbnb.". I mean the whole paragraph doesn't make any sense.

> If a guest can’t check into their home and the Host cannot resolve the issue, we’ll find them a similar or better home for the length of their original stay, or we’ll refund them.

This implies that the guest is already at the doorstep. Yeah, enjoy your stay in a shitty overpriced hotel, in the meantime we will try and refund the money over the next couple of days.

exactly - how is this not a baseline expectation? "I bought a service and you didn't provide it", "ok you'll get your money back"

Unless they mean that I as a guest can choose between the refund and the rebooking, but they should definitely clarify the wording if that's the case.

> Booking Protection Guarantee

> In the unlikely event a Host needs to cancel a booking within 30 days of check-in, we’ll find guests a similar or better home, or we’ll refund them.

Absolutely. This happened to me and cost us thousands of dollars. A refund is expected when services are not provided. But in practice if you are not able to get a similar service for the same price than a refund is not an actual solution.

Yeah that was my thought too. "Or we'll refund you" is not that great of a guarantee.

Hotels overbook just like airlines, though, so I'm not sure how AirBnB is much worse in this situation? I recently lost a room due to overbooking and being the easiest guest to get cut (I was only staying for one night).

I stayed in literally hundreds of hotels and that never happened to me.

Sure, it can happen on very rare occasions, but what a hotel will do then is "walk" you to a hotel in the vicinity of the same category or better.

They don't put you on hold for hours.

And when they walk you, they pay for your stay elsewhere and for transport to and from. And usually other perks like snacks or rewards points or hotel credit.

And a half decent hotel will call you or email you in advance to notify you of the situation so you do not waste much time.

Happened to me a few times. The hotel booked me a room in a different hotel a few blocks away, refund my entire stay, and provide points for the troubles.

Airbnb isn’t a hotel, it’s a person renting out their house. Not a fungible thing like a hotel room. When I book Marriott I don’t care which room in the class of rooms I booked that I get. When I book an Airbnb I very much care that the house I selected is the one I stay in.

Airbnb is to a great extent hotels and property managers.

The cosy little family business is not so common to come by.

The AirBnB that is my "neighbour" is run by a property manager - they run a chain of apartments on behalf of the owners. They aren't letting a room in their home; they live in another city. The owner seems to be an investment banker who lives overseas, and never comes here.

From a landlord's point-of-view, their proposition is attractive: guaranteed monthly rent, they handle all admin, they hire cleaners.

From a guest's point-of-view, it's good too; they have a full schedule of bookings and get rave reviews (this is a very attractive location). The standard of decor is high.

But from my point-of-view it sucks, because they've degraded my owner-occupied home into a hotel suite, except with no concierge, no mailroom (the visitors have access to my mail deliveries), and no onsite manager.

> the visitors have access to my mail deliveries

How does that happen? Don't you have a lock on the mailbox at the very least?

There are three flats, each with its own front door opening onto a shared stairwell; and a common front door that opens onto the street. The main front door has a mail slot. There's no 'mailbox' - mail deliveries land on the doormat. Someone picks it up and puts it on the first three steps when they come in or go out.

This works fine as long as my neighbours are actually neighbours. If they're some random tourist from anywhere in the world, not so much.

Wow. Is such system popular where you live? What country is it, if I may ask?

Looks like a flatmate-like agreement for me, but on a house level for whatever reason.

This is the UK.

This is not a "house" - if it were a house, it would be a six-bedroom mini-mansion. There are separate houses on this estate, and two larger blocks of flats. The larger blocks have entry-phones and so on. This is the only block with as few as three flats.

They are nice flats, luxury even, in an amazing location. Unfortunately the developer (early 80s) went broke, and so there are some loose ends that were never properly dealt with, especially the handling of rubbish, and the whole matter of investment properties, empty properties, and ultra-short lets. There are no children.

As I say, it would all be fine if my neighbours were neighbours. Even if I didn't like them, we'd have a shared interest in making things work. I don't have to like my neighbours; I just need to be able to find them, so I can talk to them about issues. The landlord of this AirBnB property lives 600 miles away, in a foreign country, and has never lived here.

AirCover just sounds like a rebrand of their existing policy. They've always offered an "swap for similar or refund" policy when hosts cancel.

I used Airbnb significantly last year (several 1 month+ stays in 4 different countries across 3 continents) and I found that they usually started with pitching me on other Airbnb instant books in the area; most of them I had already seen and wasn't interested in but I'd guess that this 24hr line will do that first before refunding you and maybe in the situations where there is a sub 20-25% differential (whatever cut airbnb takes these days) they might just true up the difference for a more expensive booking than the one you had to keep you in the airbnb ecosystem. I am a little surprised they aren't also offering a more literal aircover add on with flight insurance for if your flight is delayed or cancelled and you miss part of your stay but maybe that was too out there.

> In that situation, if I get the info 1 day before arrival and just a refund, then I am screwed anyway since the prices on the market will be sky high.

"Sorry, we didn't find a equivalent alternative. Enjoy sleeping under a bridge!"