What Do You Do If An AirBnb Host Cancels On You At The Last Minute?

by Ryan Vagabundo

For the most part, I like AirBnb and am glad that it's an option for travelers.

However, it does have a select list of qualities that REALLY irk me and ensure that it will never replace or surpass hotels and motels.

One of the top items on that list is the leeway that hosts have to flake on you. They're basically allowed to cancel your reservation and leave you out in the cold anytime right up to check-in. They'll face some consequences for doing this late in the process: they eat a $100 fee if it's within a week (though that's taken out of their next bookings) and become ineligible for "superhost" status for a year. That's not really enough to stop one that's determined to cancel, however.

So let's say the nightmare scenario happens. You fly into an unfamiliar city on a busy holiday weekend when every other lodging is booked up or super expensive, you tote your luggage out of the airport, you're about to book a Lyft or something to get over there ... and the "LOL cancelled" email comes through.

Now what?

1) See if AirBnb Can Help

The AirBnb support page only says that you "automatically get a full refund" if the hosts cancels at the last minute. Welp, that's nice and all, but little help if you just flew into Vegas at the start of New Years Eve weekend and the only remaining hotels are gonna be $500 a night to start if you can even find one.

AirBnb expects you to put the refund toward another AirBnb, but that can be tricky at the last minute. Not all hosts offer "instant book", and on a busy weekend in a popular city those options are probably all gone. Other bookings give the host 24 hours to respond before confirming, which would really not be helpful in an emergency situation.

I recall hearing at least a couple of stories of AirBnb helping stranded travelers get into a hotel room, but I can't find any examples of them doing that now. The only stories I can find are of them giving back an added 10% to 20% for really late cancellations. Again, probably not enough to defray last-minute hotel costs in a slammed city.

However, an upset call to AirBnb won't take much time and could yield more help. A lot of these company policies aren't as "firm" as they try to make them out to be online. I've never been stuck in this experience with AirBnb, but a few years ago I booked a Hotwire room that turned out to be an obvious druggie flophouse. Terrible pictures and reviews all over the place, just clearly a place they shouldn't have accepted in their listings in the first place. The Hotwire "policy" is a stern "no refunds ever" on their website for cases like this, but after calling customer service and getting a little amp they issued me a full refund on the spot as a "courtesy." If it's a situation that could cause PR or legal headaches for the company, you'll find they're often suddenly a lot more flexible than they first appeared to be in helping you.

2) Look Into A Points Workaround

Most of the hotel chain loyalty programs now allow you to accrue "points" that can eventually be cashed in for a free night.

Here's the great thing about these systems: hotels generally have to set a fixed rate of points for at least three months in advance, and they're not allowed to spike the points asking price just for a specific weekend or holiday. So the "points price" on a busy weekend is often the best possible rate you can get.

But, let's say you don't have any points stashed up with any chains. No problem. Here's the other great feature of the points systems - you can always buy them at a fixed rate through the hotel web site.

Let me use Vegas on NYE again as an example. You scan hotel listings and find that, improbably, a Comfort Inn has some vacancies for your stay dates. However, they want $500 a night. $500 a night? OOTRAGEOUS!

However, we quickly check the points rate and find out that it's 15,000 per night for October to January, including our desired stay dates. Checking the Choice Hotels website, we find that you can purchase points at a rate of $8 for 1,000. That would make our stay $120 per night ... not cheap, but considerably less damage than the asking price to pay cash!

3) Skim the Last-Minute Hotel Booking Sites

Third-party booking sites sometimes require hotels to commit certain amounts of rooms for each date to them, and the hotel will get an unbooked room and $0 to show for it if it doesn't sell through that site. So you'll sometimes see them go to some *very* steep discounts at the last possible minute if they've got a few rooms that aren't moving for whatever reason.

If the city is slammed, last-minute deals are unlikely, but this is another thing that takes little time and is worth a skim on your phone or whatever. For same-day or next-day bookings I've seen the best offers with HotelTonight and Priceline, but Hotels.com and Hotwire are also probably worth a look.

4) Consider Bugging Out of Town

So hotels are booked solid or are $500+ per night, and nothing else has worked. It's time to consider bugging out of town to somewhere close by and coming back for your flight out. Yeah, your trip is ruined, but it was about to be ruined by forced hoboism anyway. At least this way you get to sleep indoors.

Let's use Vegas as an example yet again. Vegas has lots of little cities within a 2-3 hour drive that are often affordable and full of vacancies even on busy travel weekends: Bakersfield, Barstow, Victorville, Beatty, Tonopah, Kingman, St. George, Cedar City, etc etc. If you have a rental car already, bueno! If not, I would look at the cheap daily bus and shuttle services to each of these places. Believe me, I would take NYE in Barstow over being stuck on the street or in the Vegas airport lugging around luggage.