Airbnb coronavirus cancellations: refund, discrimination issues sparked as hosts and guests enter unknown territory

Airbnb hosts and guests are cancelling bookings on both ends in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, with some Asian guests reporting discrimination

Refund issues are also arising, with one American, who cancelled a trip to South Korea because of virus fears, unhappy with not getting a full refund

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Airbnb says it will also allow guests and hosts to cancel without penalties if their booking is in mainland China or South Korea, or if guests are coming from those two locations. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:00pm, 7 Mar 2020Updated: 10:00pm, 7 Mar 2020

As the coronavirus threatens to upend the travel industry, executives of hotel, airline and cruise ship companies have been forced to confront sensitive questions of how to best protect their customers and employees.

In the growing corner of the travel world occupied by Airbnb, those issues are being hashed out one home-sharing host and guest at a time.

On an online message board for hosts, a man in Mumbai, India, asked what he should do when he received an inquiry from a guest coming from China. “I am unsure if I confirm or cancel the booking,” he wrote.

A host from Tacoma, in the US state of Washington, wrote on the same board that she is “wiping down all doorknobs, handles, light switches, and anything else that may have been touched by the previous guests”.

In some cases, travellers of Asian descent have reported host cancellations they see as discriminatory. And in one posting, a host in Rome, Italy, wrote that they had a guest check out “because next door there is a family from Asia”.

“Two days before the trip, I got a message through the Airbnb app that said … ‘Hey, sorry we are afraid of coronavirus,’” says Kavi Pandian, a Fulbright scholar from outside Atlanta who had his reservation for a German Airbnb cancelled. “I got the impression … that I might not have got that message if it weren’t clear from my profile that I was someone from an Asian background.”

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