Airbnb guests can now receive refund for weather events

Airbnb introduced updates to its extenuating circumstances policy, including renaming it to the major disruptive events policy. The company said: “When the policy is in effect, it does two things: first, it overrides the Host’s booking cancellation policy and enables guests to cancel eligible upcoming and active reservations at the impacted location for a refund; and second, it also allows Hosts to cancel reservations without fees and other related consequences. Now, the policy will explicitly apply to foreseeable weather events, like a hurricane during hurricane season, that result in another covered event happening, like a government travel restriction or large-scale outage of essential utilities. This means guests with eligible reservations can cancel and receive a refund and Hosts can cancel without fees and related consequences.”