Did your Airbnb bookings drop off a cliff since Summer? I am booked again.

[Travis Rasmussen]

TLDR;
By my findings, if you are a long term Airbnb host/Superhost, etc and had your bookings DROP OFF A CLIFF this summer, switch to "Flexible" cancellations and I bet your bookings will go back to "normal".

So I have been hosting since 2018

hundreds of reviews, still over a 4.9+ score. Superhost

And my bookings have fallen off a cliff this summer. ALL of the properties at once died.

At first I thought "hmmm, could just be the eb and flow of the business" but 3 months of decline and I was convinced - airbnb changed something BIG in the algo in Summer of 2025. It seems like hosts who have been nothing but great, superhosts, matter 0% to airbnb now. Cool.

Anyways, I decided to test on my own properties and share my findings here what could get them booked again.

My thesis was "if I was as big as Airbnb, and I SHIFTED my focus on what HOSTS want to what GUESTS want - how would I reward that?"

For those curious, I am in the Florida Kissimmee/Orlando area.

I have 4 properties to mess with and this is what happened. I had to go "extreme" in my thesis to get bookings NOW. I will be tweaking from this point now that my calendar is booked again. 

The Results:

100% - AT A MINIMUM, "Flexible" cancellation is being promoted and strict cancellations are being punished.

POSSIBLE - Listings that accept Pets without fees are ALSO promoted.

I had 4 properties to test with.

Thinking like Airbnb, I guessed the things that would make the user have the best experience is to be able to cancel and bring pets. So...

Over roughly a 2 week period:

Property A - Strict to FLEXIBLE cancellation, pets stay FREE

(11 bookings, 2 inquires)

Property B - STRICT cancellation (did not change!), pets stay FREE

(0 bookings)

Property C - Strict to FLEXIBLE Cancellation, pets stay FREE

(11 bookings, 2 inquires)

Property D - Control, no changes (STRICT cancellation, no pets)

(1 inquiry)

ALL properties I made sure "opportunities" where near max (office space with a comfy chair, etc)

It's really interesting that I opened up pets to 3 of them, 2 of them I added flexible cancellation and the ones with flexible cancellation SOARED.

Had nothing to do with me as a host, or my properties. Airbnb wants you to offer flexible cancellation.

If anyone else is down in bookings (and was booked before summer of 2025!) and makes this change, can you let me know if your results are similar?

I had one other person test this and she immediately got bookings. 

[Mark Miles]

Quote from @Travis Rasmussen:

TLDR;
By my findings, if you are a long term Airbnb host/Superhost, etc and had your bookings DROP OFF A CLIFF this summer, switch to "Flexible" cancellations and I bet your bookings will go back to "normal".

So I have been hosting since 2018

hundreds of reviews, still over a 4.9+ score. Superhost

And my bookings have fallen off a cliff this summer. ALL of the properties at once died.

At first I thought "hmmm, could just be the eb and flow of the business" but 3 months of decline and I was convinced - airbnb changed something BIG in the algo in Summer of 2025. It seems like hosts who have been nothing but great, superhosts, matter 0% to airbnb now. Cool.

Anyways, I decided to test on my own properties and share my findings here what could get them booked again.

My thesis was "if I was as big as Airbnb, and I SHIFTED my focus on what HOSTS want to what GUESTS want - how would I reward that?"

For those curious, I am in the Florida Kissimmee/Orlando area.

I have 4 properties to mess with and this is what happened. I had to go "extreme" in my thesis to get bookings NOW. I will be tweaking from this point now that my calendar is booked again. 

The Results:

100% - AT A MINIMUM, "Flexible" cancellation is being promoted and strict cancellations are being punished.

POSSIBLE - Listings that accept Pets without fees are ALSO promoted.

I had 4 properties to test with.

Thinking like Airbnb, I guessed the things that would make the user have the best experience is to be able to cancel and bring pets. So...

Over roughly a 2 week period:

Property A - Strict to FLEXIBLE cancellation, pets stay FREE

(11 bookings, 2 inquires)

Property B - STRICT cancellation (did not change!), pets stay FREE

(0 bookings)

Property C - Strict to FLEXIBLE Cancellation, pets stay FREE

(11 bookings, 2 inquires)

Property D - Control, no changes (STRICT cancellation, no pets)

(1 inquiry)

ALL properties I made sure "opportunities" where near max (office space with a comfy chair, etc)

It's really interesting that I opened up pets to 3 of them, 2 of them I added flexible cancellation and the ones with flexible cancellation SOARED.

Had nothing to do with me as a host, or my properties. Airbnb wants you to offer flexible cancellation.

If anyone else is down in bookings (and was booked before summer of 2025!) and makes this change, can you let me know if your results are similar?

I had one other person test this and she immediately got bookings. 

 Thanks for reporting on this, but I think you’re over complicating things. You can make all of these changes, launch an incognito browser and see how it affects where you appear in search results. It literally takes 10 seconds, the results are immediate in the Airbnb search. you can test different cancellation policies, allowing pets or not, and 1 million other things to see how far they bump you up or down in the search results, you don’t have to wait and see if you actually get bookings. Good luck!

P.s. if you had tested this, you would have noticed quickly how changing the cancellation policy bumped you way higher in the results, and you would’ve done it for all of your properties instead of letting a couple of them sit dormant for a couple weeks while you tested on the other properties!