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Airbnb, and others, cancellation policies will be a major reason for the spread of this virus. The sunk cost fallacy is alive and well here, people don't want

Airbnb, and others, cancellation policies will be a major reason for the spread of this virus. The sunk cost fallacy is alive and well here, people don't want to lose money just because they feel sick even though they know they shouldn't go when not feeling well. I think at this time the travel industry needs to stand up and relax it's policies even further. Airbnb will not refund you a stay unless your flight has been cancelled by the airline. Unfortunately the airlines are giving options right now, Delta for example let's you rebook or get refunds to some countries that are trying to shut down this virus at it's source. But not feeling safe, along with being given a refund on a nonrefundable ticket does not matter to Airbnb at all. My recommendation is if you have to travel in the next three months to somewhere in Asia or the Mediterranean is to make sure your booking is fully refundable or get in contact with your host prior to booking and see how leniant they are. If you thought you could get trip insurance to cover the risk you are also going to be in trouble. Your trip insurance will not cover pandemics, read the fine print.

microcolonel 7y ago
I heard from somebody the other day that he would not cancel his trip to Japan under any circumstance unless he was fully refunded for his 500CHF JR pass and 1,200CHF flight, or the flight was cancelled. It mystified me, as somebody who has been penniless before, it still strikes me as beyond stupid.
heligate229 7y ago
Can't overemphasised. The fine print of the travel insurance is very important! However, I don't get why cancellation policies will be a major reason of the spread. Your explanation on sunk cost fallacy and cancellation seems to be missing. Airbnb has a clause to refund under "Epidemic disease or illness"
- graeme 7y ago
  The link says you can only automatically cancel for mainland china and korean trips. So any trips to Italy, Iran, Washington State etc can’t be refunded. It encourages people to still go. Sunk cost fallacy: people might not take a free trip to italy now, but they may go if they previously paid for one.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    If I were a billionaire I'd tell these people, "Fine, I'll refund you out of my pocket, stay home and don't be an infection vector!". Obviously I'd make them sign a contract to make sure they stay home (or the contract would stipulate that they'd have to pay me back, plus a punishment on top).
  - sjg007 7y ago
    I would be surprised if Airbnb does business in Iran...
    - RileyJames 7y ago
      You don’t need Airbnb in Iran. Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free.. You only need to book somewhere to stay for downtime/private time.
      - gruez 7y ago
        >Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free.. Wait what? Is there more to this?
        sjg007 7y ago
        Iranians are very nice and friendly people is my guess.
        DoreenMichele 7y ago
        They've been under US embargo for decades. In the US, Blacks historically couldn't use commercial hotels which were Whites only. They had to arrange to stay at private homes to travel. I imagine it's sort of akin to that.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Actually you’re right, they don’t do Iran.
geofft 7y ago
OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do, simply telling people won't change their decision-making. Should we spend public health funds on cancellations? Should we also fund people with non-salaried jobs to stay home? I haven't worked through the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if these were among the highest-efficiency ways to spend government emergency health funds, especially in the early days before a vaccine has been developed.
- edanm 7y ago
  I'm guessing spending them on tracking the people infected, tracing down other people who might've been infected, helping enact quarantines, etc, is a far better use of funds than helping people cancel reservations on the off chance they are infected. > OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do, Also, huh? I think more people in this society think that "money is the root of all evil" than what you're suggesting.
Shivetya 7y ago
The major reason is far too many people exhibit an exaggerated state of self entitlement which they use to excuse their actions including those which put others at risk. Some will do it just to spite others, some will do it out ignorance. We just have so many people who have the means to travel that you cannot properly contain any outbreak so you do the best to mitigate the impact The end result usually is the same, someone else will pay. Which means business big and small for which some litigant finds a twist which a jury is sympathetic to.
- m3kw9 7y ago
  I know a few ppl that are saying the flight can’t be refunded and just be pretty ignorant about everything around
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  I think you mean corporations display an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement, and by not making full refunds easy and well-understood, they create these negative externalities. Asking individuals to bear the financial risk related to these types of emergencies seems wrong to me on all levels, moral, pragmatism, effectiveness, social fairness, etc. These types of risks should be borne by corporations in the form of strictly less profit for executives and shareholders. Not by raising prices, not by cutting staff, not by reducing employee benefits. These are risks that have to absorbed by classes of people with extreme financial reserves to cushion the blow, not by classes of people without those means.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Corporations are people. Not just legally people, which they are, but in plain fact they are legal fictions which are wrapped around the actions of people.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      I don't understand why people have such a hard time with that. If Airbnb cancels the reservation, the person renting out the room has an empty room and doesn't get paid. The housekeeper they hire to clean up after each guest doesn't get hired. The guy in the sandwich cart the guest would have bought from doesn't get paid. The corporation doesn't make a profit from the transaction (that was the one we're supposed to want, right?), but that wasn't most of the price to begin with, and the profits go to "shareholders" which are mostly the retirement accounts of ordinary people. They should cancel it anyway.
sciinfo 7y ago
A hotel speeded up the international outbreak of SARS in 2003. "The Metropole Hotel hastened the international spread of the 2003 SARS outbreak by the index case infecting visitors from Singapore, Vietnam, Canada as well as local people via close contact with the index case and the environmental contamination. The one-week quarantine of more than 300 guests and staff at the Metropark Hotel during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu exposed gaps in the partnership with the hotel industry. The subsequent guidelines for the hotel industry from the Centre of Health Protection focused largely on the maintenance of hygiene within the hotel premises." https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-018-0438-6 https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10... "This hotel is infamous as ground zero for a SARS ‘super spreader’ in the 2003 outbreak—here’s what happened" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super-spreader-in-the-2003-sars-outbreak.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super...

microcolonel 7y ago

I heard from somebody the other day that he would not cancel his trip to Japan under any circumstance unless he was fully refunded for his 500CHF JR pass and 1,200CHF flight, or the flight was cancelled. It mystified me, as somebody who has been penniless before, it still strikes me as beyond stupid.

heligate229 7y ago

Can't overemphasised. The fine print of the travel insurance is very important! However, I don't get why cancellation policies will be a major reason of the spread. Your explanation on sunk cost fallacy and cancellation seems to be missing. Airbnb has a clause to refund under "Epidemic disease or illness"

graeme 7y ago
The link says you can only automatically cancel for mainland china and korean trips. So any trips to Italy, Iran, Washington State etc can’t be refunded. It encourages people to still go. Sunk cost fallacy: people might not take a free trip to italy now, but they may go if they previously paid for one.
- netsharc 7y ago
  If I were a billionaire I'd tell these people, "Fine, I'll refund you out of my pocket, stay home and don't be an infection vector!". Obviously I'd make them sign a contract to make sure they stay home (or the contract would stipulate that they'd have to pay me back, plus a punishment on top).
- sjg007 7y ago
  I would be surprised if Airbnb does business in Iran...
  - RileyJames 7y ago
    You don’t need Airbnb in Iran. Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free.. You only need to book somewhere to stay for downtime/private time.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >Walk down 2 block of Tehran and by the end one or more people will have offered you their homes, for free.. Wait what? Is there more to this?
      - sjg007 7y ago
        Iranians are very nice and friendly people is my guess.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        They've been under US embargo for decades. In the US, Blacks historically couldn't use commercial hotels which were Whites only. They had to arrange to stay at private homes to travel. I imagine it's sort of akin to that.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Actually you’re right, they don’t do Iran.

geofft 7y ago

OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do, simply telling people won't change their decision-making. Should we spend public health funds on cancellations? Should we also fund people with non-salaried jobs to stay home? I haven't worked through the numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if these were among the highest-efficiency ways to spend government emergency health funds, especially in the early days before a vaccine has been developed.

edanm 7y ago
I'm guessing spending them on tracking the people infected, tracing down other people who might've been infected, helping enact quarantines, etc, is a far better use of funds than helping people cancel reservations on the off chance they are infected. > OK, but in a society where we've been taught that the thing that makes money is the right thing to do, Also, huh? I think more people in this society think that "money is the root of all evil" than what you're suggesting.

Shivetya 7y ago

The major reason is far too many people exhibit an exaggerated state of self entitlement which they use to excuse their actions including those which put others at risk. Some will do it just to spite others, some will do it out ignorance. We just have so many people who have the means to travel that you cannot properly contain any outbreak so you do the best to mitigate the impact The end result usually is the same, someone else will pay. Which means business big and small for which some litigant finds a twist which a jury is sympathetic to.

m3kw9 7y ago
I know a few ppl that are saying the flight can’t be refunded and just be pretty ignorant about everything around
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
I think you mean corporations display an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement, and by not making full refunds easy and well-understood, they create these negative externalities. Asking individuals to bear the financial risk related to these types of emergencies seems wrong to me on all levels, moral, pragmatism, effectiveness, social fairness, etc. These types of risks should be borne by corporations in the form of strictly less profit for executives and shareholders. Not by raising prices, not by cutting staff, not by reducing employee benefits. These are risks that have to absorbed by classes of people with extreme financial reserves to cushion the blow, not by classes of people without those means.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Corporations are people. Not just legally people, which they are, but in plain fact they are legal fictions which are wrapped around the actions of people.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    I don't understand why people have such a hard time with that. If Airbnb cancels the reservation, the person renting out the room has an empty room and doesn't get paid. The housekeeper they hire to clean up after each guest doesn't get hired. The guy in the sandwich cart the guest would have bought from doesn't get paid. The corporation doesn't make a profit from the transaction (that was the one we're supposed to want, right?), but that wasn't most of the price to begin with, and the profits go to "shareholders" which are mostly the retirement accounts of ordinary people. They should cancel it anyway.

sciinfo 7y ago

A hotel speeded up the international outbreak of SARS in 2003. "The Metropole Hotel hastened the international spread of the 2003 SARS outbreak by the index case infecting visitors from Singapore, Vietnam, Canada as well as local people via close contact with the index case and the environmental contamination. The one-week quarantine of more than 300 guests and staff at the Metropark Hotel during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu exposed gaps in the partnership with the hotel industry. The subsequent guidelines for the hotel industry from the Centre of Health Protection focused largely on the maintenance of hygiene within the hotel premises." https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-018-0438-6 https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10... "This hotel is infamous as ground zero for a SARS ‘super spreader’ in the 2003 outbreak—here’s what happened" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super-spreader-in-the-2003-sars-outbreak.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/hong-kong-hotel-hosted-super...