Airbnb Refuses To Offer Traveler A Refund Because The LA Wildfires Do Not Qualify As A 'Major Disruptive Event'
There is no other word for this but absurd.
fizkes | Shutterstock The wildfires currently raging all around Los Angeles have shocked everyone, even those who've lived in the city all their lives. Yet it seems for at least one corporation, Airbnb, the calamity is just business as usual, and the home renting app has sparked outrage for the way it's handling customer service during the disaster.
Airbnb refused to offer a traveler a refund during the Los Angeles wildfires.
Part of what makes wildfires — like the Palisades fire, in particular — so dangerous is how rapidly they can change. Often all it takes is a gust of wind to expand a fire's size, change its direction, or even start a new one nearby. The situation can deteriorate seemingly in the blink of an eye.
For context, I used to live in Los Angeles and still travel there frequently, so I still receive fire notifications on my phone. When the Sunset fire erupted in LA's Runyon Canyon Wednesday evening, just 14 minutes passed between the city's notification that the fire had broken out and its subsequent evacuation order of the surrounding neighborhood. It grew that quickly.
Suffice it to say, even the tamest wildfire, let alone one fueled by 80-mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds, does not operate on the same kind of timeline as something like an Airbnb reservation. But when customer Ana Mostarac found herself face-to-face with this situation, Airbnb was unwilling to budge.
In a post on X, Mostarac shared her experience with the home-booking app after ending up stuck in Los Angeles as the fires broke out. She left her original Airbnb location in Santa Monica and booked a different one she thought was a safer distance from the Palisades blaze.
But that quickly changed after she checked in. "As the night progressed, it got really bad," she wrote in a follow-up post. "I was met with strong winds, hazardous air quality, flickering power, and the property’s alarm blaring on and off."
Airbnb told Mostarac that the Palisades fire did not qualify as a 'major disruptive event.'
When Mostarac attempted to cancel the reservation as she needed to get herself to safety, she was denied and told the property's "strict cancellation policy" would be upheld. It's important to note that Mostarac had already checked into the location. But given the circumstances, it's hard to argue that leniency wasn't in order.
Those circumstances seem to have been poorly understood by Airbnb's staff, however. According to its website, strict cancellation policies are only forfeited in the case of a "major disruptive event," classified as government travel disruptions, military or other types of violence, large-scale utility outages, or natural disasters.
However, the policy includes exceptions for "weather or natural conditions that are common enough to be foreseeable in a given location." California's wildfires are indeed just a regular, seasonal part of life in the state — which is to say "foreseeable" to an extent — but fires of a catastrophic nature like the Eaton and Palisades blazes, the latter of which is the worst in Los Angeles history, are a completely different situation.
Mostarac said Airbnb's customer service reps seemed to be totally uninformed of this important context. "They told me they needed to contact the host and advised me to wait for a response." The host, of course, was of no help due to the ongoing natural disaster occurring, and more importantly, waiting for a response was a fundamental danger to Mostarac's safety.
This lack of understanding left Mostarac, and likely scores of others, being "stuck explaining bushfires to someone in another country" because, she said, "as always, [Airbnb's] policies failed to account for context."
Airbnb eventually refunded Mostarac, but her experience has uncovered a not-uncommon problem with the platform.
Newsweek reported that when it contacted Airbnb for comment, the company confirmed that Mostarac did eventually receive a refund for the booking "as a goodwill payment," and had since applied its "major disruptive event" policy to the Southern California wildfires. It has also begun offering free temporary stays to those displaced by the fires.
Still, the mishap suggests a pretty substantial hole in Airbnb's operations. Mostarac wrote in another post that "Airbnb should deploy US-based teams to assist guests affected by natural disasters" — especially since, judging from other customers' responses, it doesn't sound like Mostarac is the first person to experience this.
Many others saw Mostarac's account as yet another reason why they now avoid Airbnb in favor of hotels. The company's pricing, fees, and often draconian rules at many properties have long frustrated customers, and the company has recently seen slumping profits. Property owners have reported softer booking demands as well.
Of course, hotels also only care about the almighty buck and come with their share of annoyances too. But it's hard to imagine a Holiday Inn telling you to take a wait-and-see approach when the hotel is surrounded by the most catastrophic fire in a city's history.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.