At the end of last year, myself and extended family booked a seven bedroom villa in Spain, there are 11 of us. We paid the deposit which is half the amount and were planning to pay the other half when the due date was.
One of the party came across the villa last week showing available for the dates that we have booked on Airbnb. When we questioned this Airbnb support have told us that the Villa had changed ownership, but the new owners were going to honour the booking and we definitely still have the booking despite the fact that the dates are still up showing as available.
After a little bit of back-and-forth with Airbnb support we then noticed that the host still had the villa available for the dates we have booked however now had it up at an extortionate price for the 10 days we have booked (they now have it up near on 100k for 10 days! That is 10 times the amount that we booked it for). We have made contact with the new host who tell us that they have put it up for that amount so we can definitely have it and nobody else will book the villa at that price but they do not want to block it out as they don’t want to ‘get punished by the Airbnb algorithm’. They keep reassuring us that we definitely have the villa, however if somebody wanted to surely they could book it for 100k??
Obviously, we are now all feeling quite anxious about whether we’re going to have a villa or not when we arrive. Could anybody tell us if this is normal practice for Airbnb hosts? Is there anything they could do or should we be cutting our losses and asking for our money back? We obviously loved this villa and this close to our holiday, it’s actually really difficult to find another place that is suitable.
Edited because I want to say thanks in advance to anyone who helps!