Coming from Dallas, my boyfriend and I were looking forward to a weekend getaway in Austin and our stay at Sean & Sarah's place all week as it appeared to be a great value for the private suite in a favorable location for what we had planned. Unfortunately, due to the catastrophic Category 3 Hurricane Harvey that was forming in southeast Texas that same weekend, we regretted to cancel our trip to avoid any risks and impact of Harvey reaching the location of the airbnb, which would of course ruin a romantic weekend getaway, to say the least.
We did much research on the hurricane and weather conditions in the area prior to cancelling the trip as we had both already taken off work and made other investments for the trip outside of our airbnb reservation. After much debate, we decided to formally cancel the trip about an hour after check-in since the developing hurricane's path looked to be close enough to pose an unsafe journey with nearby areas being evacuated, including my boyfriend's family who strongly advised not to venture anywhere near the Austin area that weekend.
We thank Sean & Sarah for partially refunding the trip under their moderate cancellation policy. However, we were quite disappointed that due to such an unexpected and devastating natural disaster such as Hurricane Harvey, they were unwilling to make an exception and provide us a full refund. Based on our back and forth communication and their raving reviews, my impression is that Sean & Sarah are a very nice and decent family. However, in this case, there seemed to be a lack of compassion in their decision not to issue a full refund on account of the nearby Category 3 Hurricane Harvey. We do wish them well and hope they were not directly impacted by the devastation and regret that we couldn't keep our reservation we so looked forward to.