Airbnb Resolution Center:
The Definitive Host Guide.

The Resolution Center is Airbnb's internal system for financial requests between hosts and guests after a stay. When you submit a request, the guest receives a notification and has 72 hours to pay, dispute, or ignore. If the guest pays, the matter is closed. If they dispute or do not respond, the case moves to Airbnb mediation or, if eligible, AirCover review.

Hosts who treat the Resolution Center as a formality before going to AirCover miss the point. Many guests pay through the Resolution Center rather than dispute, particularly when the evidence is strong and the request is framed professionally. Every guest who pays directly is a claim that never needed AirCover at all.

The Resolution Center is also the required first step for AirCover. A host who skips direct resolution and goes straight to AirCover will be asked whether they attempted it. The answer must be yes for the AirCover claim to proceed. For the full AirCover framework, see the AirCover definitive guide.

You have 14 days from the guest's checkout time to file a Resolution Center request, or until the next guest checks in, whichever comes first. The next-guest trigger is the deadline most hosts miss. If a new guest arrives on day three, the window closes on day three.

Start the Resolution Center process as soon as you have completed the post-stay inspection and have a preliminary damage assessment. Do not wait for final repair quotes or completed work before opening the request. You can update the amount as you gather more documentation. Starting early protects you from running out of time.

For the exact rules and edge cases around the deadline, see the 14-day window explained.

Most hosts write Resolution Center requests as stories. Reviewers and guests respond to structured evidence. The request that gets paid uses a numbered list format, not a narrative.

When a guest disputes, Airbnb mediates the request using evidence from both sides. The mediation outcome depends on the quality and completeness of the host's evidence, particularly whether there is a before-record from the same booking showing the area undamaged.

At the dispute stage, add any documentation you did not include in the original request. Address the guest's specific counter-claims with evidence, not arguments. If the guest says the damage was pre-existing, your pre-stay inspection from the same booking is the counter. Keep responses short and verifiable. Every message is part of the case record.

For a complete playbook on handling a guest who denies damage, see what to do when a guest denies causing damage.

If the guest does not respond within 72 hours or the mediation does not resolve in your favour, you can escalate to AirCover. When filing, resubmit all documentation. The AirCover team is separate from the Resolution Center team and does not share case files automatically.

Treat the AirCover filing as a fresh submission with the same documentation standards as the Resolution Center request. The same evidence that failed in the Resolution Center will fail in AirCover. If the before-record is missing at the Resolution Center stage, it is still missing at the AirCover stage.

Before escalating, score your evidence quality with the free Evidence Checklist Generator. It identifies the specific gaps most likely to produce a partial payment or denial before the reviewer sees them.

The most common failure in Resolution Center disputes is the same as the most common failure in AirCover claims: no before-record. A host who cannot show the damaged area undamaged before the guest arrived is in a dispute that cannot be won on evidence alone. The guest only needs to say "it was already like that." Without a pre-stay inspection, the reviewer cannot close that argument.

The before-record must exist before the guest arrives. A pre-stay inspection completed before every stay, stored on infrastructure the host does not control, with a public verification URL, produces this record automatically at every turnover.

Hosts who build this into the turnover workflow arrive at every dispute with the most important piece of evidence already in place, before the dispute exists.