[cmsonger]

This sucks. I was doing exactly this yesterday and fortunately figured it out before sending money that I could not do the booking. Instead I told the people I wanted to stay close to me "book it and I'll send you the money."

I bet AirBnB people read hacker news.

Folks: I should be able to pay for another user's booking. It just can't be that hard. I set the dates, supply the payment info, anoint another user of your platform to reach out to the host.

Alternatively (if there's something with payment processing that I don't understand), the user who wants me to pay chooses the dates, writes what they want to say to the host, and then passes the baton to me for supplying payment info.

I've paid for friends and family to stay in hotels a zillion times. I was amazed that your platform does not allow this. Now I'm appalled that it allows situations like OP's to happen. And for the record, I was not thrilled to have to disclose what I was paying for my friends. Until this is fixed, will actively try to use hotels for this in the future. (This was a unique case.)