I'm a frequent vacationer and also had a home for rent (in Colorado) via HomeAway and VRBO. If I understand your situation correctly, you had fully paid for a May reservation in BVIs and now you can't come as a result of CV. The contract basically says the homeowner owes you nothing if you can't make your trip due to any reason (in this case, CV and border closure). However, they are willing to allow you to postpone your trip to later this year. If your group can reasonably make that happen then clearly this is a good alternative for both sides. There might be a rate difference between the booking periods - that might be a bit challenging to work out, but I'd just assume a 1:1 rate transfer (or look at the rental site's information for those dates and change as applicable - refund or payment.)

For what its worth, my owners contract didn't envision a pandemic and it said the same as with your situation - that if the renter cancelled or couldn't come - that that was fully on the renter with no refunds (we always suggested trip insurance to renters but can tell you that I personally would never purchase trip insurance). But here's what I'll say, there's no scenario where I wouldn't have reasonably tried to work out a transfer/postpone with a renter so that's good of the owner in your case. However, in this particular situation, my unbiased opinion is that given the highly unusual circumstances, there's NO scenario where I wouldn't have FULLY refunded the renter if they asked. That is the right thing to do. Period. It should be noted that the Owner has a lasting asset (the home) and the renter is entirely out of their payment for a situation WELL beyond their control - and in my opinion this is outside of a more normal cancellation due to illness or other situation which could have been insured against - in that case, I would NOT have provided a full refund though I would have reasonably worked with the renter to reschedule, if possible.

As for HomeAway fees, while I've not had my former home for rent in over a year, I don't think anything has changed: if the Owner provides a full refund, then HomeAway also refunds fully the fees that would have been paid. That is why HomeAway doesn't want to see a bunch of refunds - their entire revenues will evaporate.