Host is trying to intimidate and threaten me into cancelling a reservation. What’s my best course of action?

Apologies about formatting, as I’m on mobile.

A group of friends and I booked an Airbnb about 6 months ago for the weekend of a festival as soon as details about the date were announced. The host and I exchanged a few friendly messages when I booked. At that point, there were plenty of options left and no surge pricing, and I was happy to have secured something.

As news of the festival spread in the next few weeks, all the good places were booked and the host messaged me saying that he “forgot to block out those dates” and asked me to cancel the hosting. I politely replied that if this was about the pricing, I might be able to work with him by increasing total cost through increasing the guest amount, but if he wasn’t interested he would cancel on his end. He said he would cancel on his end and told me to search for a new place. I haven’t messaged him since.

However, he still did not cancel and a couple of weeks later (in mid November) messaged me to tell me that he would cancel after 1/1. I didn’t respond and today, he angrily messaged me saying that I “had not been reasonable” and because I was not cancelling on my end, he would cancel the day before the reservation began, which would obviously leave our group fucked.

This is an attempt at intimidation and a threat to ruin our plans because he doesn’t want to cancel on his end when it’s his responsibility to do so. Its also evident he dosesnt actually want to cancel, he just wants to rebook it Airbnb at a higher rate. It’s beyond the point of just a simple negative back and forth imo. If this person is threatening guests like this, he should not be on the platform (who knows how many before me he intimidated like this).

I know that messaging Airbnb to get this resolved is probably my best option. However, at this point all the good places in the area are taken or cost literally 5-6x more than what we paid so even if they made him cancel the reservation, I’m not sure how that would help me because we would still be out of a place to stay. Does anyone have any experience with this or any suggestions?

Thanks in asvance and sorry if this comes off as a rant cause I’m pretty pissed.