Response rate mystery

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Hi! First time hoster here.

I’ve been reading through the forums to try and figure out this puzzle, but I’m still puzzled. Hoping someone here can shed a light.

I made my listing live several weeks ago. I’ve got it set on Instant Book, receive notification on my phone, and have had several inquiries/bookings.

I have five message threads with 5 different guests. With each guest, I responded to their first message within 1 or 2 hours, except for that first one which was more like 6 or 7 because I didn’t see the message until the next morning when I woke up. At some point, I saw that my response rate was 100%. Great - I patted myself on the back. Later I saw that my response message had dropped to 75%. I know that I responded to every first inquiry within a couple of hours if not immediately. I know that there was one follow-up message I didn’t get to until later that day, but… “Your response rate and response time aren’t affected by follow-up messages between hosts and guests. You don’t have to send the final message in a conversation to maintain your response rate.” So what gives? Is it just because I’m a new host and there are less messages response times to average out?

Aha! I think I may have just answered my question: could it be that I answered using my phone instead of going on the AirBnB site? I didn’t think that was an issue since my text response appears on the site…

Thanks!

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Hi @lokilo,

I’d first ask Airbnb about this. After all, it’s their counter. And I don’t think that responding via your phone should make any difference. I suspect many hosts exclusively use their phones to communicate with guests.

You’ve got 24 hours to respond to both inquiries and booking requests. For an inquiry you just need to respond with 24 hours; you don’t need to pre-approve or decline. For booking request you need to either accept or decline within 24 hours. If you’ve done so, your rate should be 100%.

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Thank you for your response. I contacted their customer service. My response rate should be 100%. Apparently, this is an issue that’s been reported, and their tech people are looking into it. It could be that I responded immediately, but doing so via my phone didn’t quite update the system? In any event, it’s just good to know it wasn’t something I was doing on my end.