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Tl;dr I know I’ve read that rejecting too many trip requests will impact your findability but is that true if you have instant book on?
Lately we’ve had many folks send trip requests who don’t meet our instant book standards. Examples: bringing three kids when we aren’t kid friendly, having zero profile info and a two word booking message with no reviews- then not responding to our request for more info, or not having reviews and not responding to any follow-up messages. Before rejecting we give a heads up and politely ask them to cancel their request but also don’t get a response.
Now we just opened up NYE (concerned about parties but the $$$ is so good…) and we’ve gotten three requests from folks with zero reviews.
I hate to keep rejecting them but this is a stand alone house and especially for NYE we want to be cautious. We live locally but with covid safety measures and having a newborn+work we do contactless check-in. So having previous reviews is important to us. I know some folks will point out that doesn’t mean anything or they hosted nice folks without reviews but it’s is a small way for us to hopefully weed out potential problem guests.
Inquiries—your options are Preapprove. Accept or send a message & neither preapprove or decline
Respond-if they don’t answer just archive the message. You aren’t declining them. If they don’t seem like a good fit, say “this listing is not a good fit for your needs. I’m sure you can find a different listing that is a fit for you.” Don’t decline unless it is a booking request
Booking requests-you must accept or decline. Declining these will mess up your acceptance rate.
If Instant Bookings—turn it off for a while. Airbnb says they will let you cancel any IB you are uncomfortable with BUT I don’t know what this does to your acceptance rate.
If you don’t turn it off-tighten up on your requirements
Because they have the time off and want to get out of town. We have a pretty healthy winter holiday tourism market here that attracts folks to come up from the city, hotels are all at capacity. We rented out last year to a couple who spent Christmas with family and then came up to have a weekend away together and a nice supper out.
Any idea if the number of people who IB counts positively towards your acceptance rate? Example- we have had 100 IB guests but reject 5 booking inquiries out of 10.
Seems with IB turned on the only booking requests we get are from folks who don’t meet our requirements (so we reject)
Yes, this is a conundrum I just realized since having my hip replacement surgery because I switched from IB in my shared rental because there are very few people that would be a good fit to be here while I am healing.
Determine your pain points. If your problem are IB guests the no profile & no reviews shouldn’t happen.
If it is new to Airbnb who are the problem, The first sentence in your unit description should say, “ we accept only guests who have stayed at Airbnb homes before and have a positive review from a prior host”.
I don’t know if this breaks a rule but other hosts do it.
Generally, we don’t have issues with IB guests. The majority of guests who we marked “wouldn’t want to host again” have been a result of a handful of booking inquiries from folks without reviews. So we have nearly this exact line both in our rules and high up in our description. It hasn’t stopped people from sending booking inquiries who don’t meet those requirements.
Yes. All accepted reservations count towards your acceptance rate. An IB booking is an accepted reservation. So if you have (in the last 365 days) 80 IBs, 10 requests that you’ve accepted and 10 requests that you’ve declined you will have a 90% Acceptance Rate. The target that Airbnb has set is an 88% Acceptance Rate. And it is based on the last 365 days so it’s not hard to get back up if it goes down.
Anecdotally, I’ve had a listing at 68% for awhile (I was bombarded with a storm of nonsense requests) and never received an email or any warning other than next to the acceptance rate which just said, “something to work on”. My listing booked just as well as usual, same prices and high occupancy. I experienced no effect from being below the target and it didn’t take long to get back to it.
You can call it in and if it’s justified (like in your house rules) then Airbnb will (usually) withdraw it as admin so that it doesn’t count against your acceptance rate. When I had my spate of bad requests that I declined, it was just too much and too many (I had 3 in one day, 2 the next day, it was too weird) and I just didn’t want to call in and deal with Airbnb which is how I ended up experimenting with cruising below the target Acceptance rate.
So, when you get a bad request, first try to get the guest to withdraw it, second try to get Airbnb to withdraw it for you and, if needed, third just go ahead and hit that decline button, report it as a house rules concern and enjoy the rest of your day (i.e. don’t sweat it).
Ask the guest to withdraw, if they do not call air and ask them to do an admin or guest withdraw because they are not communicating, intending to break rules (kids) or whatever, Try not to decline.
Could you raise your price some more. I assume you already have it priced for the holiday due to this:
Maybe also put something in the listing temporarily about it not being self check in. After you get the booking you want you can still do self check in last minute for safety but insisting you meet whomever books the place in pre stay messages might deter someone.
Great idea! Its priced more for the holiday but maybe we’ll kick it up another notch. It’s a one bedroom cottage with a max of three (there’s a queen+ a daybed), so not a big space to throw a rager.
