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Perhaps something has passed me by, or I am being particularly dense this morning but I have not experienced this before;-
I received an enquiry at 2 am UK time from Israel; for obvious reasons, I slept through it. At 7 am I received an alert from Airbnb saying that unless I accept/decline, those dates will remain blocked on my calendar. No “until you do”, just they will remain blocked.
I vaguely remember a recent thread on the accept/decline dynamic and a possible tightening from Air, plus penalties for declining. Is this the latest manifestation or have I lost the plot? Again.
An inquiry is when the guest has a question. ABB gives you the option to pre-approve or not. In this case you don’t have to hit either button, just respond to the guest’s question.
A request to book. For this one, the guest has decided to stay but needs your approval. For these, you must accept or decline. If you decline, you will need to choose a reason why. You have 24 hours but it’s best to do it as soon as possible.
It can be confusing especially if you are on IB and don’t get many. The inquiries continue to tick down even after responding and that big red button to pre-approve is staring at you. But you just refresh your browser to stop the clock. I’ve learned this the hard way and from help from others on this forum! It sounds like you have a “request to book.” and will need to “Accept” or “Decline”
Yes we recently got a warning from Airbnb for too many declines. We were at 87% acceptance rate and they set the bar for our area at 88%. We have since reached their goal and our dashboard warning has gone away. Better to ask a guest to widthdraw their request if you can’t accommodate them rather than decline.
Thanks Mike, and Maggeroni; both really helpful. No, I don’t get many inquiries with IB on. The only question the guest asked was if she could stay! All sorted now, with no difficulty. What did twist with my brain was the message from Air five hours after the inquiry.
Coincidentally I’d never noticed until yesterday. I assume it’s been there since the new standards rolled out in April.
I don’t know but I assume so. I was a little puzzled by my 99% accept rate. I’m wondering who I turned down. Maybe it’s the booking I got a penalty free cancellation for.
I’m at like 91% accept. But that’s because I routinely deny locals unless they give me a logical reason why they want to stay here. I got burned by a local looking for a place to bring his glittered-up not wife who smoked, which is strictly against my rules. Then they stole my stuff.
As an aside, I wasn’t allowed to include the theft in my review because it was an “open investigation”. But I did leave a very negative review. Their next host contacted me directly after they left her house because she had the same experience and she wanted to know what happened at my place. Turns out, they were using my laundry basket to move into to the next place.
But anyway, good to know I need to accept some more to get my percentage up.
Who knows? I’m sure not even Airbnb knows. For most of the past year I had a response rate of 99% due to message appearing on my account MONTHS after it was sent by the prospective guest. When it came through I sent a message apologizing but she didn’t respond and probably thought I was lying. That’s gone now because it’s been a year and now they say I don’t 100% accept? It seems to me that if you IB then acceptance rate shouldn’t be counted against you at all.
Nope. One of these incidents was just two months ago. Group of 8 trying to book into a space with a 3 maximum. A group of really clueless kids here for a school-sponsored conference.
That’s not the only thing they mess up on. I got this email last night. I called and apparently it was a pretty widespread problem; paid twice for one reservation.
Hello Michael,
Looks like you’ve accidentally been issued an inaccurate payout, resulting in overpayment of $968.50 on May 19, 2018. We’ve gone ahead and reversed the extra amount from your bank account. Thanks for being patient while we’re fixing this issue.
Best regards,
The Airbnb Team
Yes, it happened to me too. Mine was only $43 and I didn’t realize I’d been paid twice. I did double check my bank account and yes, I had two payments.
I wish they’d spend their coding time fixing the damned website, or adding a pet fee function, rather than on pet projects that don’t add any value, like the stupid “listing highlights”.
Is it too much to hope that they’re using some business logic in their calculations?
I can’t recall the options under the reason for decline, but if you selected something like “breaking house rules”, maybe they aren’t counting them in the decline count?
Most of my guests IB, so it’s been a while since I declined, but I thought there was a drop-down box with options like “Not suitable”, “Dates not available”. Perhaps they’ve gotten rid of this.
