Accept or decline request?

My listing is on InstantBook. At 5 am today I received a request for tonight only (1 night). It is by someone who has a negative review and my guess is they were not allowed to reserve my place via InstantBook. He said that he and his friends are looking to enjoy the city for the evening. I am worried about hosting them because of their bad review. However, I’m also concerned about declining the request and hurting my host rating. The request should expire 5 am tomorrow (24 hours from the time of sending it) and 5 am tomorrow will already be after the night it was requested for booking. If I do not reply and let it expire, will it be counted against me as a decline? Or if the guest does not withdraw it and I accept at like 4 am, will it be counted as an accept?

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If you don’t have IB on, simply decline the reservation. Why would it affect your host ratings? Unless you are regularly declining the majority of booking requests, it will have no impact at all with Airbnb :slight_smile:

If you just let it expire it will count against you. Just go with you gut instinct. Hit the decline button you don’t have to give the guest a reason.

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As Helsi said you need to decline. It won’t count against you.

Declines do count against you, even if it’s just one. Do you know if I will have the option to decline the request after midnight (when the guests will most likely not check in as it’ll be late)?

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Is there a reason declining after midnight is a more acceptable course of action?

Both @helsi and @Maggieroni gave you sound advice.

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@Zandra if I accept the request very late, chances are the guest will either not show up or at the very least they will arrive and just go to bed vs throw a party. My concern and the reason why I hesitate accepting is that they are locals who want a place to party for just one night. And yes, I’m OK sacrificing my booking revenue for that night to decrease the risk of someone ruining my place by throwing a party there or my Airbnb ranking getting hurt.

@Skylar I am sorry but you are not right on this.

Declining a booking inquiry, doesn’t have any impact on you as a host unless you were to decline a very high percentage of requests rather than just one. This is the information on Airbnb’s own Help Centre which tells you that you can decline!!!

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/360/can-i-decline-booking-inquires-or-reservation-requests

I don’t understand your point. about declining after midnight? Why haven’t you declined so the guest can try and find somewhere else.

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Won’t all this waiting to reply, trash your response rate @skylar I would just decline.

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There is no “after midnight”. AirBnb is an international company with listings in every time zone “after midnight” is a ‘rolling point’ which varies from zone to zone, and they aren’t going to ‘waste’ their time (or computer code) calculating whether you decline at 23:59:59 or 00:00:01

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Decline. Why on earth would take a guest so bad another host has issues you a warning about him? No amount of money is worth that. What did the review say?

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A few years back, when I was new, I declined my fair share of inquiries and justifiable so. But I received a warning message from Airbnb. What I learned from that experience was to simply respond to all inquiries. (Reservation requests are a whole other animal) It isn’t required that you accept or decline, just that you respond with a message within 24-hours.

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Good point KatnHat.

Don’t accept or decline…

Perhaps just respond with some tough questions, seeking clarification and express your concerns about their previous reviews …

They will more than likely withdraw their request and look for a softer option?

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Somewhat disturbed by the bad advice on this thread.

You have to accept or decline a booking request there is no such thing as replying and hoping it will be ok if you don’t respond with accept or decline.

Anyone receiving a warning from Airbnb is declining too much! That in itself is an issue and that’s why those hosts are getting warnings.

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???
I definatly responded to a guy the other day without accepting / declining. Then I sent pre-approval as a separate action, and it appeared in the chat thread as a separate item.

Is it perhaps within IB that you must accept/decline only?

@Stuart_Ingram

Airbnb make it clear that if you receive a booking request you must accept or decline within 24 hours or they will block the dates in your calendar.

If you have an inquiry you simply need to respond.

Was it a request or inquiry? Did you send the pre-approval within 24 hours?

Airbnb says on its help centre “you can decline any booking enquiries or reservations that you can’t accommodate, but you should do so within 24 hours”.

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A booking request and a booking enquiry are two different things.

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@konacoconutz agreed, the review said they brought extra unauthorized guests and the neighbors complained about noise until 5 am

This is exactly what I do to weed out guests. I just had one who messaged me that they were coming to town for some poker tournament and and wanted to know my “rock bottom rate” if they stayed a week. He had zero reviews, listed only his first name (George) on his profile, and no photograph. I responded that the week long discount was factored in, and that I would like more information on him. The biggest RED FLAG was that he said he’d be willing to “book direct”! I told him that I never to that, as I would lose any protections afforded my by my TOS with Airbnb. He never responded, of course…

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i had an enquiry the other day, responded to questions but didn’t preapprove or decline as it was just an enquiry, the next day Airbnb emailed me saying I had to preapprove or decline or my commitment rate would be marked down.

Your commitment rate is to do with cancelling bookings. It should never go down because you didnt accept or decline a booking request or enquiry. @Louise

Whoever wrote you that email clearly has a lot to learn about the company they work for.