Air forces us to use instant booking?

1

I have seen today that the default filter now is Instant booking (it used to be that renters would ask for instant booking).

I bet most renters don’t know what it is and won’t even notice the default option. This means renters will not see any listing that does not allow instant booking, including mine. But I am very uncomfortable with instant booking, which means that my ability to rent has now significantly diminished.

Any ideas?

2

When booking seekers realize that a place does not offer that many (or any) good listings, they’ll look around and then disable the preset IB filter?

There is a silver lining to this. What this might mean is only those smart enough to disable the IB filter will find your place - surely you want to book folk smart enough to do a good search?

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3

This is not new, however. The filter is on by default when there are more than (I think) 300 listings that meet the user’s criteria. There is a pop up “tip” that alerts the user that the filter is on.

And yes, there is no question that AirBNB wants you to enable Instant Booking. I don’t think they are forcing you.

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4
  1. I did not see any pop-up tip like that
  2. I I did not see it yesterday but I see to day, so for me, it is new.
  3. I checked for a particular date, and with the filter on there were 44 listing. When the filter was off there were 244. In my area, there are usually more than 300 listings answering the same criteria, and I have never seen the IB as a default.
  4. If people cannot see my listing unless I allow IB, then essentially, Air is preventing me from renting until I do what they want.
5

This is an interesting way to look at it. But, I must admit that until now I had very smart guests that did not have to pass this hurdle.

That being said, it is not necessarily a matter of intelligence but a matter of experience. People who are not experienced should not be expected to know the intricacies of the system.

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6

Seriously, I saw this filter being applied by default at least 6 months ago. It is not new. Have your bookings dropped in the past six months?

EIDTED TO add: six months was close. Here is the first forum post about this filter:

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7

This is good to know because I check it nearly on a daily basis and today was the first time I saw it. This means Air might apply it sporadically or by a particular rule only they know.

In my listing, there is no message saying they show only IB property. Also, note that “can book immediately” can mean different things to different people. Some might see it as booking apartments now vs. in a month, for example. Booking something immediately does not represent what IB really is.

8

Yes, they do this a lot.

9

Is there anything we can do about it? I depend on this income and cannot afford losses.

10

When I have searched as a prospective guest it has always defaulted to IB, if they have occasions where it does not I have not come across it.

ABB have stated that they want as many Hosts as possible to move to IB, one of their main reasons is Discrimination, my assumption is that they see more booking for IB listings.

I assume they promote IB listings as a not so subtle way of making non IB Hosts reconsider.

Personally I think it should be a filter option, but not applied as a default.

11

I agree. But now, at least for me, it is a default and I wonder what can I do about it.

12

As a Host, nothing you can do, well you could go to IB, look at other systems.

13

I’ve never used Air as a guest so I hope I’m not being shown IB properties where the prerequisite is to have been recommended by other hosts.

Also, not sure if your premise is that there would be fewer or no good listings that do IB, but in my market there are hundreds of them. It then really helps with search ranking to accept IB. We have our IB set to require recommendation by other hosts and we haven’t had a problem yet. In fact, I would recommend it to hosts.

14

Good luck…

15

Good point, Astaire. I too prefer my guests to be intelligent.

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