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Guests trying to book new reservations at my place in Lake Arrowhead CA are now getting this automated message:
“As part of our commitment to your safety, certain last-minute bookings of entire homes are restricted right now.”
These are not last minute reservations that are being declined.
I called and spoke to an Airbnb representative and he said: “This is a system generated restriction and he has no way to override it.”
Many hosts have been reporting their guests getting those messages. I don’t know if it’s some glitch, but it couldn’t come at a worse time, when hosts are seeing the majority, if not all, of their reservations being cancelled under the cornavirus EC.
They are also getting flooded with scammers on this kind of listing.
This blanket, rigid blocking is a bummer, especially as Airbnb never warned Hosts of its implementation. I had two cancellations for one apartment last week, the first from Australia, the second from France. Understandable, but now I have people who need it and I can’t rent it. Of course, USA seems to be as unprepared for this as we were for 9/11, but we had competent leadership to get us through the immediate crisis.
If this is happening to go then go off platform. Talk to the people who need it directly, get your own contract and take direct payment.
There is more discussion of this here:
The thought was that it might be Airbnb trying to block under-25 guests from booking entire homes at the last minute, to prevent partiers.
We are not ‘their hosts’ though are we? Just people who advertise on their site.
Funnily enough, no one warned the world that a coronavirus was on its way either. 
How can we talk to potential client directly? Email address, websites, phone numbers in our messages are erased automatically before the confirmation of a reservation.
When he said “I have people now” I thought maybe he knew them off platform already. Nevertheless there are generally ways clever people can figure out if they want to badly enough. Some people have other websites they can direct people to. For example: “if you look up the property name you will find it.” I have a website for my dog boarding business and I can direct people there if I leave off the .com.
It’s funny though people can be soooo dense. I have said things like, I am glad you found name of my cabins in name of my city and town while searching the internet and they are still too dumb to do that and find my website. Oh well
RR
The latest development is much worse. San Bernardino County has is now prohibiting all bookings.
this is not my experience. Quite the contrary. After guests cancelled for the rest of the year I blocked all my listings for the next 3 month. I myself did that.
Except that I missed two night in april.
So I get an inquiry from someone on these two nights. Hes a young pharmacist in my town living with his parents. Hes young but hes afraid hes going to infect them because hes exposed to people.
He asked he I would rent to him for the next 3 months.
Although I don’t rent to locals I said yes to him.
He booked me. hey its better that nothing. on my part mortgage and bills still need to be paid. And I feel good about helping a young pharmacist.
So Airbnb has nothing to do with it.
I’m curious…did you verify his employment?