Airbnb removed preapproval

I preapproved April 1-5 for prospective guest 1. They don’t immediately book, but they have 24 hours with preapproval and tell me they are going to decide in the morning.

Prospective guest 2 sends request for April 2nd. April 2nd is now blocked on my calendar and preapproval for guest 1 is gone.

Guest 1 decides to book and is unable to. I have to decline guest 2 and unblock that day. Then guest 1 resubmits their request.

Obviously multiple things wrong with this! Anyone else experienced something like this? Is it a bug or “feature”?

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When you pre-approve there is a box you can tick that says to block the days. If you don’t do that the days remain open and another request can come in. This is by design because not everyone wants to hold open rooms for someone who is still deciding, it’s first come, first served.

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Yes, that sounds good, I didn’t check that. But regardless guest 2 shouldn’t have been able to remove the preapproval AND block a day!

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I have also run into the problem in the past! I will not block calendar days for people who are still deciding. I do first come first serve. It’s pretty rare that this happens because I have instabook enabled, but it has happened.

Anybody know if AirBnB has made any effort to address this?

I guess Guest 1 sent a booking enquiry and Guest 2 sent a reservation request, meaning Guest 2 gave his/her payment details (while guest 1 did not), that’s why dates were blocked for guest 2.

Usually when guests send a booking enquiry I never hear back from them.

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Yes, that is what happens. So a reservation requests blocks your calendar for other people? I don’t like random people having control of my calendar like that and the ability to freeze out other potential guests, but this has never come up before because this is the first time I haven’t accepted a reservation request right away.