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In the past 3 days I have had two people try to book who have young children. The Airbnb “chime” has also failed on my phone costing me another booking.
I declined the guests with young kids as we are not set up for children. I called and the CS rep told me that I should have asked the guests to recind their request to book rather than declining and that both will count towards the 3 declines before I get an automatic warning message from Air. I asked if she could reclassifiy the declines so they won’t count against me and she said no but until I hit 3 there will not be any impact on anything like placement. I don’t know how the guests were even allowed to see my listing since I have both unsuitable for under 2 and unsuitable for 2-12 checked. The CS rep thought the guest may not have disclosed the kids in the booking process but the number of guests in the sidebar did indicate kids were with them.
I also missed a booking opportunity because I didn’t know it came in until 2 hours later. My phone never chimed and I only noticed the request when I picked up the phone to make a call. The guest must have become concerned because it was a next day booking and he recinded the request. I checked my settings on both Airbnb and on my phone and the “chime” should have gone off. The CS rep had me refresh the phone app and told me that should have fixed the problem. I won’t know until someone else books.
Did the guests with the children actually book and you cancelled? Your post said you declined, which sounds like it might have been an inquiry or a request. That should not count towards your 3 cancellations but enough declines will warrant a slap on the wrist. CS is rampant with incorrect info these days.
Unfortunately, selecting the option for no children does not prevent guests from seeing your listing and sending requests. same holds true for amenities such as pools and hot tubs. Guests select those amenities in their search and most of the results they see don’t match that criteria. I understand they’re trying to encourage guests to select other options by doing this but it seems to do nothing other than frustrate both hosts and guests with the end result being dissatisfaction on both ends.
As far as the chime, I’ve just reopened after a 5 month closure, have gotten 4 bookings, and the chime has only been audible one or two times. I have checked my settings multiple times in both Air and phone settings. Notifications on other apps come through fine but there is real inconsistency with the Air chime. I have switched to sound and vibrate as well as sending SMS messages to my smart watch so I don’t miss them.
Check off all the notification options, @Terryathome. That way if one fails, you’ll still get an SMS or email.
My preferred alert method is SMS and I don’t use the phone app at all. My SMS alerts stopped completely a few years ago and it took Airbnb a month to resolve it. Same as you, I missed a Request, but the guest still booked when I got back to her 25 hrs later.
And in the past 2 months I have called Airbnb twice to ask them to remove a request with no penalty to me (not having to decline). Once because it had blocked my calendar for 22 hours “Awaiting payment”, once because the guest didn’t meet my one requirement (Covid vaxed- shared space) but didn’t withdraw the request when I asked her to.
Both times Airbnb looked at the message streams, told me to just let the request expire in the case of the guest who told me she wasn’t vaxed, without declining, and it didn’t affect my acceptance or response rate. On the “Awaiting payment”, they opened the date even though the entire 24 hrs hadn’t elapsed.
And I sent feedback to Airbnb saying hosts shouldn’t have to take decline hits when guests don’t meet our requirements or don’t have their payment method in place.
I had three bookings this past weekend and I didn’t have any issue with the notifications. They all came in right away. I only don’t hear them if my volume is turned down. As for children I very rarely get requests for them because it’s a room with one queen bed. Though I say not suitable for children I usually do take requests for one or two nights and only one child when I get them.
Sometimes it happens that the chime does not work. What you need to do at that time is log out of Airbnb’s app and then log back on. If you are still having the issue, remove the app from your phone and download it again.
This is why autonomous cars are not going to work…
