When you change your blocked dates, be sure to do it on a computer. If you do it on an iPad, or probably other mobile you have to do them one by one and hit SAVE each time.
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I blocked 6 weeks in May/June a couple of months ago. Due to this thread, I checked and they were open. Donāt like this glitch
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Brilliant Idea. I have had a pair of dates unblocked FIVE times. I presume its that the auto unblocking for my 3 month booking window just makes everthing available. Thanks so much
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Thatās an interesting idea; however, when my dates become unblocked, itās all of the blocked dates for that listing. I have 4-days blocked off each month for direct-book guest all the way into next fall. I have to check them every morning and about once or twice a week, they are all unblocked as far as my calendar is open (June), well beyond my 3-month window. I also get a lot of cuing to unblock the dates because āthereās whatever% interest in these datesā so kind of think Iām getting poked at, lol, but itās surely just a glitch, I guess ,)
Raise the price to 5 or 10 times your nightly rate and leave them unblocked, you will not get booked and not get punished by the algorithm god for being unavailable. The same bot that is telling you to open those dates is likely lowering you in the search.
And if you did get a booking at 10X your rate you could put your regular in a hotel and likely still be ahead.
RR
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I do raise the price like that before I block them, for just in case. But I donāt like to use the super-high-price for the blocking as people tend to return to our city routinely several times a year and I donāt want a past guest to be looking and see the obnoxious price and be turned-off.
Past guests should be booking direct!
RR
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Only if they contact me first and tell me theyād like to! Itās not a rule 
But if they are just scoping out the neighborhood for rates, even prior to contacting me, it looks obnoxious to have a price 10X than regular.
What if itās a new guest that is looking at my place and has flexibility for travel dates? It comes up for them and they like it but they think, āwell, lets see if itās availabe the weekend after that, itāll be easier to get a sitter for your momā, or whatever, and when they look at the next weekend it is available but itās priced obnoxiously high. They go to a different listing. I would, as a guest, also move on.
I see people using it in my area and I think it looks bad. Guests donāt understand why the price is so high, it just looks ridiculous to them.
I leave business cards out with direct booking information. They do not need to ask, I show them the way.
RR
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You are obfuscating my point (and might conjur up the Houfy gods). My point is that I think the ridiculously high prices look obnoxious and may do harm. Even someone who may direct-book might check the calendar on Airbnb for availability prior to contacting me (this has happened more than once - āwe checked and it looks like the 23rd is open for Apt 2ā) and Iām not willing to take the chance to look like Iāve lost my mind.
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I looked at it when I saw it had been locked, that caught my attention.
RR
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Is the Blocked Dates Becoming Unblocked thing still happening? Itās been about 2 years since it happened to me.
To be safe, I still make my price $1000 before blocking dates which are booked on another platform, but recently I noticed when a HomeAway guest cancelled that when I unblocked those dates, Airās price tip was $500. The price tip for the following day was about $100.
I had wondered if those inflated prices affected their algorithms and it seems it does.
I know no-one on this forum uses price tips, but I thought it was interesting how it was affected.
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They definitely do affect the price tips, even the base price suggestion in the settings. Our city recently had a special event that coincided with the holiday weekend and completely sold out the entire area. We were able to book our 3 units 4x their typical rates for this time of year and since then, all of my āprice tipsā have been way too high - which is not what price tips are known for. The recommended base price in the settings was also increased quite dramatically. I donāt know how long it will last but the last of the higher priced reservations completed today and I will take note, Iām curious to see the pattern. The price tips have been severely inflated since the bookings 2 and 3 months ago. Also, it supports the fact that the price tips are always lower than what you can get for those nights as even the highly inflated tips are much lower than what we booked for.
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I am in the middle of my FOURTH discussion with customer service about blocked dates in three months. Two things are happening: I have a six months advance booking limit in availability and it NEVER WORKS. Their response, four times now, has been for me to block it manually. This is not practical, block it manually until when? Five years out? And what - go in every day and unblock the day at the end of the six month window?
Secondly, the manual blocks I have done while they are dicking around not fixing the problem keep disappearing! I blocked through 2021 and right in the middle of that time period 4 months were magically unblocked. I then promptly got 3 reservations. CS says they will cancel with the guest (2 days ago, they have yet to do it) and again, to manually block from six months out. They refuse to address the glitch. Argggghhhhh!
I wonder if they are trying and just canāt. As Iāve said about some of our presidents, I donāt know whatās worse: lying or incompetence.
Itās a pain but can you use the high price trick and then block? Set your minimum price per night toā¦whatever, $500. Then manually change the upcoming 3-6 month blocks to whatever your real price is.
Thanks KKC. I guess Iām feeling super annoyed about the conceptual messiness of the manual blocking, especially when Airbnb clearly gives the option to specify the booking window.
Iād have to go in and keep unblocking at the end to have an actual six months availability window. And it feels weird to block into the infinite future - where do I stop? I guess I could simply block five years out.
What is with the ineptitude? Thereās plenty of complex booking systems out there that workā¦ I donāt get all the glitches in this one. Forgive the whining, I am pissed that I have to repeatedly check things so that guests are inconvenienced and Iām not dinged! Thanks for letting me vent.
On the up side, guests are over the moon, my mortgage and other bills are covered, and thereās plenty of blessings to count in this part of my life. So I guess Iāll just deal.
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And Iām scared of that high price thing. As someone else said, I fear how obnoxious and off-putting it might appear to potential guestsā¦
But maybe Iāll get there.
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What is the magic of 6 months. You previously mentioned about going in every day and opening the next day of the 6 monthsā¦Iād just go in every couple of weeks and unblock. I log on virtually every day, sometimes many times a day anyway so I guess tinkering there daily doesnāt burden me in the way it would some folks.
no magic about six months other than thatās what I expected to show up on my listing.
youāre right, one week on one side or the other doesnāt matter. Iām stuck on the principle of the thing!!!