Declined guests who have still never been hosted

When you decline an inquiry or a reservation request the messages stay in your message thread. I have archived those I declined for various reasons, i.e.: wanting to book for someone else, asking for a discount, asking a lot of questions already answered in my listing, looking for a place with easy public transportation to Manhattan, etc. I have gone back to see if these dozen or so people ended up booking elsewhere and except for one, all of them have zero reviews from other hosts so far. They’ve all passed the dates they inquired about by more than two weeks. I just found this interesting , maybe we as hosts all have the same instincts about possible problem guests .

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How interesting! I often wonder where the people that I decline (not that many) end up. I regularly look at my competitions reviews and sometimes see the declined guest has stayed with them. I’m guessing a fair number of people just find the whole process to be a hassle, and probably end up staying at a hotel.

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Yes! And if hassle means they can’t push limits or the system then so be it, Airbnb is not for them. Also, more than half had incomplete profiles, no or one verification and were new to the site.

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@Maggieroni I may have told this already but last summer I spent a good bit of time perusing listings and finally messaged someone who had what I was looking for. It took her about 7 hours to reply that the space was not available (that was a lie, but whatever). It wasn’t being declined so much as it taking so long. I just didn’t have the time to message and wait and I didn’t want to message a bunch of people at once. So I abandoned Air and stayed in a hotel instead. I agree with superhostnyc that it was too much of a hassle. If I had to do it over I would only look for instant book and superhost for NYC.

Yes, I’ve looked at the profiles of people I have declined too. In almost all cases, they had blank reviews then, and have blank reviews now. The one exception was one of the first people to inquire, and he does have a review from someone in the same city.

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Granted, messaging a bunch of people at once isn’t very considerate, but is there anything in Airbnb’s terms of service about this?

Of course the problem with messaging a bunch of people at once is that you are by definition going to have either tell some stranger - sorry, I don’t want to stay with you after all, or leave them hanging. You can guess which option most people take. Actually, I don’t think I’ve had a single person write after inquiring to say, sorry, I don’t want to stay after all.