Declining a booking or allowing it to expire

[debflak]

I made a mistake and didn’t block a weekend that I wasnt sure was available. I have long term guests staying during a house Reno that has gone over time due to covid. So the family was to leave by the 27th of May and now they can’t. They have two small kids and a dog and need to stay till the end of the month. I unexpectedly got a booking request (no inquiry before the request which is unusual for me) before I realized they couldn’t leave on time. The prospective guest didn’t respond to my offers to give a discount for another date and didn’t withdraw the request when I asked if he would. It expired. Should I have declined instead? What’s worse?

[muddy]

Yes, if you can’t get a guest to withdraw a request within the 24 hour time limit , it’s better to decline than let it expire. Declining lowers your Acceptance rate, which isn’t that crucial, and doesn’t factor into Superhost stats. Letting a request expire lowers Response rate, which is a stat counted for Superhost.
That is, if you even care about Superhost.

But if you haven’t let requests expire before, no big deal. It’s okay not to be a 100%er.

[casailinglady]

@debflak

The prospective guest didn’t respond to my offers to give a discount for another date and didn’t withdraw the request when I asked if he would. It expired. Should I have declined instead? What’s worse?

You actually DID respond. Air counts your reply as a response so letting it expire after repeated attempts to explain that the dates aren’t available due to a current guests’ house reno won’t count against you.

I have asked several Air CS peeps about this and watched my metrics - as long as you respond to the Request (or Inquiry), and explain issues and they don’t respond or withdraw (I get a lot of those - I think they’re requesting multiple places in the area and picking the one they like best) then you’re fine.

[muddy]

That is true for an Inquiry- all you need to do is message back.

It isn’t true for a Request- you have to click on Accept or Decline within 24 hours or your response rate drops. I can assure you this is true- it happened to me. A return message doesn’t stop the clock on a request.

[Brian_R170]

@Muddy is correct.

See this page in AirBnB’s help center.

If a guest sends you an inquiry—a question, or any kind of message other than a reservation request—via Contact Host , you’ll need to respond to the inquiry within 24 hours to maintain your response rate. If the guest sends you a reservation request, you’ll need to accept or decline within 24 hours to maintain your response rate.

Here’s another page that explains response rate and acceptance rate which should also be useful for understanding how you should respond. It even very specifically answers your question.

What happens to my acceptance rate if I answer a question rather than approve, pre-approve, or decline a booking request?
The short answer is this: If a guest sends you a booking request and you only answer a question, but do not approve or decline before the request times out, that counts as a decline.

[casailinglady]

Thanks for clearing that up. Ugh, metrics…