If u have a gut feeling based on someone’s profile, what reason is acceptable to decline a guest?
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Just block the days on the calendar then tell them the dates are not available.
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Ritz3 thank you so much!!
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Based on their profile info, like what they have written about themselves, or past reviews? Just curious what made you wary.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to blocking days and lying. Either tell the guest the truth (like, “sorry, but based on your past review, I’ll have to decline”) or just click on decline. You don’t have to give a reason.
Hosts understandably hate it when guests lie to them, so why is it okay to lie to guests?
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You can decline a guest for ANY reason and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s YOUR AirBnB. If you want decline because someone looks like someone you don’t want in your house, then you are PERFECTLY justified in doing so. Don’t listen to the holier-than-thou crowd in this forum.
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Too many declines will drop you down significantly in the rankings and it is very difficult to get back up to the first couple of pages. Airbnb want those nights sold so they get their cut. Every time You decline they see it as lost income.
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??? Who gave a holier than thou answer?
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This. 100%. Bottom line it is your property. Trust your gut, if you feel there is “something off” about a potential booking, then pass and don’t think twice about it.
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We generally do not host locals. However, we have made exceptions. We draw a line at “young (18-25) AND local”. Then, no thank you.
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Mostly, we care about a valid form of payment. Heartbeat is optional.
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Same here, we generally do not accept locals and underage kids. There seem to be many virtue signalers in this forum who evidently sacrifice their own safety for the sake of being politically correct; that’s not us. We insist on being safe. If something’s off we decline the request.
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No, not true.
It’s time that you read airbnb’s terms of service, which you agreed to when you began hosting:
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It used to be that when you clicked Decline, the system then asked you Why; and one of the possible responses was something on the order of “I don’t feel comfortable with this Guest”.
Others are right – the only drawback to declining lots of potentials is that it will affect your rating/status; and with too many Declines, Air will be enquiring Why, and they can shut you down.
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They send threatening messages about declines, but has anyone actually been suspended for too many declines? Other hosts have said they received those warnings, and just ignored them, that their acceptance rate has gone down to 70% and nothing happened.
Gee, that’s strange. I’ve never read any posts here that indicated that any hosts accepted sketchy bookings that might be a safety risk in order to be politically correct.
Would you care to point out any examples?
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Lol, ok…
I accept EVERYONE, no verifications, no prior reviews I do not care because I am a greedy capitalist and it’s all about heads in beds.
Yet somehow, I have never had any real issues, some guests are messier, most are great.
Heads in beds I say
RR
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There must either be something about the karma of your attitude or that your listing simply doesn’t attract bad guests.
I’ve actually never declined a booking, either, not because I’m a shameless capitalist, but because none of them have ever thrown up any red flags. I don’t have issues about accepting newbies with no reviews, because so far they’ve all communicated nicely. And I’ve never gotten a bad guest. A couple of issues, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with amicably between me and the guest.
I get an occasional inappropriate inquiry, but I just answer indicating why I can’t accomodate what they are asking for, and they go away.
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So you whine about not being able to see pictures of potential guests before booking, and now you decline them based on their name. Please tell us exactly how basing your acceptance of someone as a guest based on that information keeps you “safe”.
It’s hardly “virtue signaling” to tell you that using your criteria could be considered to be illegal discrimination, and that we don’t want to be associated with such a practice.
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I too tell them that my listing is occupied/no longer available through another platform. Sometimes it’s the truth, sometimes it’s not, but what’s the added value of telling someone to their face you don’t like them in your place? They might feel bad, feel alienated, discriminated against, and become aggressive and for what? It’s not worth it. Saves everyone a lot of trouble. 
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Sorry, I’m new here, but can someone tell me how to start a post on the forum?
New users can’t start a post. The settings of the Discourse software require that members reach certain levels of engagement such as reading, liking and commenting on posts. This is to prevent spam and to discourage the same questions being asked every day. You should have gotten a popup message explaining this.
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I am not sure, but I have had good guests overall. Most great, some are messier but it more than evens out.
My business office is on the property, and the guests see me around the place all the time so maybe that helps. I saw a post on Reddit where a host saw a party happening in real time on the cameras and proceeded to call Air and WAIT ON HOLD 45 minutes only to be told don’t call the police yet let us “reach out” to the guest…
So management style comes to play, I would have messaged Air I was on my way to remove guest having a party and then done it.
Also I do not keep all communications on the platform, day of reservation I both text and message on platform check in instructions, 80% of the time the guest responds via text and that is where we communicate going forward.
I am simply not worried about something going wrong and needing to involve air. Again I just read about someone trying to charge a guest for stained bedding, either bleach it out or suck it up as a cost of doing business, air is not my daddy who will come fix or replace stuff.
I do think that a lot of hosts worry themselves too much about too little.
Neither am I really, that was a bit of a joke. I do not try and be booked all the time, I do not discount in order to be booked and will decline discount seekers. So although I do like the cash, it does not cloud my judgement!
RR
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