How does this work to decline a booking? If someone requests a booking- and say they don’t have enough info, or bad reviews, or your instinct says something is off. What does airbnb request from you- do you have to give a reason? What is the best way to handle this diplomatically?
you usually have about 3 standard reasons offered to you. Don’t decline enquiries, leave them be.
Diplomatically: it’s better to try to get them to withdraw the booking request, by convincing them your place isn’t right. You can do this by suggesting they withdraw the request before airbnb charges them, that usually does the trick.
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You can say “I’m not comfortable with this guest” & either list reason, or leave it at that.
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Oh good that’s perfect thanks… I like to get all the hard part worse case scenarios figured out first so I can relax a bit… thanks again
ah, so spend some time reading through here, and the ABB CC forums, and you’ll pick up some good tips and great wording for rules, manual and guest messaging. You’ll probably be tweaking it for 6 months anyway, as guests have a clever way of finding all the problems with your property that you were unaware of!
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@Letsgo have you come across the Airbnb Help website. If not have a look. It has FAQs around most of the basics of managing your STR business on Airbnb and has a section on inquiries and requests.
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Well, not enough info is different from bad reviews or them giving you a bad feeling. If they haven’t provided enough info, you dialogue with them to get the info you need, you don’t just decline. If they don’t respond, or respond but ignore your questions, you can prod once more. You have 24 hours to either accept or deecline, so don’t feel pressured to make a decision right away if you need more info.
I’ve had initial booking request messages that just said “Arriving around noon”, when I haven’t even accepted their booking yet. But sending a friendly message back, thanking them for their interest and prodding for a bit more info, has always elicited a more informative response. And they’ve been fine guests.
Young people, who have grown up in a texting world, tend to be very brief, but will be forthcoming when asked, experienced guests tend to give you all the info you need to feel fine about accepting right off the bat. Newbie guests might need more guidance.
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and to be fair, Abb prompts them to tell us when they will arrive, which we didn’t ask of them at all.
If this happened to me I would look to our correspondence and try to find a guest-centric message on why my property is not a good fit for them, express my understanding for that and request that they withdraw their request to book so that they are free to reserve a place that’s right for them.
For me the easiest thing is to just tick the box saying that I’m uncomfortable with the reservation. For reasons, I say that I’m getting “bad vibes”, that’s usually sufficient.
Yes but your calendar is blocked from other guests until they get around to do so if at all.
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I have found the refusal choices offered by Airbnb usually have one that suits .
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Oh thank you… as I haven’t gone live yet-it’s hard to know… what
they have… older posts suggested you had to give reasons to the ones
requesting (I’m not going on instabook )… and so perhaps they’ve
simplified the process since then…
Have you looked at the airbnb help website it’s has FAQs covering most of the basics around how Airbnb works. @Letsgo
I have a generic response saved in my messages that I send to guests that I don’t wish to host and let them know what the reasons could be and list them all, no reviews, reviews left by past hosts, check in time does not work for that date, amenities offered is not a fit, etc. etc. I start if off by saying thank you for your interest but… and I also ask them to withdrawn their request so their card is not charged. (That way I am no declining the request either and getting dinged by airbnb for declining a request. My house rules specifically say not to send request until we have agreed on a check in time and also to read over lisitng and amenities offered to confirm a good fit. Still some will ask for things not offered and that is a red flag as they will leave bad reviews if they are not getting everything they want. It’s a business and you have to protect your property as well as your reviews by being selective of who you host.
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