Our listing clearly states “no pets” but potential guests inquire if we’ll make an exception for their pet. I respond “so sorry but we do not allow pets”. My question, does Abnb hold that against you? Thank you.
You can’t refused a certified, trained Service Dog.
But I will not allow an Emotional Support Animal which is nothing more than a pet, really. Service Dogs must be trained to rigorous standards to assist their partner in specific ways, not just make them feel warm and fuzzy.
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There is a decline rate that is monitored.
You need to stay above 88% acceptance or your listing can be pushed down the lists or suspended
If it was just an inquiry and not a declined booking, then it doesn’t count against you.
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Thank you for clarifying that.
KenH, the Airbnb animal rules don’t differentiate between a certified Service Dog and an Emotional Support Animal.
Either way, the animal should not be left alone in the unit. That’s in Air’s animal rules.
And I really do have an ESA but because people abused it he can’t go on planes anymore. I’m going to have to get him formally trained as a Service Dog for my allergies.
The problem is, anecdotal reports are that Airbnb won’t help you enforce this. So if you see guests leaving the rental without their dog, then you go to the rental and see the dog is inside the rental unattended, what are you going to do? If you cancel, you have a battle on your hands.
I’d happily battle. Our HOA ruled a few years ago that dogs aren’t allowed in rentals. (Until then I loved hosting dogs). They are allowed in owner-occupied apartments, particularly if they are grandfathered in.
But HOAs can fine owners a lot of money if they feel like it and many have rules regarding non-payments. They can put liens on apartments and make life very difficult for the owner,
I’d rather battle Airbnb than the HOA. 
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They can’t if you’ve indicated on your listing that you can’t host pets. Declining booking requests for pets is absolutely in your rights as a host, cancelling a booking that has a pet included could be trickier because you’d need to get Air involved so you don’t lose points.
Service animals are not counted as pets, so you don’t have the choice to decline them (but they usually are really well behaved!)
Good luck!
We had a guest with an esa. They said it would stay in the car, so we said ok. It was a beautiful white Samoyed. They groomed it and threw all the hair from their dog and their car into the toilet and nearly broke our delicate system and created because of this a big hassle for us. Honestly I am going to ask to see a certificate if I get another request like this.
There are pet friendly places they can choose!!!
Don’t bother. There is no standard for “Certificates” for emotional support animals. Some owners do have registration papers, but they are not recognized in any official context and the papers can be acquired online for a few dollars without any verification.
The problem is that Airbnb’s groups together Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals. Service Animals are trained and well-behaved, but Emotional Support Animals have no training and unfortunately, guests have realized that since there is no requirement to disclose the animal (in a whole-place listing), and no requirement to present proof, a guest can show up with any animal and say that it is an Emotional Support Animal. There’s really nothing a host can do about it that won’t result in the host being punished.
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I am allowed to not allow any dogs including service dogs because mine is a home share and I am allergic to dogs. Airbnb Ok’d this stance.
You call AirBnB and ask them to contact the owner about the violation of AirBnB rules, and to come back and retrieve the animal and take it with them. If they leave it, they are calling a pet an assistance dog.
If they refuse to do that, ask Air to give you a no-penalty cancellation with no refund.
This is exactly the scenario that happened to us the other week. And we chose not pursue when they left the “assistance dog” alone in the space because they were checking out relatively soon after and we didn’t want a retaliatory review right before we were up for superhost status. We still got one because some people are terrible.
As we are building our reputation on AirBnB, in retrospect I probably would have not said anything during their stay about noticing they brought a dog to accommodations that specify no pets, pursued damages if necessary and waited until the last minute to give them a scalding review.
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I like this logic, but I wonder how often it has actually worked. I don’t recall reading any instances of this being used successfully. I hope every host does this as often as possible just to drive the point home to Airbnb how shitty their “Assistance Animal” policy is for hosts.
I had a woman request to book and ask if I would consider her service dog in my no-pets place. She assured me that it had been to “potty school” for six weeks, so wouldn’t do anything to the apartment, and therefore she didn’t need to pay a deposit. I’m pretty sure service dogs don’t attend anything called potty school. Fortunately, it was VRBO, which doesn’t require us to accept ESAs, so I dodged a bullet.
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