IB is a factor of getting any guests, take a look at where you come up in the search on a private browser with it on, then with it off. I went to nearly the last page with it off. Also I only book places with IB, and I am a very good guest.
RR
2 Likes
Maybe Iāll give it a shot again at some point but Iāve had it off and on. When itās on, I get guests that do not read my house rules, Even though I asked them if they have read the house rules before they check in. We have quiet hours at 10:30 pm at our property because itās a duplex and I just canāt seem to get the IB guests to be respectful of quiet hours ie. Loud music, yelling, etc. ā¦ itās always involved drinking.
I would try raising your prices and minimum stay and see if you get a better class of guests. Yes there are good guests who look for cheap places but I am thinking price plays a role in guest quality.
Good luck
RR
2 Likes
It depends on how much competition you have in your area, but I wouldnāt let the lower search ranking due to not using IB dictate my decision on whether to use IB or not.
I refuse to allow Airbnb to push me into IB by the punishment of lowering my search ranking. Screw them.
I have never used IB- Iām not willing to have guests in my home who I canāt communicate with before their booking is accepted. Iād rather have fewer guests who donāt cause problems than lots of guests who do.
I have a budget-priced home share and really, all of my guests have been fine, most have been stellar, so while pricing can be a factor in the type of guests you get, itās not some absolute.
And some of my favorite guests never would have been eligible to book using IB, because they had no reviews. But their communication with me pre-booking was great and didnāt send up any red flags. I want to be in charge of who gets accepted, not some algorithm.
1 Like
RAISE YOUR RATES. Guests who pay more show more respect for the property, in my experience. I have found in all my businesses that the cheap customer is the one that doesnāt value what youāre offering.
You are just getting started, so you need to accept only short term bookings so that you can build up reviews ā you need to get as many 5 star reviews as possible at the start, so you need to be a perfectionist as far as cleanliness, attractiveness, and comfort.
2 Likes
I do IB - great guests across the board (except one group of locals). I donāt have the setting set to only allow guests with prior good reviews from hosts. Iāve said it before here, my best guests have been newbies with no reviews. And Iām convinced IB keeps me on page one of 300+ private room/bath listings.
I also have to say that IB is less work because there arenāt as many inquiries/requests to deal with.
I think that whether using IB tends to attract more difficult guests can depend a lot on your location and the nature of your listing. An apartment in Vermont thatās geared to business travellers, for instance, is likely going to have a whole lot less issues arising from using IB than an entire house rental with a pool and a jacuzzi that sleeps 12 in LA.
2 Likes
Totally agree with this 100% @muddy. IB for a house that sleeps 12 is risky, (risky without IB turned on) which is where raising your price really can come into play, IMO. I donāt think @Holly_Hawk has said how many guests her place holds. My max allowed in my (non-home share) listing is only 4, though you could cram 5-6 in there, itās never been an issue.
My home-share only sleeps 3, but since Iām always here and priced higher than the competition I donāt have guest behaving badly. Wellā¦one bad guest out of over 200 reservations, but IB had nothing to do with that. Guest had 8 or more positive reviews!
Agreed. I have started using the chat option in Help rather than calling, and have had good results. I keep communication on the site so Support can review what happened, and had a review removed because it wasnāt relevant to the stay.
We had similar situation with our first guests too.They booked with is for over a month stay really cheaply (with all airbnb suggested low prices and discountsā¦ we got a huge surprise) We tried to be nice to them, In order to get a good review asked them nicely to at least stop smoking weed like crazy around our property since our house started to smell like weed farm (they actually admitted that in their review too) and we have small children in this house. So they said they want a refund for the rest of the stay and left early (we where really grateful for that and gladly refunded). They left high star reviews everywhere bur low overall star rating which did not make sense, and wrote how the place and host were great, but something about the place felt fishy and lied that we forced them to leave. Customer support refused to remove that clearly unfair review. We limited length of stay to a week after that and stopped caring about the reviews ā¦ if guests bother us we tell them and from our end we do what we can to accommodate. We are super hosts now (started in March202). We had only one more bad review from guest who came for 2 nightsā¦ screamed and disturbed other guests, but we wrote them a review they deserved and expected a bad one since we had to have a few conversation with them to follow rules and had to listen to their āsuggestionā on improving 
. Plus our friends who are hosting longer say that if it gets really bad you can always remove the listing with bad reviews and create a new one. It looks more real with the bad reviews anyway.
1 Like
If this is true, I am unaware of it. If you remove a listing, the reviews stay with the hosts anyway. If you cancel your whole account and make another one, Airbnb will probably be able to determine that itās the same place and the same host. At that point, I believe they cancel your account.
Others may know for certain.
100%.
Airbnb arenāt stupid.
You do the switcheroo, the likelihood is that theyāll pick it up and youāre then delisted, under all your accounts. But hey, if you want to go with your friends advice, feel freeā¦
JF
Wow, I guess its a good think that I do not care about bad reviews. If I wanted to follow their advice I would haveā¦ we asked support to remove the two clearly unfair reviews in vain. But we got a lot of good reviews and got super-host this review period, so no harm. And as I said to my husband our listing looks more real with the bad reviews.
The question was if she could deactivate her account with bad reviews and just keep her husbandās account.
Catherine Powell will change all of that! (yeah light-hearted sarcasm - with an IPO coming the last thing they will care about is keeping hosts happy).
Sorry about the d-bag guests!