Except that doesn’t happen, in my experience. Mine has always said “within an hour”, even though I’ve had numerous inquiries or requests go unanswered for much longer than an hour.
Oh? That’s interesting.
I wonder if you answer so many questions within a few minutes that the average IS within the hour??
Not nearly enough “within a few minutes” to balance out 8 hours. And my guests don’t ask “so many questions”.
Well, I actually inquired about this with them a few months back as far as pets go. Since now Airbnb has option for pets, Hospitable can help you build a customize reply that asks about pet in case they don’t mention it. And doesn’t ask, if they do…
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That’s because only late responses, which are after 24 hours, affect your response time.
And if you go to message a host when it’s late in their time zone, I don’t know the exact time, but it seems like 9pm or so, there will be a warning there that says, “It’s late in your host’s location. They will get back to you…” or something like that.
No one gets “called out” for their response time. But I imagine it goes hand in hand with a low response rate which I suppose could invite an email from Airbnb, and definitely a loss of superhost.
Personally, I will get up and deal with messages as they come in regardless of the time, but it’s not because I’m worried about my response time. I just have a lot of guests from distant time zones so I know one of us is going to be inconvenienced and it seems ideal, to me, if I’m the one that’s inconvenienced. But as a guest, I don’t expect the same. If anything, I make a point of not sending messages to hosts when it’s late in their time zone.
Most of us, I suspect.
To me though, I have to balance speed with giving great service and being a hospitable, friendly host. (Largely because I have a large number of repeat guests and I want more. 
)
I can’t see how it would be helpful to me (although feel free to let me know if I’ve missed something).
This is what bothers me. I’d prefer it if all hosts left honest reviews for their guests rather than something standard. A personalised review is a important to me for the reason I mentioned above - they show potential guests that I care about that I care about them having a great time.
I appreciate that not all hosts feel that way though and therefore the extension will be of use to many.
One quick question - I realise it’s a Google Chrome extension but is this the case on any laptop, tablet or phone? Thanks.
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As an aside: It’s amazing you know all this.
But when you see “This Host usually responds within [fill in the blank hours/minutes]” that calculation must include responses within 24 hours. Otherwise, how do they calculate that?
So, for example, assume a Host always responded exactly 12 hours after that first inquiry. Wouldn’t then it say “Host usually responds within 12 hours”? [That’s what’s being referred to as ‘called out.’]
If not, what would it say?
I think that is what @Rolf was asking about, not to have the Host’s response time dragged down by those late night inquiries. @muddy was saying it just doesn’t happen. You’re explaining why, but I’m not understanding it (yet).
After 24 hrs affects the response rate. What Rolf was referencing, I assumed, was the “Responds within…” Which has always said 1 hr. on my listing.
As far as inconveniencing guests in a different time zone by not answering right away, I figure if a guest doesn’t bother to notice that it would be 1am in my time zone, I don’t really care if they move on to inquire or request a different listing if they expect a reply in what is the middle of the night for me. I don’t take last minute bookings, so they aren’t that inconvenienced by waiting for a reply until a reasonable hour.
It’s packed w. shortcuts to your calendar, inbox, listing settings, and even within Aribnb.
Hosting for about 9 years now, quality and integrity of reviews I leave to guests is always priority to me. I build the extension around that. When guests stay and they are 5-Stars guests, my experience is that 98% of the time I will write very similar reviews.
In the extension, you can add up to 3 different version at any length and personalized by name for any the guests. In case nothing was out of the ordinary.
For my listing, I get about 100 reviews a year. Before it would take me 3 minutes to go through the whole process. Now, it’s about 8 seconds while keeping the same high level reviews.
For me, instead of 300 mins a year - it takes 7 mins. This is probably sounds stupid… though this is only ONE aspect of managing. It saves you more time with other aspects of managing (like leaving a Public Response). And I do value my time.
Google Chrome doesn’t allow extensions for tablets nor phones. There is no such thing.
It works on any laptop or desktop.
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I didn’t know that - I use Safari on my phone. Have you any plans to develop this for use on a phone or iPad? I only use the laptop about 10 - 15% of the time. I find time management so much easier when I can work from the line in the grocery store, from the car, from the doctor’s office etc.
Sounds like that would be ideal.
Unfortunately, there is no such option for extensions to be installed on phone or iPad (tablets). I would develop it first, though there’s no such feature.
There are some weird work arounds, though they can not guarantee it will work as intendend.
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And the response time. Your response time isn’t affected unless you answer late, after the 24 hours. It will say “1 hour” unless you respond after 24 hours at which point your response time is then averaged out for the last 30 days to something more than an hour (how much more will depend on how many responses you’ve made in the last 30 days).
Here’s what it says (at the bottom) and I also confirmed it with a case manager who I was on the phone with for a different reason (and for a very long time). She even said, “a lot of people assume it’s the actual amount of time that it takes you to respond, but that time isn’t calculated. It only matters that you respond in 24 hours”.
Of course, she could’ve been wrong or even lying but she wasn’t an entry-level CS and proved to be particularly helpful and truthful otherwise.
And as much as everyone talks about the trials and tribulations of Airbnb, I’ve never once heard even as much as an implication of an intimation that a host was expected to respond any sooner than in 24 hours, much less that they were ‘called out’ for it. And with all the reports of the crazy things that CS agents browbeat hosts over, not once have I heard that they mentioned response time unless it was more than 24 hours (and it seems that it would be easy for them to latch onto it otherwise, lol).
Have you? I know you read a lot of forums too. I certainly could’ve missed something but because I haven’t personally come across any evidence to the contrary, I don’t have any reason to think that I was given inaccurate information. And my response rate has always stayed at “within an hour” operating under that assumption. But I don’t know what I don’t know, of course.
That’s interesting info. I always figured the response time listed would be some average (which would be logical) but as I said, mine has always read “within an hour” so what the CS rep told you sounds correct.
But that also means that response time “within an hour”, if that only changes if a host goes over the 24 hrs, can be an entirely false and useless statement as far as being a guest who is awaiting a reply from what may be a slacker host who doesn’t bother to answer in a reasonable amount of time.
Wow, that’s so true. I hadn’t thought about that.
Maybe if you never answer late (after 24 hours) they give you the benefit of the doubt that you have the potential to answer within an hour 
It is Airbnb so it is really possible. And I’ve never seen a host with a “100% response rate” that didn’t also have a “within an hour” response time.
I just looked through listings in my market (because I know who the slackers are, lol) to find hosts with a Response Rate that is less than 100% (which really seems very uncommon) and their Response Times were either “within a day”, “within a few hours” or “within an hour”. That seems to come from the averaging of the actual response time that happens after an occasion of not responding within 24-hours.
If it is in fact that direct, then I would posit that if a host got knocked for not responding (e.g. responding after 24 hours is counted as a non-response) that the best thing they could do is to respond to all new inquiries and RTB within a couple of minutes so as to at least get their Response Time down to “within an hour”.
I have no idea how often guests even look at the response rate and response time. Some must and I did look at it one time when I was booking very last minute, but my feeling has always been that it’s primarily just yet-another-carrot to keep hosts in line.
Btw, I saw two listings that didn’t have a response rate or response time at all, it wasn’t there. One only had 7 reviews so I figured that was why but the other had 93 reviews and was a real estate brokerage. Seemed odd.
I would imagine that would only happen much if a guest has had past hosts ghost them on messages.
I wonder how often that response time gets updated if a host has gone over the 24 hrs. I once missed responding to a request within 24hrs because Airbnb had glitched out me receiving alerts. That was years ago, so I have no record of whether my response time then changed, and I never thought to check it at the time. I know it affected my response rate, even though the guest went on to book (I did respond to her and apologize within 25 hrs, when I saw the missed request in my account), and Airbnb admitted it was their tech glitch that caused me not to see the request in time. 
Seems like they should’ve fixed that for you. How annoying.
Claimed they “couldn’t”, that it was all automated. While a CS rep may not be able to change it, sounds like BS that the tech team wouldn’t be able to.
I recall a post from a host who had gotten a spate of scam inquiries, contacted CS about them, and the CS rep told her to just flag them,that she didn’t need to respond. The host’s response rate then tanked, and when she asked for her 100% response rate to be reinstated, pointing out the CS rep’s advice not to respond, was also told it “couldn’t” be changed.
“We f**ked up, too bad for you.”
I found one with 100% response rate and “within a few hours”.
Vrbo used to report how fast the owner responded, but I can’t find it on listings now. I also heard it was part of their “secret recipe” for the ranking algorithm.
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Airbnb flat out states that it’s part of theirs.
Since I get mostly “last minute” (within the week) bookings, I respond ASAP. If I hear the ping in the middle of the night for a request I will look at my phone and hit accept. Then by morning I’m sending a message if I didn’t the night before.
In an increasingly competitive environment, I’d guess that hosts who are picky and slow to respond are going to find themselves with so few bookings that it hardly seems worth the effort.
As a guest, when a host doesn’t respond within a few hours, it usually means it’s not going to work out for me to stay with them.
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It’s interesting you mention it. Yesterday I came across 10 or 12 listings on Air that didn’t have the response rate/time anywhere. It could be a glitch but it made me wonder if they were doing away with it. I’m sure they wouldn’t tell us haha.
I doubt I’ve ever taken more than 5 minutes to respond to a message, initial or not (maybe 10 min once when I was on the pot, lol). I realize now that when I said above I’d gone close to the 24-hour mark that it was waiting to decline a request (hoping the guest would finally withdraw) and was not to do with an initial response (I’m going to correct that above because it does give the wrong idea).
If it was late in their time zone I would expect that they were sleeping and I would not expect a speedy response. I’ve gotten up for middle-of-the-night messages but I wouldn’t do it if it was frequent, if I had any issue getting back to sleep or being able to sleep late or even if had a minor health issue.
Perhaps it sounds like a heroic business practice to get up in the middle of the night but I wouldn’t encourage hosts to interrupt their sleep to deal with messages. Interrupted sleep is so detrimental to health that it is just technically not worth it. The impact it has on health, especially as people age, is far greater than most of the stuff we tend to worry about, like falls or fires.
I might think that Airbnb wouldn’t mind hosts risking their health to respond to messages in under an hour, except that even they put up a banner at a certain hour reminding guests that “it’s late in the host’s time zone and to not expect a response until the next day”. And I really don’t have any reason to disbelieve what the case manager told me about how they calculate response time so I don’t think it makes a huge difference either.
Of course, if you specialize in last-minute bookings then I suppose it’s what you’ve signed up for, but that’s a really personal choice and doesn’t apply to most hosts. Otherwise, hosts should get a good night’s sleep, literally for their own health, and deal with messages promptly in the morning just as other businesses do, even as other competitive businesses do.
In the past, I know I’ve also encouraged middle-of the-night responses and other do-or-die style hosting techniques but if I learned anything from Covid, it was about health and priorities (well, and just how persistent a rash can be, lol). So after having this discussion, I’m making it my personal policy not to get up in the middle of the night and I can’t recommend it either.