How does blocking dates on my calendar really work?

1

How exactly does blocking dates on my calendar actually work?

I’m planning to be out of town April 17-21 to visit my father for his 80th birthday. I blocked off those dates on my calendar a month ago when I booked my trip.

But an hour ago I got an instant booking with a checkout date of April 17.

Blocked dates are shown differently than reservations on the calendar. When I block, it looks like it’s from 12am one day to 12am the next day, whereas reservations are from check-in time to check-out time. This really seems like a software interface bug and Airbnb seems to have a lot of those. I couldn’t find any details about how it’s supposed to work on Airbnb’s website.

I can make this work without cancelling the reservation, but it’s going to piss off my wife who will end up doing most of the cleaning.

2

I’ve not given much thought. Does it matter which day the cleaning gets done? Block of the day at the end, the 22nd, and do the cleaning then.

3

Unfortunately, we are doing a favor for some very close friends/neighbors and letting some of their friends stay in our listing (free) from the April 21-23. We’re going to ask our friends to help with the cleaning/prep. They are retired and travel a lot, but I’m sure they will help if they’re in town.

4

I learned the hard way not to try to schedule things in too tight. It sounds like this will all work out okay. I never thought about the times. It makes sense to me that if you block the 17th someone can still book the night of the 16th.

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5

Ouch! I learned this the hard way also. If you do not want anybody in the home on the day you are planning to leave make sure to block off the night before. Maybe something special for the wife?

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6

You have to setup custom rules for checkin/check out dates and times for when you’re on holiday. For this occasion, you might want to block out check-outs on April 17th and allow check-ins that day and the 18th but no checkouts until the 20th or 21st.

7

Looks like it’s time to start training a housekeeper to fill in when needed.

RR

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8

Always take an extra margin for your personal days and hire a housekeeper

It seems airbnb books the “night” in question until the next morning (exit hours to be stipulated by yourself).

If you are using airbnb you should not be surprised or complaining about sometimes needing to do an urgent clean by yourself!

9

I can only find where to setup custom check-in or check-out rules for specific days of the week. Where can you create such a rule for specific dates?

10

This is on the Airbnb website, not the app. You also have to drill down into each individual listing, select the dates and then go to rule sets and create a new rule set. Be very intentional and exact here as these rule sets won’t show up anywhere else.

11

This option is not available to me, but thanks for explaining how to find it. Based on your reply I searched help for “rule sets”, and found out it is a feature for those with 6 or more listings. I only have one.

12

That’s not correct. It’s available to anyone, we only have two properties and often use Rule Sets.

You may need to enable the multi-calendar:

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2499/how-can-i-use-professional-hosting-tools?q=multi-calendar

JF

13

Thank you @JohnF. I will check this out since I do not have multi-calendar enabled.

14

Oh I don’t have 6 listings either. I did the rule set from the single lane calendar.

15

Ok, this is what I am doing. I am working on my PC and I have the date selected on my calendar on which I do not want to allow a check-out. I then selected “availability settings” then “check-in and checkout” then edit. All I see is “Specify days of the week when guests can’t check in”. Not sure what I am missing.

16

@wwirth I just went through this process and figured out how to do it!

You create a rule (like "no Tuesday check-in), specify Tuesday as the day that you don’t wish to have people check in on, save the rule, and then go to the day that you wish to apply the rule (assuming it’s a Tuesday) . Right-click on the day (you have to do this in multi-calendar, not regular calendar), and then select that rule to apply to that date.

This is just an example how you can do it for just one day, but you get the idea.

Let me know if that works for you…

Enabling Professional Hosting Tools and Multi-Calendar is very powerful, and free to use for everyone, regardless of the number of listings you have.

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