I have only just joined airbnb, my first experience ended in the guests choosing not to book, all very friendly. But I kept getting the email from airbnb asking me to proceed or decline. As it is not me who is declining I was reluctant to select this so phoned for advice as I didn’t want to have a negative on my history or whatever you call it! In spite of assurance that I didn’t need to press decline, I kept getting the emails. I could not get any further with the airbnb help line, so I joined this forum and found that if I press “archive” alongside the exchange the roudabout will stop! Brilliant! But, my question is… how do I access the “archive”?
You may need to be on a computer (rather than cell phone) to do this…
In the top right menu, click on messages and make sure you’re in “hosting” not travel.
In the right corner of the message list, you’ll see a dropdown box that says “all messages”. Click the dropdown and select “Archived”
There are a few ways requests come through - some of them require a response and others don’t. If you see a countdown clock, you def. need to respond or it will ding your Response rate.
If it’s an inquiry it will have “pre-approve” and “special offer” in addition to decline.
So long as there are no red flags, I reply to most inquiries with a pre-approval which quiets the auto-messages. In cases where I know the interaction isn’t going anywhere (like w/ your inquiry), I’ll just let them know I’m pre-approving to keep the Airbnb system happy.
This might be helpful, too:
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/363/what-does-each-reservation-status-mean
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Thank you Allison, very helpful, I can see the archived messages now! However, I still get the email from airbnb “when you’re ready let … know what you’ve decided about their inquiry” even though the enquirer has said they do not want to book and we have finished the conversation resulting in no booking. Very annoying, so do I just continue to pre-approve or what?
So long as you’ve at least replied to an inquiry message, and replied with firm accept/deny to a reservation request, you can ignore Airbnb’s “helpful” e-mails.
They’ll also start sending you e-mails that “guests are booking locations near you for $X less per night”. You can ignore those, too. (Or at least take them with a big grain of salt) 
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Great help and reassuring! Thanks again 