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So, I received an IB for this weekend that I’m not comfortable with.
One of the reasons is that, in explaining what she’ll be doing in London this weekend is attending a conference on Sunday. Although it doesn’t make sense to check in Friday evening and check out on Sunday morning for a conference on Sunday, the conference website doesn’t show anything happening on Sunday. So it seems she’s lying.
Is that good enough grounds for me to cancel without being penalised? If so, how do I go about it?
Of course it’s your right to cancelled , you won’t be penilised the first time around. To can just you are not comfortable with this guest.
. But If you scrutinize every booking like this you won’t last long. She might be wanting spend a weekend at your city and then go to conference and from there to home. There might be millions of reasons. The conference might not show up in line or you went to the wrong website.
With IB we have to have some kind of initial trust . Otherwise screen every guest like you did this one with Google search and get off IB
Yes. I sent her my usual welcome message and also asked her more about the conference to give her a chance. I began asking you guys so I know what to do in case things go south in the conversation or if she ignores me.
Of course, there’s initial trust. But, at the same time, Airbnb let’s us ask questions about their trip for a reason. If the person then lies, then one must ask the question of what are they trying to hide?
I had a similar booking made 2 weeks ago. It was on Thursday for Friday and Saturday. I was also suspicious of their explanation, saying that they were attending a football match between 2 teams on Sunday and wanted to explore London in advance. It turned out that the teams he mentioned were not playing and, whilst I was probing him for more, Airbnb sent me a message to say that the booking was made using a stolen card and was being cancelled.
For Listings like mine, one has to be very cautious of last minute weekend bookings, especially when the details don’t add up.
I have guests who say they are from one place…because they are! But, have been living or researching in another city. They have not updated profiles. I really do not care.
Yes I find that annoying, people think they can pick and mix their national identity to suit popularity. Its dishonest. I wish Airbnb would crack down on it via passports. I recently had someone pose as American, then I got hit with the awful the Korean state has decided to override your cancellation thing.
It helps to know. I recently had a Greek guest pretend to be English. It would have helped if I knew English was his second language. Its basic honesty.
Correct. Which is why I didn’t focus on it. But when you have lots of exceptions piled into one PLUS a high-end house with a short notice 2 day weekend booking etc…
You know you can set advanced notice to as many days as you want so you wouldn’t have those last minute bookings. I probably would stop hosting If I didn’t accept last minutes booking and my guests can stay months with these kind of urgent bookings.
And don’t know why would people make up stories about conferences and concerts If they can just say nothing . Or " weekend trip*or visiting family. Most hosts don’t really care why anyone are in town.
So…just trying to understand … some hosts are doing Google search on a guest?
Because I don’t and never did . With so many guests I had I can only imagine a load of work that would be
@Fahed – since you’ve got such a "high end’ listing, why are you even mucking about with IB? I wouldn’t be. Just go with Strict cancellation and minimum 1 week advance notice on all bookings so you can run security checks on each and every guest. You Londoners can only have X number of booking nights anyway, why not ensure you get the highest quality guest for the best price.
Increases the listing’s coverage in terms of filters, ranking etc.
Increases conversion rates because user know they can just book now without having to do the to/fro of requesting.
Reduces hassle for me too.
As for the advance notice part, I may just do that. After the booking from 2 weeks ago, I moved from 1 day notice to 2 day’s notice. If this one turns out to be bad, I’ll push to 3 etc.
The house is the type that can easily attract the wrong people and, considering the amounts involved, it makes good financial sense to evaluate each booking as it arrives.
