I just turned on Instant Book, something I noticed

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I noticed that since I have “Guests who meet Airbnb’s requirements, and also have:
Provided a government-issued ID” that if I search incognito, my listing does not come up as Instant Bookable, so if someone uses that filter, I can’t be found. Now if they login and have an ID on file, I will show up as Instant Bookable. So if they login and don’t have an ID on file, they won’t find me and have the chance to request to book pending they upload their ID. I required ID before I turned on instantbook, did it work the same as before? I just want to know if I’m losing a lot of eyeballs or gaining GOOD eyeballs that have uploaded their ID already and stay logged in when they look for a place.

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Of course not. As an incognito user, you have not met your own requirements for instant booking. I consider that a good thing personally. Instant booking without verification is a disaster waiting to happen.

EDITED TO ADD: I don’t think that without IB your listing doesn’t exist when someone is just perusing the listings, so the number of eyes should be approximately the same. Just some folks can book instantly, and some need to send you a request. I was reading on my phone, and didn’t understand your post completely.

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Yes I show up if someone is just perusing, not logged into an account with ID, but once they try to filter just instant book, I dissappear unless they login to their verified id account.

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In my view, you are losing eyeballs for no reason.

If you want to enforce Verified ID, requires your guests to have a verified ID to complete their booking. Just tick it here: https://www.airbnb.com/hosting/requirements

Then allow IB for everyone. Everyone will have the possibility to IB you, but they will have to complete their verified ID to have their reservation confirmed.

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But what I want is a positive review from hosts that they have stayed with before. Not just the verification. Not sure how much protection that is, but it feels like something.

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And you are absolutely right of course to restrict IB to “experienced guests” if you feel like it, but restricting IB to verified ID, while requiring verified ID for any requests to book doesn’t make sense.

In fact, require verified ID in the hosting requirements, and restricting IB to experienced guests (without additional restrictions) makes indeed more sense to vet guests… but there is a cost in terms of eyeballs.

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So requiring verified id is in two places, and if I already had it ticked as a non instabook host it will still require it even if I untick it in the Booking section?

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This is making me dizzy :slight_smile:

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Probably true, but I’ve had some requests from people whom–after some back and forth communication–I would never want to have access to IB.

I’ve never stayed at an Air place. If I choose “contact host” does that appear as a request to the host?

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You have to enter dates in order to contact host. Obviously, people find open dates and send requests for more information. Mostly, I get people who think the dates might be open even though the calendar clearly shows that they are not.

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Yeah, I just had that happen. Got an inquiry for November asking if I was available this weekend…

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That’s happens to me, too.

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I was just thinking the same thing!!

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gmta…:slight_smile:

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Requiring Verified ID in your hosting requirements means no reservations, or requests to book can go through if the guest has no verified ID.

Restricting IB to guests with Verified ID means guests verified ID already can book your listing instantly.

Then it is just a matter of what your requirements are, and who you want to offer IB too, in light of your business objectives. There is no magic formula.

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I apologize in advance for not understanding this clearly. Before enabling instant book I required Verified ID for all guests. If I leave that checked in hosting requirements like it always has been, it will require all guests to go through Verification, instant book or not? or just guests who make regular requests? If I check require Verified ID in hosting requirements AND in the instant book settings. Am I losing eyeballs or just the “lower quality” eyeballs that don’t bother to go through Verification? I basically want the same requirements as before but allowing people to instant book now. Is it a redundancy of settings that accidentally makes me less visible but yet does the same thing?

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I understand that you are currently having IB restricted to Verified ID, while requiring guests to verify their ID.

  • All your guests will be required have verified ID (IB or not).
  • Only guests with a verified ID already will have access to IB.

To me it makes no sense if you just want to enforce Verified ID. This is no job for IB, this is a job for that checkbox in hosting requirements. Why make a distinction between those who verified their ID before contacting you (who can instant book), and others (who will need to verify their ID anyway before requesting to book?

You are giving an additional right to people who already did verify. Others will need to verify their ID before requesting to book.

There is no assessment of quality when it comes to Verified ID. Everyone can create a new account with a verified ID. I have +20 verified ID accounts (though no booking with those).

If you want to offer IB as a privilege to “quality” guests, then restrict it to experienced guests who have been reviewed positively.

Then allow IB for everyone. They will have to verify their ID to complete their booking anyway (per your hosting requirements).

I am under the impression that you don’t know who you want to have access to IB. Vetted guests? Restrict IB to experienced guests. Restricting IB to verified guests? Makes no sense if you require guests to go through ID verification in your requirements. Only have reservations from verified guests? Allow IB for everyone, and check that box in your hosting requirements.

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The last sentence answered my question. I want all my guests to have verified id as I did before. Searching with no dates, I found that only myself and one other host had both checked. So I will stick with just using the hosting requirements checkbox for now. Thank you for super clarifying, this makes me feel more comfortable now. I understand it’s easy to make accounts with verified id. It’s a placebo effect and thus far with 109 reviews has put me at ease that each guest at least took the time to upload an id to the website.

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