I had the same thing. I couldn’t get my seven day minimum at Christmas and New Years week to work so I just handled the inquiries by hand.
Never again will I have a guest break up those peak holiday weeks with two or three night stays.
Wow, this is a real nail-biter. Will dcmooney get a booking? Here’s rooting for you, @dcmooney.
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The plot thickens! Prepare to bit your nails even more, @faheem! Last night I again reviewed listings, hotel prices, etc. - yep - still in line. The Quality Inn near me, with a heavy ICK factor, with 1 room with two doubles, was $300 for 4. I’m a bit more than that, as I should be. It’s really gross.
This morning about 3 am the guest that booked then cancelled checked in to see if I’d booked yet. I replied, then laid in bed awake thinking of all the stats I could quote for her of hotel room prices and listings available.
Another message came in, this time from @AquaticQuests - he let me know that I wasn’t showing up in the search at all; he was assuming it was because of my minimum nights. But I had changed that as suggested.
So I’ve been up using chrome and mozilla, clearing cookies, rebooting, etc. and I am not showing up in the searches, even when I focus right in on my street. When I signed on, yes, I showed up. For a moment I did show up on chrome, but no more.
I can’t even JOKE about it being to early or to late for a glass of wine. I know I should call air but with @cabinhost’s and other’s experiences I don’t know if I’m up for it at this moment.
It’s pretty dang hard to book if you don’t show up in the searches.
Guess I’d better do as @anon67190644 suggested and get onto booking.com - edited to say - sorry, @sylvainbg suggested booking.com. I don’t even know how one gets paid when using booking.com…
To be paid clients will enter credit card details when they are booking.com and you can see the credit card details.
The clients will pay at arrival with credit card or cash. You have credit card details in case of no show up to charge them (using stripe or paypal easy to use). One important thing you need to call booking.com so clients must put CVC when they are putting card details (in order to charge them)
edit: don’t hesitate if you have questions, we have several that can help you with that. It’s pain and not as easy to use but at the end it’s money… (you can even try higher pricer compare to air bnb as I am usually doing)
edit2: you can have an app on your phone so clients can pay with credit card (It’s using stripe)
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I don’t know what parameters I’m meant to use in order to increase the chances of seeing your listing.
I did just run a search for 4 and limited the price to £350 per night… over 300 properties came up,loads at the £200 mark.
What’s the pound/dollar ratio these days?
You can search for my actual town - Riverdale Park, MD. My calendar is open from today to the 20th - I have someone arriving on the 21st. I have a two night min for the 19th and 20th.
When I compare I compare entire home with 2 bedrooms.
1.2 dollars to the £1 I think …was when I was in LA
Hi @dcmooney,
I’d shoot off a quick message to Airbnb Twitter to say you aren’t showing up in the searches. It may not do much good, but it also isn’t much effort.
I think I have forgotten the context here. Was this the guest who booked when she thought it was going to be a Hillary win? If so, why would she call back, I wonder.
I don’t know what this means. “For a moment I did show up”. Did your listing disappear from the page as you were looking at it?
I’d consider other sites as well. VRBO/Homeaway, though I know nothing about them, are used by a lot of people. Are you interested on listing on other sites temporarily, because of this special situation/need, or are you thinking of a more “permanent” expansion? It’s more sites to keep track of, but if you aren’t getting bookings from Airbnb…
This thread - Newly listed on Booking.com - Airbnb hosts forum seems to have a lot of info on booking.com, though it’s not laid out in a systematic way. It’s worth taking a little time to go through it, I think. And it would be useful if someone was to go through and summarize the information contained therein.
It may have to do with instant book.
If we are not signed on, and search with instant book on, we don’t show up, but other instant book locations do. If instant book is off, we do.
If my husband is signed on - he’s fully verified but never reviewed - we don’t show up with IB on.
When I’m signed-on, we do show up.
EDITED TO ADD - it turns out it’s because I was requiring a government ID to book. Therefore, if someone is not signed-in, I’m not going to show up. I removed that requirement - have to to be competitive these days
That all sounds rather weird, but for Airbnb, unfortunately not surprising.
Yes, the guest who was sure Ms. Clinton would win - I told her I’d refund most of her money if she rebooked, so she was checking to see if we had as she’s “eager to get her money back”. It’s over $600 so I’m sure she is.
Yes, it looked like I was there and then after it finished loading, it vanished.
It does appear to be an instant book issue.
Other sites - it’s just a matter of taking the time to sit down and go through the process of trying to get it set up. I spent about an hour trying to get my listing on booking.com active, but then had to stop to tend to other things.
Ah, I see.
Oh, yes. These things are a pain. And you have to check it will play nice with your existing booking. booking.com is problematic, because, as I understand it, they do only instant booking. Isn’t it possible to delegate one of your children to do at least preliminary spadework? Children, at least in the US, have more spare time than adults. At least, such is my impression.
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I don’t know if that’s a fair assessment of kids in the US or not. I know my high schooler is always working on school, dancing, or working. My other two kids are working on school, or dancing, karate, or music, or art. But, they do have a bit of time. My 12 year old, actually, is quite the future engineer. She can figure anything out - like she has a magic touch. Maybe I’ll put her on it!
Isn’t that awesome? I feel so fortunate that my kids are able to explore so many interests. And they themselves are interested in many things. I don’t know how I got so lucky. They are all industrious. It was tough for my son, newly home from China - he didn’t know what to do with himself. It was very stressful as his sisters are introverts who were very happy reading or pursuing other things while he just wanted to be doing something with someone. Then he began kicking a football (American) and decided he would be an NFL kicker. He was terrible, but practiced obsessively, in heat, humidity, etc. He’s still not very good! But then he decided to play the guitar, and is pursuing that with lots of energy, and (luckily) is succeeding. Now he is in a new school and wants to play soccer. Who knows where that boy will end up. He has had so many set backs and abuse in his first 12 years of life but doesn’t seem to have noticed…
TMI - I’m so weary. I’d go back to sleep but it’s about time to get up and start the Saturday chores, including taking girls to dance and doing the shopping. But tonight, as part of our Civil War study, we are watching Gone with the Wind. We thought we might try to also cook Civil-War era food, until I studied what they ate. Blech. Well, all I found with a quick look is info on what the soldiers ate. The south ate nothing, it seems. Terrible terrible times.
spoke to a nice guy in Dublin. He really took time to try to hear what I was saying, though I’m so tired I was having trouble saying it. I was impressed with the amount of time he took being silently and thinking it through.
I have ‘require government id’ checked, and that’s what throws me out of the listings when IB is turned on.
I turned that off for now. Other listings in the area are dropping their prices, so I guess I will too.
I’m really sorry to read this, it sucks for you and instead of featuring all the new listings it would be great if airbnb would reward the hosts who do the work day after day, year after year to keep them in business.
Most people (I would think) would search DC first and there are literally hundreds of new, great looking listings. I clicked on one I thought looked nice for under $400 and he is open just for 10 days from now until the 24th. I’m sure that they were inspired by the articles they saw in the media. I’m depressed for you.
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Can you ask @smartbnb.io to do a search for you? That will at least give you some data.
I forget now about your cancellation policy. You were on strict so they only got half their money back? Honestly you were probably too nice to promise her a refund. It’s on her that her candidate lost and she cancelled and lost her money. I don’t think you are really obligated personally. At least you have that cash if you don’t get a booking.
What minimum are you set on? Maybe change it to one?
Sorry DC… I know nothing I am saying is helping. I am just convinced it’s the candidate getting sworn in that is causing the lack of bookings. Depressing all the way around.
There just aren’t that many people coming to DC for the inauguration. Only 200 bus permits have been requested, though folks riding buses don’t usually spend the night. As a comparison, the Women’s March has requested 1,200 bus permits. Capacity at the lot is 1,300 bus slots.
There might be people who choose to come last minute, but most of his supporters don’t live along the East coast, so some planning on their part does have to happen. How many people decided on a Thursday that they will drive from St. Louis or Milwaukee to attend an inauguration? Maybe folks from Western PA are close enough to be spur-of-the-moment?
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I read a story about how all the swanky places in town are booked, and people are already shipping in their ball gowns, etc. somehow I don’t think that is DCs target market. 
Here’s the story.
Actually, @konacoconutz and @KKC, what you say is helping a lot as I feel that I have someone in this with me.
As you all know, we can talk to family about this and just get blank stares.
You’re right, I was not obligated to refund her anything. I’m not that business-tough yet.
But let’s not get depressed - this is the nature of the business we are in - a hotel takes years to build, so supply and demand can be somewhat predicted - but airbnb listings can go on in an instant - mine did, and so did everyone elses’. When that Post article came out about airbnb making money hand-over-fist the number of listings really exploded.
When I got on in 2015. My neighbor had been on the platform quite some time and her listing was much nicer than mine. Now I’ve grown to be much a nicer, I’m (much) closer to public transport, and have more reviews. So, I did it to her. Luckily we’ve become friends and support each other, but she could easily resent me for making her business harder.
We saw those listings those $400 this morning, too, @KKC. At one point there were only 11 listings cheaper than me, and nothing very nice. There are still only 18 near my price or lower - but they are in a city area, near the zoo - much more preferred. Even my husband was saying “yeah, our 101 reviews should count for something, but I’d pick this place (which was $75 more a night than us)”.
So we’ll lower the price.
But let’s not be depressed. It’s the nature of the business and we’ll all learn as we go along. I didn’t mean to be greedy but perhaps I was. As @KKC said, expectation played a large part in that.
In the meantime my youngest is 12 on that day. And, I did book the march for 3x my rate, and to share good cheer with us all, I’ll tell that I used 1/3rd of that money to help buy one of my son’s classmates a bike. He’s an immigrant, and mostly homeless (bad situation at home). The principal thought the bike would help a lot. So that’s a shot for the good-guys. Some direct good has come out of all of this. The principal says he’s a hard-working, smart, nice boy, in spite of his family life. Thanks to that one sweet booking he got a little help.
So lets all realize that we are all incredibly rich in so many ways, and be thankful. No more whining from me. Promise. 
Oh! ha ha I just got a July instant booking from a family from the Netherlands with FOUR children aged 14-23, with a great first message with lots of info. Ha ha!!
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