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Me too!! My prices are higher that week and it MUST be booked as a Christmas block! New Years too. Prime peak days that shpould be priced as such! Gone are the days when I am willing to scrub toilets, clean hair from drains and do laundry on Christmas Eve or worse, Christmas itself! My minimum block ensures I get top dollar and I don’t have to work cleaning on those days. If guests are going to be clomping around my place on the Merriest Day of the Year, then they are going to pay through the nose to do so. Otherwise I’m FINE with it remaining empty.
I got a request to book last night at 11:30 PM from a gal who said "me and my two best friends are having a road-trip across the country - unfortunately we got a late start so won’t arrive until 4:30 AM - is that ok?
Her photo was her making a crazy face with so much make up that the pillows on my guest bed shivered in their sleep -
If I had IB on, could she have booked? That would be to much!
I should say, I have flexible check-in because many guests come from NYC via bus and the buses often run late. 12:00 midnight is fine with me, but not 4:30 in the morning!! (And what would they do, get back up at 10 to be out by 11? I don’t want to ask…)
I am using the IB feature, and 50% of my bookings are with that.
75% of requests ends up with a booking.
I read your reply to guests, and what I reacted to was that your bathroom was under construction.
When I travel, I want everything to be perfect.
I started hosting for Airbnb in September, and received bookings before the apartment was finished renovated. (Stressful.)
And everyone was asking about if the apartment would be finished before their arrival.
Whatever, IB is a good thing in my opinion. I think travelers want to be over quickly with the booking, without having messaging the host back and forth. Just put yourself in their place. Many might be already busy traveling.
Thank, Bjorn, that’s good feedback. You are right, if I read that I’d think “under construction?? What does that mean?”
And you’re right - when I’m booking trips for my own travel it’s usually way past my bed time and I have just THAT bit of time to work it all out. I would much prefer to be able to just book the place, unless I had questions. In fact, I tried to use airbnb in 2012 when preparing for a trip to Shanghai, but with the time difference the host and I could never really connect, so I ended up using booking.com. That was some good food-for-thought.
I just did a bit more research on the air website and see that I can set an hour at which same-day IBs are cut-off, which would keep people like the young woman who inquired at 11:55 pm if she could check-in at 4:30 am…or I can even set it with one-day notice. So - something to seriously consider. (Because we almost never ever turn anyone away anyway)
Thank you for your inquiry.
(I then answer their questions.)
Looking forward to receive your booking and to be hosting you in our lovely apartment.
Bjorn
Some guest has an endless list of questions. And sometimes over many messages. But I always try to answer the best I can.
Some even asks the same questions more than once, so the last time this happened, I just copied and pasted the answer I had given before. (Made him probably feel pretty stupid.)
The most important thing is to answer the first message as fast as you can, and preferably within an hour. (Due to Airbnb algorithm.)
Thanks so much - perfect. I think I started writing so much because of a two out of 20+ guests were not clear on what I was offering - but after everyone’s feedback here I realized they were the anomaly so I don’t really have to be redundant in my reply.
Norway! Scotland! Hawaii! I can’t wait to meet you all some day on your home turf!!!
The first thing ask about time of arrival.
You d be surprised how many people just showed up without volunteering their time of arrival.,I had an impression they think I never leave the house.:).
That’s why being next to your phone is very important . It’s much less work than endlessly answering inquieres.
I agree sounds great except for the “under construction” comment.
We get most of our bookings via instabook too. They have been fine. I think most folks just want to book and be done with it. They usually send us an inquiry if there are any questions at all, so it’s not much different than when we had no instabook. Almost all guests send a message anyway.
We have it set to instabook for guests with positive reviews, so only the newbies have to send us an inquiry. We accept almost everyone as it is in a separate apartment. We only decline folks who want to put 3 in an apartment for 2, etc.
I think @dcmooney is just being honest, which is a good thing. But I agree it’s not the kind of thing people want to hear. Perhaps some details about what is under construction would be helpful?
