I saw the banner a few weeks ago about “Now Instant Book hosts can cancel without penalty if the dates should have been blocked” (or something like that).
I’ve had instant book enabled for my listing for months, and I only get a few bookings through AirBnB and only about half of those are instant book. I’m thinking about going to Instant Book on my main listing site (VRBO), but don’t want to risk double bookings. We are a fairly expensive property, so we don’t get inundated with multiple bookings requests/inquiries on a regular basis, but I’m deathly afraid of a double-booking. At the same time, it’s been drilled into me that if we don’t have IB turned on, no one on AirBnB will ever see us.
Here’s my question. If I get “Instant” booked on AirBnB a very short time after I get booked on a different website, can I cancel the AirBnB booking without penalty since the dates “should have been blocked”? I’m pretty on top of things and it usually would not be more than an hour or so between getting a booking on the other site and blocking off the AirBnB dates (barring a booking at 2 AM in the morning). We are not SuperHosts and most likely will never be (too few bookings), so that’s not my worry.
Thoughts? I know the easy answer is to turn off IB on AirBnB, but I am hoping I can have my cake and eat it, too…