We have a listing with Instant Book, and we set it so people recommended by other hosts could use it. However, today an Airbnb member with previous positive reviews sent me a Booking Inquiry.
Are guests allowed to send an Inquiry instead of going straight to Instant Book? IIRC they weren’t given this option before.
I think what your describing makes sense. They can’t book since they have no reviews; their only option is an Inquiry. If you were expecting guests with no reviews to have NO way of contacting you you should have realized Air would never do that. They are pro-guest. They want booking whether you are comfortable with them or not.
But they do have reviews. Seven of them and all good.
I think you can always make an INQUIRY. That; after all, is a mechanism where potential guests can ask you for additional information (or questions they didn’t read the answers to in your listing). It’s an INQUIRY not a BOOKING REQUEST.
Even when I can, I seldom use Instant Book. I personally don’t care for the concept, and refuse to use it with our listing. I want to look over potential guests before accepting them. Not that I’m racist, or bigoted, or age-ist or anything like that (we’ve had people from around the world) but I do want to see who I’m going to be involved with.
It seems to me from all my reading here, that many of the hosts who use Instant Book are the ones who have “trouble” with guests trashing a place, adding extra no-pay guests, etc. ad nauseum. They aren’t “vetting” their guests, just accepting any Tom, Dick or Harry who reads my listing.
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I find the only issue I have with Instant book is that either the guest has misread (or more likely selectively chosen only the parts of your listing that they want) and then book for example your private room and then come seeing it is NOT a whole house, or they book them selves and ‘forget’ their spouse. The experience is colored then by the host interaction, which is basically asking for more money or tediously recalibrating the guest to the lack of use of the kitchen, etc.
Check off they have read your rules? Sure. Read your description of the property? Sure. Understand airbnb billing and payment process? Sure.
oh, wait…
Just because you have instant book doesn’t mean guests have to use it. They are probably checking to see if it’s a good fit (which is why they probably have all good reviews 
)