Hi People,
Setting up a new additional listing which is “entire place”.
We currently host via “request to book” so I’ve no experience with Instant Book!
My question: if I choose instant book, is it possible to select periods when it would be instant book and others when it’s request for book?
Say for example I’m open to instant book guests arriving over the next month, but farther out then that I’d like them to request to book.
Is this possible?
Unfortunately, it’s not possible. Instant Book is either on or off. I believe that sooner or later Airbnb will set up the system so that you can choose what days you want available for Instant Book.
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@AquaticQuests No, no hybrid AFAIK, but one workaround that I can think of is having two separate listings for the same place - one which has availabilities for Instant Book, and one for Request to Book. One disadvantage to this would be that the reviews would be separate.
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I would probably use that if it were offered.
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Whenever we turn off Instant Book (which is always because we have a day on which we don’t want turnover) we are given a list of reasons why we are turning it off and asked to choose one. One of the reasons is, Do you want to be able to choose which days guests can Instant Book? This is why I believe that Airbnb is gearing up to permit Instant Book with limitations on which days.
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I’m worried that if I turn it on I won’t be able to turn it off!
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We turn it off and on all the time. For example, it is currently turned off because we have an event to go to on August 15th so we don’t want turnover on that day. As soon as someone books a stay in which August 15th is in the middle, we’ll turn Instant Book back on.
Kona
Rightly so…you should be very concerned that you will turn it on and then not be able to turn it off. HA did this with owners trying to get them to enroll in certain things…then they said “oops now we can’t change it back.”
I spoke with Air about this only because they were hiding my property because I did not have instant book enabled. I asked them if I could turn it on for the upcoming week and they said that was a good idea and they would send feedback.
They did the same A/B testing with hosts where they would not allow them to switch to “strict” policy if they already had moderate or flexible enabled.
And of course we now know they are doing A/B testing with certain hosts who have no option but to enroll in instant book.
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The rules for today may change overnight. Not worth the risk for someone who really doesn’t want to be on instant book permanently.
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There are tons of options that would be useful for hosts. But Airbnb already has problems running a non-buggy web site with the limited number of options it does provide. I’m not sure adding more buggy options would help anyone.
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Thanks for the advice people!