I am pretty new to the vacation rental business and I am not comfortable with using the Instant Book option. Periodically I like to do a search to see where my house shows up in the feed. I make sure to not be logged into my account and to all have my history cache cleared on my computer. Today when I did a search using some of the filters that my home has, I was shown a page with only Instant Book listings. I did not click on Instant Book as a desired filter and nowhere on that page did it show a way to see all of the listings, not just the Instant Book listings. I then clicked on the Instant Book tab and saw that the Instant Book filter was on even though I did not click it on. That was very irritating. I understand that Airbnb favors Instant Book listings but I feel that is not right that this could happen. For an Airbnb novice who does not understand the difference between Instant Book and not instant book listings, they would never see my house, in this circumstance. This needs to be corrected. There needs to be some obvious way to alert a novice that there are other listings available and also to make sure that INSTANT BOOK is not automatically checked on without someone purposely checking it on. If a person does check it on by accident the page should should obviously indicate that there are other listings available that are not instant book and an easy way for the person to be directed there. I posted a complaint to Airbnb about this. It is the first time I experienced this and hopefully it will not happen again in the future but I think non-instant book hosts should be aware of the possibility of this happening…
I don’t think Airbnb will change its policy of having potential guests have to unclick the Instant Book filter. There are two reasons that come to mind that make it a sound business decision on Airbnb’s part. One, I’ve seen countless complaints from guests that hosts had days open on their calendars, but when the guests asked to book they were told that those days weren’t available. Second, Instant Book is a way to ensure that the non-discrimination policy is being followed.
Yes, AIR has been doing this for awhile now and I’m also not on IB. My AirBNB bookings dropped off in the past year and I listed on VRBO – over half of my bookings came through vrbo.
By prioritizing IB, I feel that AIR gave half of their earnings with my listing to VRBO which is fine by me (until AIR moves to a 100% IB scenario, in which case I may have to move off their platform). VRBO is also trying to push IB so this is a pressure that’s coming from all platforms.
I have found that if you require a government ID 90% of people still will need approval. Likely varies, but very few of my requests have a GOVT ID. This is a way to be on IB for search results but they will still need approval.
@Brandt
To add to Brandt’s comment about Govt IDs and instant book & approvals… I played with the IB feature and found that if the IB requires a prior positive review from a host and the guest doesn’t have one AND selects the IB option, IB properties requiring a prior positive review will not display.
A shorter verion: for the newby guest with no prior reviews, IB listings requiring a prior positive review will not display.
Thanks, didn’t know that.
Whoa, I didn’t know that either. My locale mostly has IB toggled on, rarely is it not and I assume it is only turned off by Air central when a certain (high) percentage of available properties are booked. I have the “prior positive review” screen but 50% of my guests are newbies. Based on your research, I have no idea how they are finding me!
The settings just prevent newbies from booking using instant book, not from sending you a booking request. If they have the IB filter on you will still show up in their search… NOTE: I may understand this incorrectly - I need to do some testing and check it out… 
Quite honestly my best guests have been new to Air and I was their first booking. The guest that had the most positive reviews was my worst guest (not that she was that bad but in comparison to some of the awesome guests I’ve had)…
Really - I thought they still displayed just that they had to request to book… I need to update myself on how a few of these settings work…
That is good to know.
I did not even think of that reasoning but can see that some people may be screening guests for other reasons than just wanting to make sure the guests are respectful and responsible. As for myself, I purchased a commercial insurance policy to make sure my house is fully covered since my home insurance did not cover vacation rentals and I send the potential guests a copy of the short term rental agreement required by the insurance company before accepting their request since they will need to sign a hard copy upon arrival.
Please disregard last reply - I meant it for a person who commented earlier than you!
Please tinker with it and let me know what you find.
I am a host but I’ve never been an Airbnb guest. Since purchasing my beach condo the only travel I’ve done is to the condo to do maintenance.
I logged in and did property searches with the instant book filter on. The only reason I caught that the IB requiring prior positive review didn’t display was a friend’s unit didn’t display with the IB filter on. However I was logged in.
I wonder if someone not logged in would see all IB listings?
This is a good explanation I pinched from elsewhere:
For Instant Book listings where the Host has designated that a guest must have recommendations from other hosts in order to book instantly, here is what happens when the Instant Book filter is ON or OFF. By User I mean both hosts and guests doing the search.
Instant Book Filter ON:
-
Listing will not appear if the user is not logged in
-
Listing will not appear if the user is logged in but does not meet the requirement for recommendations from other hosts or does not have any reviews. Only IB listings without the requirement will be displayed in results.
-
All IB listings will appear to users who are logged in and meet the requirement.
Instant Book filter OFF:
Listing will appear as non-IB listing if user is not logged in.
Listing will appear as non-IB listing if the user is logged in but does not meet requirement (must send Reservation Request to host).
Listing will appear as an IB listing for users who meet the requirement and will be able to book instantly.
The overriding principle here is that Airbnb will not show IB listings with the requirement that users have recommendations from other hosts if the user does not meet that requirement. These listings will either not be shown in results or will be shown as regular non-IB listings depending on whether the IB filter is set to ON or OFF.
Of course, those users who meet the requirement and are logged in will see all IB listings ( with and without the requirement) regardless of whether the IB filter is set to ON or OFF.
I did some searching recently for my own property while logged out and the IB filter defaults to yes every time I look (after sliding it over and then coming back later.) I thought cookies would take care of that–guess not. Sigh.
I did not even think of that reasoning but can see that some people may be screening guests for other reasons than just wanting to make sure the guests are respectful and responsible. As for myself, I purchased a commercial insurance policy to make sure my house is fully covered since my home insurance did not cover vacation rentals and I send the potential guests a copy of the short term rental agreement required by the insurance company before accepting their request since they will need to sign a hard copy upon arrival.
@HumptyDumpty good info. thanks
@sosa Reason for activating “positive prior review filter” : I am trying to to avoid young adults who are 18-24 so they qualify for Airbnb from renting my unit for a graduation party via instant book. They can make a traditional reservation request, but not instant book. I’ve had a surprising number of guest book via instant book so I don’t want to deactivate it. However, before I had the “prior review” filter in place, I had to cancel graduation party reservations 2X (we only get 3 no-fault cancellations).
That rule has been changed. Airbnb now permits hosts unlimited cancellations of Instant Book reservations for the reason that the host is uncomfortable with the reservation.
That is good to know for when I may decide to switch to Instant Book. Thank you.