Dear Community: I feel that airbnb has changed drastically over the past year. I’ve been with them for 9 years. I have a small bachelor apt in the city that I advertise as for one person only and that it has one twin bed. I declined 3 requests because they were from couples. Airbnb paused my listing for 5 days and customer service wouldn’t accept my reason for declining. Has anyone else had this issue and how have you handled it? Ty.
I haven’t been paused for declining (only for low overall star reviews) but I recommend to call Air to cancel because they do not fit your requirements rather than doing it yourself. Then they can do it as CBG it CBA.
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They also say you can do it yourself without penalty because your listing doesn’t meet guest requirements.
@Militaryhorsegal @justMandi, @mypictonhouse is talking about declining a request, not cancelling a booking. Airbnb is shooting themselves in the foot with this “acceptance rate” metric. If a guest is booking in violation of a hosts’ rules, it shouldn’t count against the host.
This is one situation where I think IB is actually helpful because it skips the Accept/Decline step. You can cancel a booking that violates your house rules or max guest count with no penalty (although it does often require you call in to make the cancellation).
Alternatively, work within their system. If you get a reservation request that breaks your max guest count, tell them to please withdraw the request. Tell them if they don’t, you’ll accept the booking at the 23rd hour. Make clear that they can only arrive with one guest, as their itinerary will show.
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I would give the guests the chance to cancel first, tell them it’s a twin bed and if they do not call CS
Agree that IB would be easier in this case.
Happy Hosting
RR
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I understand its decline and not cancellation. That is why I said call Airbnb because their customer (requesting guest) is trying to break limits with their booking request and they are penalizing their other customer (declining host) because of it. Not fair.
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Next time do not decline.
Answer that the listing is for 1 person only, and that only one person can stay.
Most guests will then cancel their booking.
Also add a fee for every extra person over 1 for $500 per night or something.
If they do not answer, then accept and send a change request for the extra person.
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I hope that Instant Book completely prevents a guest from booking for 2 people in a home with a maximum occupancy of 1. If it doesn’t, that’s just plain stupid on Airbnb’s part.
The major problem I see is that using IB still won’t stop guests from sending reservation requests, so I don’t see how it will help this situation at all.
It will stop them from booking when the guest correctly indicates 2 people but most of the time they are only booking for one and then letting host know (purposefully or inadvertently) that there are actually more guests.
Rather than 100% of requests going through me, about 90% book directly through IB. That translates to a 90% acceptance rate.
Perhaps ~5% are cancelled because they intend to violate my house rules. As @Militaryhorsegal says, they’ll book for one and say they’re actually bringing 7. Or, since they can’t add children to the booking (because it violates my house rules), they’ll just mark the number of adults and say “we’re also bringing 8 toddlers.”
By using IB, my acceptance rate is 90% rather than 85% (my actual acceptance rate after weeding out unsuitable guests).
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Thank you, MHG. Very helpful.
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Thank you, RR. I like this strategy.