Hi, I am new to this and have advertised a spare room in our home. We have a booking from a couple in January but have just received a new request from a male for two nights but he has no referrals or even anything to say where he is from. Is this normal??
Yes, it’s normal for new users of the service. Although, I always go with my gut feeling. When I’ve accepted questionable requests in the past, they have never went smoothly.
I’m fairly new to hosting as well and the majority of my guests have been ‘newbies’ and I haven’t had any problems.They’ve all been excited about using Air and really grateful for a nice place to stay in a good neighborhood. For requests where the profile isn’t filled out I follow-up and ask them to update it and write something about themselves.I also ask a few questions about their stay and their general plans. How they respond and if they take the time to do it can speak volumes on if they ‘get it’ or not… Just my two cents…
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Yes, it’s normal. Whether you want to accept the booking is up to you. I personally won’t accept a booking unless a user has provided official ID to Airbnb. I rent my home (rather than a full-time listing) on Airbnb, it’s a nice secondary income but not worth the risk to accept bookings I’m not 100% sure about.
If a user doesn’t have ID, then I will ask them to update their profile. Similar to @SleepingInSeattle, which is good advice.
Thanks, I have sent him a message but no response as yet 
Thanks, I have asked but no response as yet
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If he doesn’t respond just decline the booking.
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Even if they are new users they should take 30 seconds to introduce themselves. Although I have accepted ones who didn’t, had mysterious profiles and turned out to be perfectly lovely guests. I’ve had ones tell me too much and ended up being nit pickers.
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I’ve hosted about 50% newbies, many of whom have had barebones profiles. There’s a place in your listing set up where you can indicate some introductory prompts that inquiring guests will receive. I ask guests to tell me what brings them to my city and to let me know who’s traveling with them. Most inquiring guests give me this information and more. I have also straight up declined at least one inquiry where the person was new, didn’t provide the info, and was vague or perfunctory. I just didn’t get a good vibe.
You can ask for the guest to verify his/her ID with Airbnb. I have done so, and everything worked out well.
@konacoconutz is right - there seems to be little in the way of ‘sure signs’. My first inquiry was from a very young French man (college age) traveling with two female friends and his photo was a pineapple. I asked him to put a photo of himself and he did. He was a wonderful, extremely polite guest who told me immediately when one of the women had a small accident on the comforter, and took out the trash.
My first guest that booked that had a few reviews - I was so excited I gave him a discount. Ugh. They showed up at midnight, which was arranged, but then were incredibly loud, they were very loud at breakfast though we were sharing the space, and left beer bottles in everywhere including our non-airbnb areas of the basement.
Good luck! Of 111 groups I only had a 2-3 that were terrible, maybe 10-20 that I was happy when they left, many that were wonderful, etc.
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Thank you all, Still no response from him so I think I will decline as he originally wanted to stay in two days time so I would presume he would have been got back to me by now
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!It is a very low percentage that are terrible. Maybe four sets of guests in 6.5 years.