"No mutual cancellation" policy is severely flawed

[muddy]

Yes, I’d be asking some questions of a potential guest who made a same day booking in rural Vermont.

[JoshM]

@KKC

I hope your defensiveness serves you well in life, Josh.

Not trying to be defensive. I didn’t want to include a million details to start with.

@muddy

You need to change your booking setting to a minimum 1, preferably 2 days advance notice

It’s already set to 1-day. This was a booking request, not an instant booking.

@muddy

And when you got that message from the guest saying she had “sent cancel request, not sure why you didn’t receive”, your response should have been that she just needs to click the cancel button, not send you a cancel request. FYI, if you receive a message asking you to accept or decline a cancellation, that is registered as a host cancellation with all the attendant penalties.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but now I do!

@PitonView

@JoshM

When you fix shower let me know, I need place during rest of summer

I’d be a bit nervous about this. They can wait a few days, but then need the “rest of the summer”?

In this case, he meant he would need a place to stay during the week for the rest of the summer. They’re a construction crew who is likely working on the store across the street.

---

Thanks for all the replies. I realize this was mostly my ignorance in “trying to do the right thing”. Airbnb said they’d remove the penalty once the shower was fixed, which it is now, so we’ll see how that goes…

[muddy]

@JoshM

It’s already set to 1-day. This was a booking request, not an instant booking.

I don’t understand. Guests can’t enter dates on booking requests which are blocked on your calendar. Do you mean an inquiry, and the guest *asked * for those dates in his message?

[JoshM]

@muddy

@JoshM

It’s already set to 1-day. This was a booking request, not an instant booking.

I don’t understand.

It’s here:

[muddy]

Not sure why you are showing me that. You have your setting such that guests can send a request for same day booking. If you don’t want them to be able to do that, uncheck that box.
I have never used IB, have advance notice set, and have never gotten a request for unavailable dates- the system will reject a request that is sent for same day.

[JoshM]

@muddy

Not sure why you are showing me that.

Because you said you didn’t understand how the guest was able to request a stay day-of. I was just showing you how/why.

These are the settings i want. I have had very, very few issues with guests so I’m not looking to do anything drastic like turn off IB, etc.

[muddy]

I wasn’t suggesting you turn off IB, I was suggesting you uncheck the box saying guests can send requests for same day bookings. Unless those are a big part of your market, guests who book same day tend to be problematic in other ways. Of course there are legit reasons a guest might need a last minute booking, and maybe you’ve not had any issues with them before, but they generally indicate guests who don’t plan well, got kicked out of their last place, expect instant gratification, etc. Although that wouldn’t hold true for hosts who live near an airport where guests may have unanticipated delays, flight cancellations and so on, or hosts who live close to a highway and may get a lot of road trippers who don’t really know how far they’ll get in a day, so might not book ahead.

[RebeccaF]

@muddy

guests who book same day tend to be problematic in other ways

We haven’t hosted through Airbnb since late winter of 2020. It may be that same-day bookings are more problematic than they used to be.

When we were taking reservations from Airbnb, we got lots of same-day guest. Lots and lots. And we never had a problem. They were typically people doing a long-distance drive who drove until they were nearly ready to stop for the night and then shopped on Airbnb. We’re near a major north-south interstate in the US, and lots of people travel up and down that highway.

Our same-day guests were great. A number of them arrived late (I let them in) and left before my husband and I were even up. They arranged that with me on arrival.

But, as I say, we haven’t Airbnb hosted in two and a half years.

[muddy]

Yeah, that’s why I said that for hosts who live near an airport or highway, last minute bookings may actually constitute a large percentage of their bookings, and those wouldn’t be problematic. In fact, they are probably less likely to be problematic than some advance notice bookings, since air and road travelers just looking for a place to lay their heads and have a shower are usually low impact, might roll in fairly late, and leave early.