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I am a Superhost of nine years who occasionally uses Airbnb for leisure travel. I just booked a place in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State and my host has not acknowledged my instant booking in over 24 hours. One day, you say? Who cares? I care. When I lay down my money I expect some sort of personal acknowledgement even if it is to say, “Thank you so much for booking with me! I will be in touch closer to your arrival.” I even modified my reservation to add on a day, sent a personal note asking if it was okay. It was accepted with No Comment.
Hosts, it takes about 30 seconds to respond with a personal note. Make the effort. Frankly, I would cancel my reservation if it were up to me, but my husband likes this place and I don’t want to go through the hassle of picking another place with my husband.
I can’t imagine anyone not thanking a customer for their order. And a curse on Mr CatskillGrrl - he should agree that you need to cancel. If the host is in a coma or something then fair enough but otherwise there’s a bad review coming, I can feel it… first impressions and all that…
Yes, I agree. It’s not only courteous but good business practice. Airbnb has a function to allow a standard message to be sent but it’s not automatic. BDC has an auto-reply option.
Personally, I always reply with a tailored “saved message” on Air. Probably the longest I took to acknowledge a booking is 8 hours (ya don’t want to know but a good time was had!!)
Is it a property managed by a company and/or a professional manager with multiple listings? If not, shame on them.
It is a historic Adirondack “camp” in a lake - essentially a small Inn with a few suites. The owner runs the rental and a restaurant in town. No management company that I can see.
I had the a similar experience. I booked a suite in a home in Maine for late July in late April. It wasn’t IB but the request was accepted sometime along hour 22. No acknowledgement message. I made a change which was accepted within 24 hours but again no message or acknowledgement. This was a place with over 200 reviews but after 2 weeks with no message I decided to cancel and try to find a home that seemed to want my business. That’s fine, I don’t need them and they don’t need me. It’s old school Airbnb.
IB has a canned “automatic” response message you can customise. Go to Manage Your Settings and click the edit button under House Rules. Then click the edit button under Guest Requirements. Scroll down to “Your welcome message before booking”.
It seems odd theirs doesn’t work unless it has been disabled. Maybe mention it in Private Feedback.
The place has wonderful reviews and I will not cancel over this, mostly because our arrival is only three weeks away. But I will DEFINITELY mention it in private feedback and they will be dinged for Communication. I guess this is why hosts don’t like to host hosts.
MY booking message to him was warm and forthcoming and even asked if there was anything else he needed to know about me. Nothing. Grrrr.
As we all know ABB has glitches…maybe they sent a message and you haven’t received it or the auto msg didn’t send. There could be a host of different reasons why you didn’t receive a reply yet. I would politely reach out again if you have not received anything within 72 hours especially since your trip is 3 weeks out. I try to respond within an hour when I receive a booking but very occasionally one will slip thru as I am driving or they confirm at 2 a.m. and I am asleep or I have thought I have sent thru an email and I didn’t (my fault entirely).
be careful! If the host didn’t see or didnt bother to reply to you with a thank you you, I’d assume his place is neglected and you’ll find spider webs and cockroaches. If it was me I’d cancel. Send your husband to stay there. You book something else.
Actually, the opposite might be true! It could be that the place is so great that s/she doesn’t feel the need to be warm and nice in communication. And maybe most of their bookings come through other sites where it’s more hands-off.
I am huge on communication because my own place has it’s limitations. The selling point is the homestay aspect and therefore I spend a lot of time and effort on communication. If my place was perfect, I wouldn’t bother. Mind you, I’d still send a quick personal reply.
In end, it’s down to business. It is probably a smooth and lean operation and while you feel like you are ‘the’ guest … you are one of many guests. Reality is that in an inn with multiple rooms one usually does not need much information from the guests. I get reservations from booking.com and ususally I know pretty much ‘nada’ from or about the guests and usually that works out just fine.
Really? I think there is enough information about us as hosts and about the accommodation. I would not be concerned with lack of communication after the reservation was made unless as a guest you asked a question and it was left unanswered. Having said that, I get very annoyed by questions posed after the reservation has been made, especially ones that I need to say no to. Ask first, make reservation second. Hey, what do you all think of guests that tell you that it is a reservation for one (explicitly) and then show up with another person? The room can accommodate two.
Cannot imagine. I respond within an hour maybe on weekend or holidays a bit more but guest always a personalise heads up within the day.
In my experience it is the opposite: Book-n-bye guests who click get their instant book reservation approved, then log off and put future airbnb messages to spam.
I need to communicate for arrival this is a real problem for us.
Do you not find that so many people do not read the listing? They do not even look at all the photos! I have had people ask me if there is a parking space (its in the listing, in the photos, in the description)…
People click and book. I was the same before I became a host!
Absolutely. I didn’t mean to say that I don’t send them a personalized message. I send them a short one reiterating the things that are really important to me right away along with the greeting and at the bottom I say “please let me know your estimated time of arrival by the morning of your stay at the latest.” I then say “I will send you check in instructions when I receive your reply.” It seems to be working for me. I just started doing that the last few weeks because you are right nobody reads and they rarely bother to tell me when they are coming.
that’s a good strategy! excellent i’m going to start doing that. you don’t get chekin instructions if you don’t give me your arrival and departure info! great idea thanks!
having said that most of my guests are great it’s the 20% problematic that I’m dealing with.
also the last time I had a guest who gave wrong checkin and checkout time resulting in 4 hour wait on our side for checkin and him wanting late checkout and not getting it (would have got it if he had told me his correct flight info !): airbnb support was very helpful in getrting them out of the apartment in time (for the next airbnb guest same day arrival).
