Practically, Can You Prevent a Blocked Guest from Entering Property under a Reservation from Unblocked Guest?

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Probably not. But I’m leaning toward it being a “thought experiment” and “a flight of fancy” as @HostAirbnbVRBO has described it. It’s not the first conversation we’ve had like this and I’ve been guilty of similar types of tangents. But I’ve been on the forum longer and have it mostly “trained out of me”. :smirk:

@HostAirbnbVRBO Is something else going on? Are you sincerely concerned about this one guest sneaking her way back into another stay with you?

My suspicion is that you kind of started thinking about it, maybe because of the last guest but then it expanded and became a wider, general thought process about what happens if you end up with a guest on your property that you don’t want there. Am I close at least?

I think I can answer either way. I doubt you’ll need the information though.

So, here’s the thing, if someone/anyone comes onto your private property and you ask them to leave, they must leave. If they don’t leave then they are trespassing so you call your local cops and they will come deal with it. Tell them you have a “warned trespasser” that won’t leave.

Even better, about 1/2 the time (which really should be more often IMO, lol), the trespasser usually leaves because you’ve called the cops. Pro tip: If the trespasser leaves before the cops get there, it’s considerate to call the cops and tell them you no longer need them.

It’ll be the exact same for anyone who comes on your property and doesn’t when you ask them to leave. One possible exception might a guest who has an active booking. Not all of their guests, only the guest. In some states and localities it would be dealt with under inn-keeper law or the like. However, in MA I don’t know if STR hosts fall under that type of law (because your STR laws are so unusual). But if you have no other choice, you can cancel the guest’s reservation and then tell them to leave. Then they will be a trespasser.

I hope this helps your wandering thoughts. :smiling_face:

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LOL. I am often accused of overthinking things, considering hypotheticals.

I wouldn’t put it past this guest to do something confrontational. She was a little strange and had a kind of confrontational energy. So IF I told her she was not welcome to return I think that would be a trigger for her. If I really didn’t want her to return the best thing to do would be to block her. She would therefore not see the listing as available and that would likely be the end of that.

But that line of thinking did get me thinking how could I move from ‘likely’ to ‘guarantee.’ I’m a player of games. I used to play chess, now Civ V and these games require you to think through the possibilities.

Yes, you got it.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll do anything.

BUT I think this was useful if nothing more than for the trespass discussion that I think surprised some people. IF you do need to eject a guest you will likely need to understand the law indoor jurisdiction and speak it confidently to the police so that they feel that they must act.

I think It is VERY important to have thought through any ejection scenarios because the Host’s confidence will likely carry the day.

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I think that in these kinds of situations, you know like ones that haven’t happened yet :wink:, that it doesn’t really serve you to do more than you have to about it. This woman obviously has stirred you up and obviously caused some kind of ill will with you. Maybe it’s bad vibes or maybe it’s outright animosity. I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter. No one should creep you out or make you feel uncomfortable at your own home. But as my grandmother would say, don’t kick the hornets’ nest.

You said that she is confrontational. And you don’t want to give a confrontational person something to be confrontational about. Don’t feed her by telling her she isn’t welcome back. If you don’t want to deal with her again, then yes, go and block her. I’ve blocked people that I purely didn’t want to deal with again, not anyone who’s actually stayed, but it’s the same and that is your right, to not deal with her again. So block her. (do you know how? I can tell you if you don’t).

In the, very very very extremely, IMO, off-chance that she gets someone else to book and shows up with them, then deal with it then, but don’t put your energy into it now. And, honestly, even if she came to stay again, it might not be a problem. I’d probably leave it alone unless she made threats or acted out in a manner that caused me concern for property or people.

Unless it gets really weird it’s probably not worth the trouble. I think it’s ideal to avoid calling the police on guests unless really necessary. It may be easier to just avoid her, but I wasn’t there and I’m not going to judge. I didn’t meet her and I do know that sometimes ‘confrontational’ means possibly prone to violence. Either way, you can still just wait it out and not worry about it right now. But I understand wanting to know what could be done in a worst-case scenario.

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Because I sound like a big fan of calling the police for trespassers and don’t want to give you the wrong impression, I want to explain the situation. I am not a “get off of my grass” kind of gal but I was repeatedly put in a bad position and had to call the police fairly frequently for trespassers and other issues for a few months (and yes we shut down the airbnb during that time).

We live on a short, dead-end block and one of the houses, one house over from us, became a crazy squatter-filled den of drugs, crime, trash, people living in the garage and all the other kinds of nuisance you can think of too. They were there for about a year but it really amped up the last few months before they got removed. There were 30+ people living in one-half of a duplex, not counting the people in the garage, lol. So of course they were kind of spilling over and ambling about.

Sometimes people would sit on our porch or lean against our house in front of the cars in the parking area. I don’t think they were dangerous, per se but they were leaning right below one of our tenant’s windows. And she was a 24-year-old woman living by herself that was 1200 miles from home who had to go out there to get in her car to go to work at 11 PM. So I was not going to fool around. It was actually the police themselves that encouraged me to call every time I saw them on our property, so I did.

Funny enough, that house has now been turned into illegal Airbnbs. And it’s the same incompetent owner who is now a host. I ordered some popcorn. :rofl:

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Well, several of us have been huddling, talking off-line, conspiratoralizing, and we’re thinking it’s you, just you.

Have you often felt ‘left out’?

Talk to us.

Just kidding, of course. Are my thinking paths that weird??

[Don’t answer! I was normal before joining this forum.]

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I’m curious! How do you block someone?

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Thanks, Rolf! Okay, so the Airbnb information says that to block someone, “You must select They’re being offensive” – does Airbnb in any way investigate what constitutes “offensiveness”? It seems like it would be a bit hard to block someone on such grounds just because they reviewed you negatively. But I can totally understand wanting to block a bad reviewer from returning and continuing to bring down your rating.

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Blocking someone only prevents them from contacting you. It’s like when you block someone on FB. FB doesn’t care that you blocked someone but they ask for a reason. They only ask so they can look into it if it’s dangerous or heinous or if there’s a clear pattern of someone being blocked repeatedly for the same reason.

It’s not a host thing either. It’s not like declining too many requests. Anyone on Airbnb can block anyone else. Guests block hosts too. I’ve blocked hosts and guests but have mostly blocked those robo-spam things that are really neither.

In almost every case I was cued by the Airbnb system to block them. In the message stream, there’s a pop-up that arrives and says, “Would you like to block this person?” and if you say yes, it guides you through the menu of blocking them.

A couple of times I’ve not had any inclination to block the person and couldn’t figure out why I got the pop-up, so if anyone is trigger-happy about blocking people, it’s the Airbnb system itself. So, no, I don’t think they care unless there’s some kind of odd pattern (like blocking every other person that contacts you or being repeatedly blocked for the same thing), like other similar systems.

It’s not necessary to justify it. Being offended is subjective anyway. The last time I blocked someone they were spewing that Q-anon crap. That offends me to my core but it’s a kindred spirit for someone else. In the box that asks “why”, I think I wrote “crazy AF” :grin: I don’t have time for that crap.

Btw, there are several choices to make after choosing ‘being offensive’:

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The help article only mentions the “offensive” option but most blocking happens under, “I think they’re scamming or spamming me” because there are periods when loads of spams and scams come through. You can block those through that option.

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It’s an automatic system, like blocking people on other platforms, the blocking doesn’t have to be approved. But I doubt that anyone would be blocked for merely leaving a 4-star review anyway.

And it’s also good to know that you can unblock someone with only one click. It’s really more of a toggle than a reporting. No one is harmed. It’s an international website, not a public service, so there are bound to be people that you don’t want to deal with or don’t want in your house.

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Would the block block them from instant booking you?

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Yes.

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Be good to know how did you handle guests that were trespassing and how did they react. Did you get the police involved?

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I went into that at length above if you scroll up you’ll see it.

But, yes, I’ve had the police involved numerous times with trespassers.

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This was all very useful information, thank you! So what does blocking someone do, precisely?

  1. stops them from messaging you, and
  2. stops them from booking with you,
  3. but does it stop them from seeing your listing?
  4. or does it allow them to see your listing but all dates appear booked,
  5. or does it appear available but when they try to book, they get told they’re blocked and can’t book?
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I believe that it does keep them from seeing your listing. But that’s only anecdotal information from my own experience.

I have reason to believe that they do not get any notification or hint that you’ve blocked them. But, again, it’s only anecdotal. I can’t find that information in the Airbnb documentation or anything.

If you really want to know, I could send you an Inquiry and you could block me and then I’ll see what it looks like? That’s how I figure out a lot of stuff, just by doing it and seeing what it looks like. Experiential learner am I :slight_smile:

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Oh sorry, I thought we were talking about evicting Airbnb guests .

Not asking the police to move on anti-social local people.

Sounds like you have some unsavoury neighbours there.

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I love experiments! Are you able to see my listing somehow in my profile? (I can’t see it, even though I entered it when I was setting up my profile, but you’re probably better at navigating the system than I am.) If not, you can just search on Airbnb for “Sea Glass” in Manly, NSW.

(Also, here’s the direct link, but I am curious to know (a) if you can see it in my profile, and (b) if you can find it by doing a search – sometimes it works for me and sometimes not. https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/687061339727999248)

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Yes, it shows on your profile here. Just click on your profile circle here- I think it appears to you just as it does to everyone else.

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Ah, thank you! I had been clicking on my profile photo in the top right corner of my screen and not finding it there, but yes, I see it when I click on my photo next to my posts.