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I received a contact today in which the prospective Airbnb guest in an inquiry requested that we talk off-platform.
I responded to say that Airbnb requests that all communications be on the platform and that we honor that. I also flagged the message from the would-be guest, which was immediately removed from the platform. [I’ve done this in the past without such immediate results.]
I then received the following emailed message from Airbnb. I was surprised by ‘1’ below, not quite sure what it means though we would never accept a third party booking or ourselves make a refund (instead referring a guest to Airbnb for a refund).
#1 is a known scam that has been around for years and has nothing to do with 3rd party bookings.
The inquirer tells the host that their company is paying for their housing, but the inquirer has another place to stay with friends or family, so proposes that they make a booking and pay for it, and that the host then sends them back half the money paid. The idea being that the guest and host will split the $ the company is supposedly paying, but the inquirer will not stay, so the host would be free to rent the place for those dates.
If a host falls for this and accepts the booking and sends the guest the money, the booking payment of course fails, because it has been paid with a stolen credit card.
Of course, the entire proposal from the get-go, even if it didn’t involve stolen credit cards, or fake “my company is paying” claims, relies upon the scammer presuming that hosts see nothing wrong with a guest scamming their company for a bogus booking.
Never book or communicate outside of the AirBnB system. Once a guest is booked and beyond the cancellation period I will sometimes give them a WhatsApp for instant communication. And have entertained a longer booking off platform with a short term lease for a well known returning guest. But that is very uncommon and only for a 3 month period where no hospitality tax need be collected or paid.
