Q: Booking Outside Your Stated Availability

This is something I’ve not dealt with before:

My listing is set to only accept booking two days in advance with a minimum of two nights stay but what if someone wants to arrive on one day’s notice for one night on a blocked day?

Here’s the situation - a friend wanted to stay at my place. She tried to book one night on one night’s notice during a blocked time (I’m closed during the winter but this is a friend so I’m making an exception on all counts). She couldn’t book because it’s blocked so she sent me an inquiry. I got back to her through the platform and pre-approved her but she didn’t respond withing the 24hrs and now she can’t make it anyway.

What I’m wondering is if she was pre-approved would she be able to book on a blocked day outside my listing’s availability rules?

Could I have clicked something right from the booking window that would have allowed it or would I still have to go into my settings and change things?

I think you can send a special offer for any dates or price as long as the room isn’t booked. I’m not certain as I’ve never done this. Unless one of you is trying to get reviews why would you book via Air and let them take a big cut?

Don’t care about reviews. The booking involved a third party I don’t know so I had her go through Air.

If she’s your friend, just let her stay - no need for a booking at all :slight_smile:

You have the dates blocked off so she can just stay.

I am pretty certain she would be booked if you pre-approved her. I have done this before but it’s been a long time. Things may have changed since I did it. You never know with ABB. They change things all the time and don’t tell us.

I’m confused; not that it matters.

She wasn’t going to be the one staying. She was booking for a someone (three people) who was hauling livestock cross country for her. Someone she had only just met and someone I didn’t know at all. I did offer a discount but not free (she insisted on paying something). Yeah it’s convoluted but it is the way I decided to handle it so that taxes were dealt with and all that.

Our county is in the process of writing regulations for vacation rentals with the possibility of banning rentals like mine (non-owner occupied). I decided to keep everything on the legal side with regard to paying my share of taxed etc.

Had it been her needing a place to stay she would have just stayed in the guest suite in my house.

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Ok that wasn’t clear at all from the initial post @Bunny so thank you for clarifying.

In which case no need to discount, and you can create a booking, by unblocking the date, creating a special offer and sending it to the people who were hauling the livestock.

Take IB off, and then give them an hour or so to make the booking. When they have booked you can turn IB back on.

If your friend doesn’t know them I wouldn’t advise a third party booking.

Thanks for the booking tips.

Yes, the not really knowing them gave me pause BUT she and her husband had spent a couple days with them at their place in the mid-west looking at livestock and I totally trust my friend’s judgement. My friend wanted to pay for their stay as part payment for the hauling. Again, convoluted but it made sense to me at the time and my friend is 100% responsible and wouldn’t hesitate to make things right should things go wrong. Not all that different from having 6 strangers stay at my house with the change only on one person’s CC.