It seems you are rueful of missing out due to the timing. Her message is very generic though and the whole asking if it’s available even though the dates could be entered to determine that seems generic as well. She probably sent this generic message to a bunch of hosts. Maybe it doesn’t make you feel better but I think it’s quite
possible you wouldn’t have gotten the booking anyway. I get similar questions and I have instant book. What the what? Just book it.
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Agree with @KKC we get the stupid is this place available question ALL THE TIME and we are on IB.
However, I have never had an issue with @smartbnb.io not informing the guest that the place is indeed available. So I’m kinda confused
Ps/ we are full blown generic messages, I guess I should change that 
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Surely the point is @JonYork you would have missed out on this booking anyway.
If you didn’t use @smartbnb.io you would have missed out because you would have been sleeping.
You can’t have an automated messaging if guests inquire about dates saying they are available, as in some cases they won’t be. I have had guests ask to book dates a number of times that aren’t available.
I get enquiries for dates they could IB and very rarely do they follow through so I do not take much notice of them. Probably multi mailing.
I used to get frustrated with guests who inquired about dates that were free on our calendar and available to Instant Book. After reading posts here from hosts who are also guests saying that they would book dates that are free on the listing calendar only to find that the dates aren’t free I no longer mind when people ask if the dates they want are free.
I have never had that happen not saying it could not.
Yes, we get those too. So, to put a static “your dates are available” message in your auto response doesn’t work either.
@smartbnb.io Isn’t there an option to add answers to common questions to your personal question flow?
That’s right Helsi. I’m not saying @smartbnb caused us to lose the reservation. I’m not saying that at all! If anything, because of their first automated message, it gave us a better chance than we would have had.
But you can have an automated message that goes out to guests who ask anything about dates. The message could say something like, ‘the dates you selected on Airbnb are available. If you’re asking about any other dates, we’ll read your message soon and get back to you personally.’
Anyway, Pierre suggested that we put a “Your Dates are Available” message in the first-inquiry template. That’s what we’ve done, but it’s not the best solution. It makes the message unnatural and awkward when it goes to people who didn’t ask anything about the dates.
I think it would be better if he had a question template for this specific question.
Anyway, Pierre @smartbnb.io, I hope you will note from some of the above responses that a lot of people do get this question. Thanks!
Our experience is that we get a lot of requests like this and I would say about half the time they do end up booking with us. This woman was serious about booking somewhere because she did eventually book another place it seems.
@azreala, I like your auto-response. You did a really good job with it. I’ll work to incorporate something like that on the first inquiry message.
Yes, they have it where you can add answers to common questions, but you can’t add a new question. They obviously have to do that. And this isn’t one of the available questions. I’ve been asking Pierre to make it one, but he has said he doesn’t feel like it’s necessary.
We could put something in our first-inquiry response like @azreala did, that says ‘your dates are available’. But, I don’t think that’s as good as having a separate question for this - because like the example @AlexSJ gave, sometimes they’re not asking about the dates they input into Airbnb at all.
As it is, I think what I’ll have to do is similar to what @azreala did, but change it a bit to say:
‘The dates you entered into Airbnb are available. If you’re asking about any other dates, we will get back to you soon with a personal reply.’
That’s about all I can see we can do that will cover every situation. It is a bit awkward though and I wish it could be made less so.
I find this question to be fascinating. I have only received this question from 2 people when the dates were NOT available. They had indeed, selected the only open dates that they could find to inquire about different dates. I also received this question from one person who I thought was trying to delay making a decision, which is of course, not my problem.
I have received just a handful of inquiries over the past year plus, since almost all of my guests simply instant book.
@anon67190644 - all I can say is it’s a most annoying question when you have IB turned on! Just IB and leave us alone - and we’ll see ya when ya get here! But in the meantime, STOP BOTHERING US!
I think some people ask it because they just want to talk to someone on the other end to make sure someone’s there - and they can’t think of anything else to ask.
It’s amazing to me how Airbnb has taken over the world yet most people don’t know anything about it yet. I’m still amazed by the fact that 95% of our reservations come from first-timers and 90% of our reservations come from people who just joined Air in the month they’re sending us a request! So, duh, of course they don’t know that Air blocks them from selecting unavailable dates - they just registered five minutes ago!
But maybe also, like @EllenN said, they’ve tried to make a reservation that showed the dates available and then the host wrote to them and said they weren’t available. That’s probably the case more often than we suspect. That’s happened to us too.
The default setup including a bit about the dates being available, and specifying the dates in question, which are the ones selected by the guests. If the guest do not actually intend to stay at the mentionned dates, the guest usually clarify (if not done already). Of course, you are welcome to modify the templates in any way you would like.
As for the detection of new questions: yep, now you can train Smartbnb to detect new questions yourself. You just have to provide examples to train Smartbnb to detect questions about availabilities, and create your reply in that scenario (which may, then be a confirmation that the dates of the inquiry are indeed available).
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That’s great Pierre! Thanks so much for adding a training feature.