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Recently I got a request for a 4 months stay from a girl whose profile is empty. She says she is a student and a new user of Airbnb. Her profile shows no name, no country, no language, no presentation. She has no verifications except email.
It’s the first time I get such a request and I don’t really know how to handle it.
In the first message the girl said that she will send more personal informations via SMS. Well I wrote her back that she could begin by populating her profile but currently she didn’t. Well I ended up by refusing her request.
But I still have this question in mind :
How do you manage this type of situation?
Yes I do think that verifications must be sent to Airbnb. That’s why I was a bit worried and told her to use Airbnb to add more things to her profile. I left her request open for many hours but nothing had changed except the email. Well it’s not too complicated to add a country, a language and a small presentation but none of them were added. So after more than 17 hours I decided to decline her request, to stay within the 24 hours Airbnb’s threshold.
But as a host we always want to make people happy that’s why I was not feeling good with this request even if it’s a great amount of money. But risks are too high.
Furthermore here it’s not a habit for students to book an apartment on Airbnb for many months.
What @Maggieroni said. You don’t have the setting enabled that requires guests to be verified before they can book? If not, you should definitely enable it immediately. It would be helpful in avoiding the kind of situations which you describe.
I set this up only for instant booking but not for normal booking. Well I already got bookings from newcomers for a few days and everything went well. I don’t want to shut the door for them.
With more than one year of hosting it’s the first request of this type that I get. But it’s true that we must take care from strange behavior.
It doesn’t stop them booking. They just need to get verified first. You’re not excluding anyone, and this is a minimal bar, which is in everyone’s best interest. I’ve got that setting enabled. I think most people, at least on this forum, have it set. It’s a good idea.
Indeed, on this forum I read something about squatters. Now I have my answer : I did decline the request. Now I’m just wondering whether I keep a one month booking on my Airbnb announce. Well, I will probably keep it “open” and let my judgment filter strange requests.
Yes I understand that. The question is : is it considered a verified profile by the Airbnb system? In other words, what’s the Airbnb definition of a verified profile? In that the same as verifications?
what is a verified ID?
For me, after having created an Airbnb account, we have probably an account number or something like this. But a verified profile is probably something else.
