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You keep asking this question when the guest count is wrong. It’s been suggested that you just put up your prices reflecting the ability for the house to hold 8 people or to a higher rate that includes additional fees after say, 4 guests.
Raise your rates.
That is one option I will consider for the future, but not really applicable in this situation where the guest has already REQUESTED TO BOOK under my current set-up where I do charge for extra people.
Can’t you send a special offer with the right number of people and the price you want?
Sorry, I haven’t had bookings in so long I’m forgetting how the platform works. LOL.
Here is the Official Answer from AirBNB: I hope this helps everyone with this issue.
A host has 24 hours to officially respond to a reservation request by choosing to “Accept” or “Decline” before it expires. Responding with only a message is not an official response to the request, since it doesn’t tell our system whether to release funds or charge the guest, who has already entered their financial information.
You’ll see all the reservation requests you haven’t either accepted or declined in the “Requests” section of your Dashboard. You can click on the request in order to read the message from the guest, provide an answer, or ask for more information.
I encourage you to get in touch with your potential guest at your earliest convenience. If you’re not sure if you’ll be able to accept the request within the time frame, feel free to decline it for now and continue messaging with the guest. You can always send a pre-approval later if you’re able to accept the reservation.
We have a Help Center article with more details on reservation requests here:
We typically accept the request and let them know we will be sending a change request to reflect the correct number of guests, and pricing. If they do not accept the change request, then you can cancel. However, if they don’t like the new pricing we have found that they typically cancel the reservation on their own. In fact, we’ve never had to cancel due to this.
That is very helpful. So if I accept the REQUEST TO BOOK then the CHANGE REQUEST option will be available? And I can add in the additional charges?
I am pretty sure that on a REQUEST TO BOOK that SPECIAL OFFER button is not available, However on an INQUIRY the SPECIAL OFFER is available so that you can offer a discount and such.
At least that is what I have noticed.
Yes. It’s generally easier to just accept the booking and then you are able to send a change request with their other guests added. If they would rather decline the change, then they can cancel. I tell them this in my response, that they can accept or decline the change (and new price) and that they have 48 hours to cancel penalty free if they don’t want to pay the extra charge.
I’ve never had anyone cancel but I did have one guy say that he “already had a reservation with me” and “didn’t have to accept any changes” and “didn’t have to cancel either”. I told him that it was fine but that he was the only person who would be allowed onto the property, as that is all he had a reservation for. That worked too 
Can you accept it and then send him a request for the additional fee?
Yes. I always let the guest know that i will be sending them a change request before I finalize the booking - which gives them a chance to do it on their own or back out at that point if they want to. For some reason, we seem to do a lot of change requests and to date (after 600+ trips) we haven’t had it become a problem for us.
I believe that is correct.
Well, you’ve talked about it before…
Send them a special offer. If they don’t accept, make it Air’s problem.
She has. Frequently. From another topic you started:
If every other booking request gets it wrong, is it not time to think that maybe you are doing something wrong?
Just saying like…
JF
Wow - you are a rock star, not a host!
Yup. Thanks for finding that one. Honestly, I’m so over the definition of insanity… 
It is a big deal. they want you to accept 88% of requests no matter what. You can send him a special offer that corresponds to the price he should be paying. If he doesnt accept that you are all good. Airbnb wont hold it against you and the acceptance rate will not be affected.
That’s too funny! We are just blessed to be in a good location for North South traffic from Florida to the rest of the country! We get a lot of one night bookings as a result.
Yes, I’m aware of the target Acceptance Rate. But I’ve also read host posts that say that their acceptance rate dropped below that and nothing happened. Even if you get a warning, it’s just a warning, action doesn’t necessarily follow.
Of course, if you can use other methods to avoid having to decline, that’s preferrable.
Do you know for certainty that it does not drop your property down in the search engine? I have 2 properties and one of them is very high in the acceptance rate, it’s a large rural cabin in MN, my other one is a small 4 person near the beach house in AL, there are a lot of festivals near the beach and on in particular draws the 18-21 crowd, (it cancelled du me to COVID) but from January to early March I had about 10 requests for that property from kids that were under my age requirement of 21 and even a father that wanted to rent it for his daughter and 3 friends, it resulted in me having a horrible decline rate on that home, and I can’t even find it in Airbnb at times when I do a search as a traveler, where as my other property is near the top and I have never had an actual decline on that one.
No, I don’t know that for certain, at all. There are so many factors that go into the search algorithms, and Airbnb is not forthcoming about it, that it’s anyone’s guess. I’ve heard that changing little things on your listing, like some wording, or blocking and then unblocking dates, i.e. making your listing look active to the computer bot, will pull your ranking up, but I’ve never found that to be true. And I’ve never had to decline a reservation, so haven’t been able to check what that does to my ranking. Blocking my calendar for a month while I take my summer holiday definitely seemed to drop the ranking.