We’re getting a lot of last minute bookings at the moment. This puts us, our cleaners & gardeners under enormous pressure with the Airbnb mandated response time limits. To accept the booking I must first find out if the cleaners can accommodate the extra clean. Because of the response deadline I will need to decline a guest, not because I don’t want the booking but because I don’t hear back from the cleaners (or gardeners!) in time and I’m frightened of being penalised because I’m not able to respond in the time frame. So I think Airbnb should giving hosts 36 hours to respond to enquiries and booking requests instead of 24 hours. This will also help enormously with international guests and time zone differences. (I’m getting to the stage where those booking requests that come in overnight, if I can’t get the cleaners to respond immediately then I just decline - it all gets too hard).
Why don’t you just set your listing so you need 48 hours or more notice for booking @anon33287864
I agree with Helsi. I have the system set to blo ck 2 days before and after each reservation. I do all the cleaning myself but I need two days to make sure I don’t miss something. Also, are you a remote host? If not, then you might consider doing the cleaning yourself, this way you don’t have to wait around for the cleaners to get back to you.
I think @Helsi was referring to the booking settings.
I use IB so apologies if I’ve got this wrong but I thought that for reservation requests the recommended time is 24 hours and if it’s longer than that, you’re not penalised per se. Your response rate goes down (which I think is only used to calculate SH status) and because you’re not a host that is easy to book with you’re going to drop in search results.
So if you rely on Airbnb searches for business then it’s a good idea to set the between-booking time (as described above) or find cleaners who can be relied on to get back to you quickly. I do our cleaning but on the odd occasion when I’ve been unable to, I’ve had a pool of three cleaners to use. The first one to respond to me gets the job. Easy 
Although you’re shooting yourself in the foot a bit because not many people will wait for hours for a response. They’ll just move on. And because it’s lowering your results position it might be a good idea to see if you can find a way to develop a system to help you respond more quickly.
I’m not sure that it’s actually mandated? It’s only necessary if you’re worried about SH status or dropping in search results.
That’s the one. 
I just joined this group but I can’t find anywhere that I can make a post.??
Any help would be appreciated
I agree. If possible do your own cleaning over the course of a 12 month period of time you won’t believe the savings! Also I would block two days before and two days after
I’m not sure if you got a private response, but there’s a probationary period for new members before they can create new discussion topics. It cuts down on spam bots and members that join just to sell something.
thanks, how long would that be for?