Thank you to hosts who leave accurate reviews. I just cancelled an instant booking (for some reason the recommended by other hosts wasn’t checked off) for a guy who was coming from Spain, only staying one night and had at least 5 reviews that spoke about him leaving the place a mess (stains on bedding, dirty dishes etc.) not respecting house rules (smoking and leaving cigarette buts) and having a party. If not for those honest hosts I wouldn’t have known to cancel and could have had a very negative experience. I see a lot of people agonizing over leaving a negative review but it’s soooo necessary in order for people to be able to weed out guests who may not be a good fit
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ask Air how he was able to Instant book!
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Hosts who enable Instant Book have choices of which guests may Instant Book. It can either be anyone who is eligible to have an Airbnb account or only guests who have received exclusively positive reviews from other hosts. Apparently, @Saranah chose the option to let any Airbnb account holder Instant Book.
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/484/how-can-i-control-which-reservations-i-get-with-instant-book
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I agree @Saranah.
But sometimes hosts don’t help protect themselves…you have to wonder at the at least four hosts didn’t both to read the previous reviews.
I didn’t realize it was unchecked I thought it was checked so I didn’t intentionally choose to let just anybody book. It’s now updated though!
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Agreed especially since he’s been on air since 2016 and his last review was a negative one with at least 4 others before hers. I have had reviews “disappear” when there is only one not sure how or why but I had a guest who was messy and when I went back to see if I had missed something in his review it was gone
My intention wasn’t to criticize you for not checking the box that would only permit guests who have received exclusively positive reviews to book with you.
I was responding to @Martha as she posted that you should ask Airbnb how this guest was able to book with you.
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I have read absolutely nothing that indicates that this setting only allows guests who have “exclusively positive reviews.” I have only seen the disclaimer that a guest has received a positive review.
If you have found a definitive definition, please post. I have searched and haven’t found anything.
Got it. No offense taken. Just glad I now know it’s checked and I dodged a bullet 
Hi Susan,
This is from the attachment. I was surprised myself as I thought guests could Instant Book anywhere as long as they had a certain number of positive reviews.
“Who Can Book: You can allow any eligible guest to instantly book your place, or you can just allow guests who have traveled on Airbnb and received only positive reviews from other hosts. If you don’t recommend a guest to other hosts or you’ve given them a rating of 3 stars or below, they won’t be able to instantly book any of your listings.”
Thank you so much @EllenN. This was not the case the last time I researched. Great tweak on AirBNB’s part.
Me too! The positive review I got from an Instant book was a 3 for cleanliness!
Doesn’t checking that mean first time Airbnb users won’t be allowed to instant book? I haven’t checked that box because I get lots of first timers and don’t want to make it more difficult for them.
That is exactly what happens, so I have not elected to check that box. I rather like the first-timers. They are always so pleasantly surprised by how much they enjoy staying in someone else’s home. But, of course, I live here too so my risks are different.
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@anon67190644 Thanks for confirming. I love the first timers too, so won’t be checking that box. Now if they had a box that just excluded those that specifically were not recommended I would check that one.
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Simple: 
The mutual review system is what makes a peer-to-peer platform like Airbnb work.
This matches my recent experience. I’ve had guests instant book me who’ve only had some of their previous reviews rate them positively.
It’s a tradeoff between whether to risk unfit repeat-timers booking versus whether to exclude first-timers from IB. Maybe Airbnb should introduce another condition - ‘Except if they’ve never booked before’ to the positive-reviews requirement.
I also tend to have first timers for instant book, as I am on the premises, not a problem although I imagine I would do things differently if I wasn’t though
I had a guest that had five star reviews from other hosts, and he was a total pig. He left dirty pots and pans, grease all over the oven, and everything was sticky from a melted ice cream cake. I then had a guest with no reviews, he had just joined Airbnb and he was wonderful. He even washed, dried and folded all the towels. So I went back and read the reviews for the pig. I noticed he had five stars but the comments made by the other hosts were generic. So now i have learned to read between the lines when reading host’s comments and not really just look at the star rating and allow guests with no reviews to book, perhaps I’m pushing my luck.
It would be nice if Airbnb gave home stay reviews a different flair than those done by hosts of corporate/whole space listings.
Some guests are great in a whole place where they can leave dishes undone or otherwise be slobs until the last day, but that behavior would be insufferable in a shared home where others have to live with it daily.
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The other great thing about honest reviews is that some future hosts will care about infringements and others won’t.
I once had a guest with a horrible ‘we never want to see this guest ever again’ type review. Reading between the lines, it was an illegal (as in landlord-doesn’t-know) listing, it seems. The whole debacle was due to a parking issue which isn’t a problem here. So she was a great guest.