Third Party Bookings

1

I have my phone in “do not disturb” during the night. As much as I love my guests, I was hating the Airbnb “ping” in the middle of the night.

I woke up this morning with an Instant Booking for tomorrow. Someone that lives nearby was booking for someone. I know third party bookings are a big no.

But… I accept them.

How I fix the third party booking situation is that I alter the reservation to add the actual person who is staying. In this case, it was one person staying in the place. She booked for one, I altered the reservation to two, but DIDN’T change the money. And now the actual guest who is staying is on the reservation.

Simple? Maybe not. But I’m covered and we don’t have to go back and forth.

If it was a future booking I will ask the guest to have the person staying at my place create a profile, etc.

What do you do?

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2

Are they new to Air? Might have been a little bit of booking learning curve difficulty.

3

Not cool! I sincerely hope you don’t get “burned” somehow. It’s still a 3rd party doing the booking, and AirBnb-legal issues aside, there are very good reasons for NOT accepting 3rd party bookings.

I NEVER accept a 3rd party booking.

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4

We just had a situation very similar, last minute booking, form someone local, who was booking for family members. Given all the ‘craziness’ that has been going on with people being robbed, fraudulent CC, house rules being broken, etc, I did not feel comfortable taking that risk. My belief was if the person booking is not staying and you try to claim a security deposit related charge, they can deny saying it was fraud. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I remember reading it somewhere.

I ended up cancelling the 3rd party reservation, and waiting for the ‘older’ couple at my house.(They had the address from the first reservation and my phone number, so we talked about them coming to the house and sorting everything out) We then spent an hour getting their own Air BNB account set up, it worked out for us, but definitely was much more laborious then just ‘accepting’ the original booking.

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5

You do know that Airbnb allows it for business travels.

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6

Well if you are approved for business, then you know and accept that will be the case. I got approved for business even though I’m in a resort area! My business guests were here on mosquito business. :smiley: But they’ve stayed with me so much now, I just take cash for their bookings.

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7

We have had a few of the ‘business’ approved 3rd party bookings, and they were great! We had all the info of the company, people staying,etc.

I thought you were asking about non-business 3rd party bookings? My bad if you weren’t :slight_smile:

8

It’s about both. Sometimes someone is booking for their parents or someone that is flying. I only do this for LAST MINUTE bookings. Not for future bookings.

9

We’ve had a few booked for family members and have had no problems at all.I do like the idea of adding the extra guests name to the booking though.

10

I really see this being no different than allowing kids to stay for free. Maybe someone can enlighten me. I have heard many times on this forum people say that Air’s insurance won’t cover guests who aren’t on the reservation. But how does Air even determine that?

For example - if host allows guest to invite friends for a dinner party - and damage is caused…then is Air going to deny the claim because the guests of the guests were not on the reservation?

Or what about people who do not charge for children or infants. Let’s say the guest enters 4 in the reservation, and you have an extra person charge over that. Do you edit the reservation to reflect 5 people and override the “extra person” charge? Is it possible to do that?

Once in a while I will make an exception to allow a 7th guest. My listing shows 6 as max. I have not figured out how to alter the guest count to 7, and don’t see that I can since my listing is only set up for 6. So what is one to do?? How do I include 7 people if my listing is not set up for that?

Air told me that anyone in the group is considered a guest. And anyone in the group can have a death in the family and the entire group can cancel.

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11

Wait. You can add guests’ names to the reservation? What rock have I been living under? - lol. Where can you do this?

12

@Evelyn Evelyn, I have accepted third party bookings for legitimate reasons: children living in Miami and having elderly parents from overseas come to town; parents booking for college-age children without a credit card (or with low limit), sister booking for siblings coming from overseas, etc. This has happened 2-3 times without incidents.

13

It seems that you are a relatively inexperienced host if you think that Airbnb will cover you. Don’t you have your own STR insurance?

14

Yes, I do have my own insurance. I’ve only been hosting since 2010 with hundred of guests a year. Teaching hosts how to do it right on my site and teaching at the Airbnb Open as a host educator.

Nonetheless, I do like also being covered by Airbnb.

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15

With only six years of hosting experience it’s great that you are sharing :slight_smile:

16

I do monthly FREE webinars about different Airbnb topics. And I have a very active FREE facebook group “The Hosting Journey.”

I believe you becoming a better host only helps me. Even if you’re the competition in my city.

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17

I really don’t think you are covered by ABB. We just dealt with this last Friday and ABB said the person that booked needed to stay there. Obviously different about ABB for Business, but that’s not the question here.

You are in San Jose right? I think we took your seminar in Paris.

Edited: BC I actually can READ, you are not the person we saw in Paris. LOL

18

I’m in New York. Yes, I spoke at the Airbnb Conference and will be speaking again this year.

19

Evelyn mentioned it see above

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@Evelyn I’m still a little confused - how are you covered by BNB when you take a third party booking? How do you add a second party to a booking?

Thanks