Short story
I did 3 things that many people on this forum advise against but that are valid options:
- Give a discount.
- Offer a non-reimbursable rate with 10% off.
- Block nights for 24 hours to give the guest the time to book.
Result: AirBnB system gloriously failing.
Long story
Today I got an enquiry for 6 nights for 2 people asking for a discount. As taught by this forum, I’m always apprehensive about giving discounts, but 6 nights is an above average length of stay and they asked really nicely, so I decided to give them a small discount.
However, I only wanted to offer this discount at a non-reimbursable rate (business decision 
) but AirBnB does not allow you to send a ‘special offer’ at a certain cancelation policy. The special offer always comes with your standard policy, in our case ‘flexible’. So I talked to the guest and said that I would be lowering our normal rate for those nights and that I would be blocking during 24 hours giving them the chance to make the reservation.
Half an hour later the guest comes back to us saying that the AirBnB website is giving errors and that they are unable to complete the reservation. They also contact AirBnB to look for a solution but they decide to send it ‘to another department’. I just tell the guest to try again in an hour, because the website is known to have troubles but they usually solves themselves by ‘trying again’.
I go to bed, hoping that the problem would solve itself within 24 hours.
4 Hours later I wake up to a message, a reservation request from a second guest wanting to make a reservation for 2 of the 6 nights the other guest wanted. Didn’t I block? This message is shortly followed by a message from the first guest saying he has tried multiple times making a reservation, that always an error message came up and that now the nights have become unavailable 
… So a simple reservation request made the night unavailable for the guest I blocked nights for. LOGIC !
I decide to explain the situation to the second guest, apologizing for the AirBnB system mess-up, telling her I have to turn her down to honor my promise to the other guest and telling her she could still make a reservation if the other reservation does not come through. I tell the first guest to try again. He tells me the same error message is popping up 
.
I cancel his pre-aproval, ask him to try again. I block (really BLOCK) those nights and unblock them. I turn off instant book to prevent other guests from getting the discounted rate. Etc. … Until now we haven’t had any success in getting him the reservation. I will return to bed and keep you updated.
Now I’m wondering if all these troubles is just the universe trying to tell me I don’t want this guest anyway 
.
P.S.: I didn’t call AirBnB because it’s obviously a software problem that no-one will be able to help me with immediately.
.
. I told him he needed to make a reservation for 2 people and asked if he was the travel companion? He said yes 
and immediately sent a new reservation request… again for 1 person 
and went to work. Then I got this message in the afternoon: “I guess not writing back, blocking various dates, and raising the price back means we should look elsewhere?” 