Calendar syncs do NOT change minimum stay requirements or prices - only blocked and available dates.
You can get a channel manager (such as OwnerRez) to do a lot of the work for you, but it’s an extra cost and a lot of work.
I’m not fully aware of a channel manager’s duties. VRBO should be the third and last platform that we’re using. We did do well with Airbnb and BCD but wanted to test waters with another platform to put our eggs in more baskets and establish a decent ranking 
Once we get the hang of VRBO and iron out all the kinks everywhere else it should be manageable for us.
I don’t know exactly how you got out of declining the RTB, but, technically, Vrbo could punish you for declining it since the reason had to do with you (wanting 7 nights despite not having that in your calendar settings) and not because of something wrong the guest did.
You should get busy and learn more about calendar syncs and Vrbo. One thing I learned at the beginning is that BDC only syncs calendars a few times a day. Since their penalty is steep if you cancel (even within a few hours of the booking and months ahead of time), I decided it was not worth the stress to advertise there.
My other advice is - if you are doing well enough on Air plus Booking, block off your Vrbo calendar for a little while (or snooze the listing) and learn more about Vrbo before you advertise there again.
Thanks for the warning!
I didn’t decline the RTB. I got an RTB (I’m still not sure if it was one…) and since I couldn’t see the message of the guest, I was confused and I also I changed the dates to the minimum for peak season. This change is something the guest wasn’t looking for and we were able to chat then, where I finally saw his initial message.
So, since the guest is not making the reservation now, I still might get dinged. The timer is running for like 3 days or so - weird.
As much as I can understand, as a guest, to be annoyed when a booking request gets denied - I thought that this was the intention of providing that feature: to deny someone 
Obviously, I shouldn’t be only denying guests but granting that ‘right’ should not immediately lead to a punishment. Yes, in my case it should as it was my mistake to not properly set up the calendar. But from what I’ve read, hosts do get quickly punished on VRBO even if they don’t do anything wrong, like a preapproved request not being booked by the guest. Not sure if that is really true though.
We’ll see how it goes.
So on VRBO a request has the option to preapprove? On Airbnb, Preapprove or Decline are the options for an inquiry, not a request. A request on Airbnb has the options of Accept or Decline.
And I have a hard time believing that you’d get dinged on VRBO if a guest decides not to book after you’ve pre-approved them. That’s not something a host has any control over.
There is a lot going on here…
The VRBO request we received, and I wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was an inquiry or a request - and heck, it confuses me to the max what the difference is between them, did have an Approve and a Decline button, but I was also able to make adjustments to the request which then triggered a pre-approval since the chat was available and the 24 hour timer was shown in the chat window, with the note ‘pre-approved’.
I was surprised that it works this way (and maybe this is an industry standard I’m not aware of) as I though that only if the guest would accept the modified request, I then have the final decision. It doesn’t sound correctly when I say it like that but, as I mentioned before, I was assuming that a request to book would include the message of the guest that helps me decide whether to approve them or not.
Since I didn’t see this message in my RTB I was disappointed and questioned why anyone would use this feature as in that case I could just use instant booking and then work everything out with the guest so they could decide whether they would like to cancel because it might not be a good fit.
I don’t know if I didn’t make myself clear, that I would have liked to have a conversation with the guest prior to approving them. That’s what I was looking for.
Only through this bizarre way of modifying the request I did see the initial message.
And yes, like you said, why would a host get punished if the guest doesn’t want to book? Unless the host changes the dates of the inquiry…? 
I believe what happened for @Hosterer is that the RTB “disappeared” when the dates were changed by Hosterer. It then became an inquiry since the dates don’t match what the guest wanted. You can preapprove an inquiry. An RTB on Vrbo is the same as an RTB on AirBnB.
No, I’ve heard you don’t get rewarded if they do book, like you would if they RTB’d and you accept them. It’s an odd design, I agree. (Edited to fix my error) Oops, I said just the opposite a few posts earlier. I think I’ve heard it both ways which is why I said it both ways. But the bottom line is, there is no value in preapproving on VRBO. (End edit).
I’ll repeat this - @Hosterer, you should join a forum specifically for Vrbo. That will be more helpful than this forum, especially since I’m the only one answering your questions and I use IB and a channel manager.
Yes, I understand. I’m still figuring out which place to join as there are also scammy places around especially on FB. Can we DM each other on here? I don’t know. Feel free to drop me a link or two - for forums or groups that you consider legit. It would be highly appreciated.
“Say No to Vrbo Service Fee” on Facebook. Not scammy. I believe you have to provide your Vrbo listing information to join. But I recall you are in Europe and that’s a mostly US-based group (I live in the US but my property is in the Caribbean). You can join, but you might get better advice from a group with hosts closer to you.
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OK I will look around. Thank you.
How does a host get “rewarded”?
Improves your listing position.
Ah, I thought it was some special reward VRBO gives. Search ranking seems to go upon Airbnb when you get bookings, too.
@Hosterer @muddy -
There’s a new post on the topic of Vrbo preapprovals on a different forum. Reports are:
- An owner is being charged a cancellation fee when the guest did not respond to the preapproval. Owner hasn’t seen it hit their bank account yet but has notification from Vrbo that they will be charged. Another owner had the same thing happen but said the charge never went through.
- Other owners have reported it hits their metrics as a cancellation (this was before Vrbo charged for cancellations) if the guest does not go ahead and book after being preapproved.
- Another host said a preapproval blocked their calendar and it failed to open the dates back up after the preapproval expired.
Bottom line - DON’T PREAPPROVE on Vrbo. No upside and lots of downside.
Is it just me or does this just not make any sense whatsoever?
Correct - it does not make sense. It may just be a programming glitch and not enough owners have complained about it for them to fix it.
I don’t list on VRBO, as I just have a private room listing, but it’s always interesting to find out how other platforms work. Kind of comforting to know other platforms also suffer from glitches, but if it’s not a glitch, that certainly makes no sense and is outrageous to penalize hosts for a guest’s decision not to book.
Reminds me of when one of the Airbnb criteria for Superhost was that 50% of your guests had to leave a review. As if hosts have any control over that.
Not sure if you were specifically asking to DM with Pitonview or if it was a general info question- if the latter, yes. Click on your profile circle on upper right screen and click on the envelope symbol.
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I never approve/disapprove/accept/decline a booking inquiry on Airbnb or Vrbo. I just reply with a simple answer to satisfy the response metric and that’s the end of it. Almost all inquiries are scams or guests looking for steep discounts. They should already see everything in the listing so if they want to book they would have already done so. They probably send out a bunch of inquiries and are fishing for desperate hosts to take the bait…don’t fall for it!
I have gotten many inquiries and while a couple have been trying to get me to communicate off-platform so they can avoid the service fees and taxes, none of them have been scams and no one has asked for a discount. They all had legitimate questions, or some just wanted to make sure there was a responsive host who answered messages before committing to book, because they’d had a bad experience before with ghosting hosts.
Some may have sent out several inquiries, I have no way of knowing that, but my point is that we don’t all have the same experiences as hosts, and our listings don’t all attract the same type of guests, so blanket statements like “Almost all inquiries are scams or guests looking for steep discounts” stated as if they were some universal fact, rather than “almost all my inquiries have been…” aren’t correct.