Watch out Airbnb technical glitch means bookings on blocked dates

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I use the function on the listing to block out the date before and after I have a guest stay as I work and can’t do same day turnarounds.

For the third time in the space of a couple of months, Airbnb has booked a guest on dates I have blocked out in my calendar.

I then have to contact the guest to explain the situation and apologise that I can’t accept their booking and call Airbnb to sort out the situation.

All they can tell me is that it’s a technical hitch. They suggested I turn off Instant Book until they sort it out but admit it could be many more months before this happens. In my highly competitive city that would mean me dropping down to page three or four and a huge reduction in bookings.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has encountered this issue?

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Yes, it started happening roughly a year ago so I put the price up to $1000 on dates I didn’t want to be booked, but a few weeks ago I noticed a change in the calendar where a diagonal line is added to blocked dates so I thought perhaps the glitch had been fixed.
However, yesterday I received an IB on a blocked day. I decided to honour the booking even though that particular booking will mean a financial loss to me.

It is frustrating. The first time it happened to me, my place wasn’t ready so to honour the booking I rushed to finish the renovation and ended up getting 3 stars.

I can’t believe Air still haven’t been able to fix this! It deters bookings if you put an extremely high price on those dates but I wonder what that does to your ranking as price is one of the things taken into consideration.

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Me neither. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It happened to me a few times last year. It’s not just a “glitch”, it’s a catastrophic error. Imagine the true cost of it: all those hours air staff had to deal with it, the mistrust it created in both guests and hosts. Forgiveable in a new start-up company but Air is not such a thing anymore.

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