Will my response rate be affected?

I have replied to a booking inquiry but I have not accept or declined the booking inquiry and the 24 hours have past (the 24 hour clock disappeared after I replied). Will my response rate still be affected? and should I still accept or decline the booking?

Yes, your response rate and time will be affected, because they are calculated on whether you respond (you didn’t) and how long it takes you to do so.

I would go ahead and accept or decline it. If you don’t have acceptable answers by now from them, decline it and send them a message that you’ll open it up to them if they respond with the info you need. (You’d need to use Special Offer I think, but you can do a special offer for the same price.)

He said he did reply to the inquiry and so that first contact is the most important thing. After initial response, I believe it doesn’t matter how long it takes to work out details with the potential guest.

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Interesting, so hosts could get out of making any decision just by asking a question in reply, seems a bit poor for the guests!

Not at all, the guest was just asking about the listing and did not request to book. I think if you respond within 24 hours you keep your 100% response rate, well I hope I do as I just responded to questions about my neighborhood but they did not request to book. Anybody else?

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I think even as an inquiry, our response rate will be affected, if we responded but not pre-approve or decline.

I used to be a 100%-ter. Recently, I had a handful of enquiries with communication still to-ing and fro-ing which made me held back from pre-approving. Then, I had an email from Airbnb saying that it is important for me to pre-approve within 24 hours. My response rate dropped to 99%. Not too happy with that !!!

I think the way they (Airbnb) do it is very unfair. The way I operate with every enquiry is that I send a standard message to the potential guest that they should read the listing again very carefully and that a car hire is highly recommended to get around from the property. That there won’t be any meet-and-greet (access via security lock). And if they agree to that, to write to me again to give me the green light to pre-approve or accept booking. I guess I should more ruthless and start declining enquiries who don’t respond to the above within an hour or so because I can’t be keeping an eye on the clock all the time to see if my 24 hours is up :frowning:

@felixcat
Excellent explanation!

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