Understanding Response Rate and Acceptance Rate

[Airbnb]

For many of you, hosting is important, but you’ve also got work, family, and your personal life keeping you plenty busy. So, tracking how quickly you reply to guest inquiries and monitoring the percentage of booking requests you’re accepting versus declining is probably not on the top of your to-do list. Some of you have asked about the specifics of these measurements, why they matter, and how you can improve them without much fuss—and we’re happy you asked! We’ve gathered answers from the folks who build these tools, so let’s dive in to see what they have to say.

What’s the difference between my response rate and acceptance rate?

• Your response rate measures how consistently you respond within 24 hours to guest inquiries and booking requests. You can find your response rate from the last 365 days by clicking on the Progress tab, then clicking Basic Requirements.
• Your acceptance rate measures how often you accept or decline reservations. Guest inquiries are not included in the calculation of your acceptance rate. You can see your acceptance rate from the last 365 days by clicking on the Progress tab, then clicking Basic Requirements.

For my response rate, does just the first message/inquiry count or do subsequent messages in a thread count, too?

We only measure a response within 24 hours of the guest's first message or inquiry. Subsequent messages in that thread do not impact your response rate.

What happens to my acceptance rate if I answer a question rather than approve, pre-approve, or decline a booking request?

The short answer is this: If a guest sends you a booking request and you only answer a question, but do not approve or decline before the request times out, that counts as a decline.

Let’s dive in a little further. It’s important to note the difference between an inquiry and a booking request. An inquiry is just a message—perhaps asking to clarify something about amenities, dates, or House Rules. The guest may be interested in staying with you and may even ask something like: “I want to book your home; is it ok if I bring my dog?” This is not a booking request. It’s an inquiry. You can respond to an inquiry with an answer, a pre-approval, or by declining. Declining an inquiry signals to the guest that their needs aren’t a good fit for your space and encourages them to request another listing. But none of these actions directly affects your acceptance rate. If you pre-approve an inquiry and the guest books your space, that counts as an acceptance. If you pre-approve and they don’t book, it doesn’t have any effect on your acceptance rate. And if you decline an inquiry, your acceptance rate is not affected.

A booking request means that the guest is officially asking to book your listing and is waiting for you to accept or decline. As far as your acceptance rate goes, we only measure the final outcome of the booking request, and there are just three possible actions you can take: accept, decline, or let the request time out. If you let a request time out—even if you answer questions but take no action to approve or decline a request within 24 hours—that’s considered a decline.

How do these rates affect me as a host?

That’s a great question. The technical answer is that low response rates can impact your eligibility for the  Superhost  program, and acceptance rates can impact eligibility to become a Plus host. And hosts who have very low rates could face penalties, including having their listings paused. But, it's important to note that one-off instances of not responding or declining a booking request rarely lead to any action being taken. We’re much more concerned where we see a consistent pattern of non-response or declines.

Can you share insider tips or suggestions on how to keep my response and acceptance rates high?

We think hosts are actually the experts in this area, so we’ll share some of your ideas here, too, but for response rate, one of the best ways to manage messages on the go is to use the Airbnb app on your mobile phone. You can also consider temporarily snoozing your listing if you know you’ll be unable to respond to messages for a while. If you’re taking a vacation, attending a long work conference, or just needing to unplug for a while, you can rest easy knowing there’s no response clock ticking or messages piling up in your inbox.

To snooze your listing and hide it from search results for a set period of time:

1. Go to Your listings and select a listing
2. Click Listing Details
3. Next to Listing status, click Edit
4. Under Listing status, select Snoozed from the dropdown menu
5. Enter the start and end dates, then click Save

Your listing will automatically reactivate when the timeframe you set is over. The day before your listing reactivates, you'll get a reminder email.

Here are some tips hosts in the Community Center share for keeping your response rate high:

• Set aside daily time to reply to requests and inquiries.
• Have a co-host or a friend respond for you if you’re unavailable and don’t want to snooze your listing.
• Save time by pre-writing responses to commonly asked questions. Look for the “Use a Saved Message” prompt in any active message thread you have with a guest. You can create, use, and re-use responses there.
• If you’re very busy or your hosting business really takes off, consider hiring a virtual assistant.

For your acceptance rate, ensure your calendar and booking preferences and settings are accurate and up to date. For example, if you can't accommodate same-day requests, update your listing to reflect the time you need between reservations. Hosts also tell us they find it helpful to keep their house rules updated so that guests understand what’s ok and what isn't before submitting a booking request. You’re less likely to get requests you can’t accept if you’re very clear about your expectations.

What is Airbnb doing to avoid penalizing hosts' acceptance rate when they decline unfit or illegitimate requests?

We understand that sometimes you may get requests that clearly violate your House Rules, or that are actually marketing attempts disguised as booking requests. These can put you in the awkward position of having to risk harming your own acceptance rate when there’s not a better action to take. To address this, the first thing we need to do is help you flag to us when there’s a problem. We’re exploring how best to do this, and while we don’t have a feature to announce at this time, we are absolutely aware of this pain point for you.

We want to ensure you’re empowered to decide who you welcome into your home and that you’re comfortable with the guests who stay with you. We understand that you only want to be held accountable to legitimate booking requests, and we’re committed to making sure that happens.

Numbers are just part of the story

While it’s good to keep response and acceptance rates in mind, the bigger picture isn’t about these measurements—in fact, they’re just indicators of the actual hospitality you show to your guests and the connection you establish when they reach out to you. You impact your guest’s experience from the moment they contact you or request to book, and the host community rightfully takes a lot of pride in creating experiences of welcome and belonging for the people who stay in your listings. So, yes, please do care about communicating in a timely way and setting guests up for success while they’re trying to find a good listing match for their needs; but know that numbers are just one way to tell the story about how you host.

[Deb176]

 also, in our instance, we are prohibited by law to except any thing less than a 30 day renter. But people constantly right to is asking if they can stay for the weekend, and then we have to decline .  

[Tammy34]

Dee, I absolutely agree with your message! Having a "I do not feel comfortable" response is reasonable. I'm a superhost myself, but I've had to decline twice now, once to a teenager, and once to someone who wanted pay in cash. Both of those reasons were unsafe for me to follow through. Airbnb needs to trust our instincts in certian circumstances. 

Thamks for posting your message!

Tammy

[--Angela-and-John--0]

I had a Guest with a a medical condition that required an organ transplant, they booked for 5 months but they had no idea when they would get ‘the call’. Even though they only booked for a certain time frame  I would get booking requests that I had to decline because I was unsure if they would be staying later and did not want to put them out during such a difficult time. I knew this was affecting my acceptance rate but I was informed that I should probably block my calendar, however I wasn’t sure they would be there so I also didn’t want to ‘close for business’. I feel there should be a feature where hosts aren’t penalized during extremely special circumstances such as something on the back end of AIRBNB where they can check a box ‘do not penalize‘  for declines, and maybe Airbnb can get signed medical records or something. This way someone can explain to people who want to make reservations that it ‘could’ be a possibility or tell them about a different property and not affect their acceptance rate.

[Carolyn39]

I completely agree with Greg about the issues of declining guests. Greg expressed perfectly, the conundrum airbnb hosts face. We often (and I mean OFTEN) get requests from airbnb guests who are asking for different dates or a one night minimum stay (which we don't offer). So I am forced to decline them. I feel sometimes airbnb's platform favors the guests rather then the hosts and that is challenging - becasuse we put our homes on the line (for guests who dont' always treat our property with respect), while guests can easily come & go and have little liabiities.

[Lauren338]

Dan, for some reason it won't let me reply to your message.  But I was going to say: Or maybe an EASY mechanism for the guest to ask questions about other dates without requiring them to "pick" from available dates. Most of the time they tell me, "sorry I don't actually want these dates but Airbnb made me pick dates"

[Grayson0]

@Airbnb4

The reply function is broken on these pages. "Unexpected error occured" 

1) Why not confirm with guest the dates and # of guests. The biggest complaint in comments above is guests not entering correct dates or  guest #s. 

2) Its great you force guests to read house rules before instant book. But it should really be required they read those before RTB as well. 

3) Many complain about needing more info from guests, who then don't respond, necessitating declines. Please offer another button, "Need response from guest before deciding". That would stop our countdown and put pressure on the guest to respond with a countdown on their side. If they don't respond (88% of time), they would lose their SuperGuest status! 🙂  Its only fair! 

4) I often want to offer guests a different room better suiting their needs. To do this, I must decline and then send an offer for another room. I have no idea if this counts as a decline. Even if I hosted the guest? Why not let me send an offer in direct response to RTB? 

[Amy843]

#3 is a great suggestion 

[Diana591]

I’m a super host and I’m getting solicitations from house keeping company’s requesting a date as a phony way of connecting 

I have to refuse cause they are Fake and then get penalized— this totally unfair and needs to be resolved ASAP 

[Melissa63]

Hello--just some feedback on the snoozing option: while snoozing my listing for a week or so while vacationing (and away from reliable wifi) the past 3 summers that I've been hosting, invariably a confirmed guest will message me with concern that my listing is no longer active. I wish there were a way to automatically communicate to confirmed guests that are trying to reach their reservation that the listing/host is merely on a short leave and that everything is fine with their reservation.

[Rick15]

I have the exact same issues with AIRBNB as many others.  WE have cats and even though I say in bold letters in the description I still want to make sure requestor knows we have cats so I don't Accept until we both agree that cats are no problem.  And then may not hear back and if the request expires I am penalized.  Very frustrating.

[Shona30]

Sometimes I get requests from people with large groups, dogs or just people I’m not comfortable letting stay in my home.  I don’t think it fair to penalise a host when they refuse to accept people travelling with say a dog when your listing says no pets and the guest is trying to get around that.  Also sometime large groups with toddlers want to book snd we've an unfenced pool so I don’t want to exclude children but need to be careful there too.

Also some guests don’t give you proper information about who will be staying in your home and you need to politely verify before being able to accept or decline.

[Sejla0]

You say you do nat have a way for fake booking requests?!

You just put : "fake request"

as a reason for declining ...

I ve even got a request to buy our house inside the booking request...

I do not think the aceptance rate is a measure of a great host.

[Rentals-One0]

Suggestions for Airbnb: (1) Measure acceptance rates only for requests from established good guests (prior bookings, good reviews); exclude new or underrated guests from percentages.  (2) Provide guests a clearer way to send an inquiry-only without entering bogus dates. There are legitimate reasons to decline 100% of certain request types, such as guests who intentionally enter wrong dates and inform us they have no real intention of booking the dates they entered, or new accounts with thin profile data seeking to book but unresponsive when asked questions or asked to provide a more complete profile. Those shouldn’t be subject to a %. The quality of requests is on Airbnb, not something hosts control. So far we haven’t run afoul or Airbnb’s percentages, but if we keep getting newbies with no reviews and no data, bogus dates, and pet people pleading with us despite clear ‘no exception’ language, our rate could well fall below the requirement. A more nuanced measurement system could help. 

[J124]

I will add my voice to the chorus of other hosts and Superhosts who have a problem with the acceptance rate being used as a performance metric. It is ill conceived and needlessly pressures hosts who are often 5 stars in every other category.  Whatever behavior you are seeking to modify in hosts should be researched more thoroughly. This is a really bad solution that will doubtless end up having unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. Find a different way to achieve whatever it is you are looking to achieve through punishing hosts for not always saying yes to everything and everyone. 

[Amy843]

Hear hear