Are there any penalties For Blocking Dates in your calendar?

[Carmela-And-Jim0]

Are there penalties associated with blocking the calendar for six consecutive months?

[Marzena4 · Accepted solution]

No, there aren't to my knowledge, @Carmela-And-Jim0. You can also snooze the listing (it disappears from the search results) - no penalties either.

[Carmela-And-Jim0]

Marzena, we will read up on snoozing.  That might be a better option for us.  Thank you.

[Alexandra316]

@Carmela-And-Jim0 This is a really interesting question, and I'd really like to know the definitive answer. There are no direct penalties, per se, but in my experience, there IS a downside/backdoor penalty. I have a vacation home in a resort that's only open for 6 months of the year, so I block my calendar for the other 6 months when it's closed so I don't waste potential guests' time. Not all of the hosts in the resort are as responsible, and they leave their calendars open and just don't allow instant booking. I have noticed that my listing has a very poor ranking, even though my stats are great and I'm a Superhost (due to the performance of my primary listing). As a result, I have almost no bookings for my resort property through Airbnb. In contrast, my primary listing, which has no blocked days, performs amazingly well: I'm ranked #2 out of approximately 300 local listings.

I don't have any concrete evidence directly from Airbnb to show that blocking dates affects performance, but I think it does based on my experience. Make of that what you will.

Another annoyance associated with blocking off so much time is that I'm CONSTANTLY receiving messages from Airbnb to unblock my days.

[Carmela-And-Jim0]

This home is located in a four season resort area as well and we offer the home to our family and friends during the spring and summer seasons free of charge.  Going forward we might have to charge them $20 a week via airbnb just to maintain our current status.

[Karen1027]

Alexandra this was a very interesting read. Airbnb were not giving me enough bookings and I was therefore forced to list on other popular sites, and thank goodness I did otherwise I would not have done the business I have done. I have also been very uncertain about smart pricing as the suggested rates are far too low, but I have found that when I de-activate from it my airbnb is very quiet. Today I forwarded a message to support to ask for some information as it is very difficult to understand exactly how it works.  And the same problem, constantly receiving messages from Airbnb to switch to smart pricing as well as to unblock my days. I block the days which are booked by guests on other sites and always have wondered whether we are penalised in some way or the other, such as ranking. I would also love to hear what other hosts are thinking.

[Steve143]

Hello @Carmela-And-Jim0,

Three are no specific penalties imposed by Airbnb for blocking the calendar for long periods but there could be some consequences.

Your listing may go down the list in search results. If you have dates marked as available up to and after the 6 month period and guests book for those dates before and during the 6 months this effect should be reduced.

The post below gives some indications of what affects search result placement.

Your-top-questions-about-Airbnb-Search

Depending on how many guests you usually have per month you may have fewer than 10 guests in the previous 365 days when the first superhost assesment is done after the 6 month block period. If that were the case you'd loose superhost status. If you usually have more than 10 guests per 6 months then you should be OK.

Steve.

[Carmela-And-Jim0]

Thank you for your quick response, Steve.  The link was very helpful.  We will have in excess of 10 bookings prior to the blockage so that makes us feel somewhat better.