Bad changes in calendar settings

[Noor-En-Mat0]

Dear co hostst,

I want to express GREAT DISSAPOINTMENT in the fact that Airbnb changed the hosting settings to "blocking days where you do not want people to arrive", while before you could set an preferred arrival day for guests for any rental period.

Because of bad experiences with self check in, we want to check in our guests personally. Some weekends we would like to have guests arriving on a Friday for example and other weekends on a Sunday and most of the time we could welcome guests any time of the week.

Under these new settings we can only rule out days where people cannot arrive in general, so for the whole calendar. As a result:
1) we are forced to only let people check in on Friday  
2) or we need to set a limited amount of days for rentals for every single week forcing guests to check in on our preferred day.

Therefore managing the calendar is so much more inflexible which will lead to fewer bookings! We will miss out on all of those bookings for which we before could offer a check in on another day. And we will miss out on guests who find our minimum rental period too long.

For example: December 22 we can only have a check in on Friday and set a minimum stay of 4 days because it's Christmas. After four days we lower the price hoping that guests will book the whole week or longer.
If we would choose not to block arrival days in our settings, but we still want people to arrive on Friday 22, we need to block the calendar after 4 days, otherwise we could have people arrive on Tuesday when we cannot do a check in.

Conclusion:
These changes in the availability settings are counter productive, limiting hosts to a great extend, resulting in fewer booking and a let less rental income. After six years of being super host, we will change to another booking platform if Airbnb does not change the settings back to more flexibility for hosts in managing their calendar, minimum length of stay and preferred arrival day.

Are there any co hosts who share my views on this? Like to hear your thoughts and experiences

Thank you alle,

Noor (Utrecht and Reeuwijk, The Netherlands)

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Noor-En-Mat0 to do what you want you need to

1) Switch on pro tools in your account

2) Create rule sets that you can apply when you need them to various weekends etc.

[Breanna]

Hi @Noor-En-Mat0 

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. We will, of course, relay this. 

Were you able to use @Mike-And-Jane0's advice below to achieve what you needed with your calendar?

[Susan3695]

Absolutely, having the same problems. I am a Superhost for 7 years now. I have never seen such a mess in the Airbnb software. Airbnb doesn't seem to care either. I called the Superhost line in which we are supposed to get preferencial treatment. The agent was not knowledgable at all. They really don't care. Finally, they told me they couldn't do anything about it and closed the case. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!! I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN AIRBNB!

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Susan3695 Have you tried the published solution in  my post above?

[Susan3695]

Thank you so much! It worked!

[Sadara0]

Absolutely the worst software and design decisions. We should not have to go to a completely different part of the site to do things that we were able to do without issue on the Pricing and Availability page. This new Calendar configuration has less functionality, is less user friendly, and when when you call it may take the team weeks to ask a simple question, like " Where do I go on the site to do ABC, etc. that I used to do very easily on the Pricing and Availability page?"

I have had so many problems, I am tired of calling for and waiting 2-3 weeks to get an answer from agents who can't even answer the simplest questions.  And yes, this whole Pro Tools section is some more  new silliness! It was finally introduced to me after after repeated calls and complaints no one could help me determine why I had a $255 cleaning fee on my listing that prevented me from renting my unit for 4 weeks. 

Why is there bright idea to take everything from one comprehensive pricing page, break it up, and hide it in multiple places on the site.  AirBnb has no consideration for their hosts at all and they don't care how much you complain about what they done.