Changes to Instant Book

[Steven1713]

Hello Community, 

Has anyone else ran into this? Apparently Airbnb's new update to instant book allows guests to book your property whether or not you have implemented a number of days for advance notice. They can book at anytime and will be confirmed whether you approve or not. Here is the response from Airbnb when I asked about this issue:

So as I have checked there is an update if you are going to select instant book even if you will select that you get the request for approval so still if you will click on calendar one day Advance for approval thing still in instant book it will get automatically booked so if you want that you should get the option off Accepting or declining then you can go Ahead and change instant book to request to book as it is updated and as you said that you was not knowing and without you approved this reservation *, and it got automatically booked so as one time courtesy we can cancel the reservation and wave off all the consequences, but if in the future there is the same situation we will not be able to cancel and waved off all the consequences.

*[Sensitive information removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Joan2709]

@Shelley159 

Thanks for helping out...appreciate it. 

[Joan2709]

@Steven1713 

I believe you have your answer....Airbnb approved this booking to move the guest from another listing to yours without your approval and overrode your settings to do it. 

That is probably the only reason they cancelled the stay when you called them out on it....they messed up. They tried to couch it in terms they were doing you a "courtesy" when they were in the wrong to do what they did. My guess is they went looking for another listing that had instant book on (yours) and just mashed the button to override your settings instead of realizing you have 2Day Advance Notice set for a reason. The explanation is just "word salad" attempting to cover-up the real reason this happened. 

This is NOT a new setting for Instant Book as they claimed.

[Steven1713]

I think you are right Joan, unfortunately. Hopefully an isolated incident, thank you so much for your assistance!