@Adrienne174 You need to respond to an inquiry or request within 24 hours. There are no penalties for responding anytime within that window.
For an inquiry, you only need to message the inquirer back. You don't need to either pre-approve or decline. Messaging back fulfills your obligation.
For a request- you must either accept or decline within 24 hours. You can message back and forth with the guests within that time frame, but don't let the request expire without either accepting, declining or convincing the guest to withdraw the request if it is inappropriate for some reason.
So no, you don't have to be a slave to answering immediately. Hosts have lives, other jobs, and need to sleep sometimes. No need to wake up at 3 am to answer a message that just came through, or run afoul of your boss by answering Airbnb messages during work time.
Of course you should try to answer as soon as possible, but don't stress out about it.
Communication is one of the categories guests rate hosts on after a stay. But it is highly unlikely that a guest would mark you down because it took you 2 hours to respond to their booking request. Poor communication ratings are given by guests if a guest finds it impossible to contact the host after booking (like the host doesn't respond for days), if they can't gain access to the unit on check-in day and the host is unreachable, or if they encounter issues during their stay and the host is unresponsive.
And if you have upcoming guests, but might be going camping for the weekend, or will be busy with your kid's birthday party, you can always message your guests beforehand to let them know not to worry if they send you a message and you don't respond immediately, you have some commitments to attend to for a couple days and that you'll get back to them as soon as you are able.
