Airbnb isAllowing Guests with Negative Reviews to Instant Book

[Lisa1980]

Hi Community,

I am a Superhost, Plus host and Ambassador. My listings are all turned on for Instant Book only because I have also clicked on the following listing option too: 

Host recommendation required. Require guests to have recommendations from other Airbnb Hosts and no negative reviews. If they don’t meet this requirement, they will send a request instead.

So far, this has worked and I have been able to review inquiries from guests who have less than 5-star reviews. Yet yesterday a guest with a 2-star review was able to Instant Book. Airbnb said they would cancel "as a courtesy" but that if I no longer wanted guests with bad reviews to book I would have to turn off Instant Book. 

WHAT?! This is one of the very few if any penalties Airbnb imposes on guests with bad behavior and runs counter to its stated policy. Airbnb needs to clearly define what "negative" is and enforce this or I will stop hosting and move to another platform. Please let me know if you have had similar experiences or what recourse there is here. 

Thank you, 

Lisa

[Kim1091]

This happened to me as well but under a slightly different circumstance. We have a two day notification for booking so that we have time to prepare the home before guests arrive. This is blocked on the calendar and set in our settings. A guest was able to bypass this and was arriving the next day. We had to scramble to get make sure everything was set in the home. In addition, the guest departure did not provide the two day time line for the next guest which left us rushing to prepare again. Airbnb could not explain and informed me I would have to turn off Instant book to prevent this from happening. 

[Lisa1980]

Thank you @Kim1091. Yikes, and it seems they are having problems with Instant Book settings. 

[Kelly149]

@Lisa1980 I once had a CS tell me that guests were only barred from IB when they had repeated all 1* reviews. Who knows. But you’re right abb isn’t very forthcoming about their definitions for their actions. 

[Lisa1980]

Considering that they have stringent requirements for hosts based on defined performance metrics, they really should have the same for guests and guests should be aware of what a negative review is and how it can impact them. There are so few penalties or disincentives for guests to behave poorly. This is a weakness in a platform that otherwise does a great job.

[Fred13]

They also give 10% discount on many occasions when someone books 7 days or more. Not always, but sometimes, depending on whether their computer develops an emotional attachment to a particular guest.

[Kendra114]

I could go on for days about what kinds of guests get through to us: 1 day bookings on holiday weekends, horrible guests with fake 5 star reviews, my reviews on bad guests repeatedly being removed, I have now resorted to basically warning anyone who makes a reservation with us that they will be evicted if they don’t follow our rules. It’s freaking ridiculous!

[Kendra114]

Oh, and here’s a new one! I declined a request for very good reasons and the guest was able to send me another request from the same account!

[Huma0]

@Kendra114 

Declining a guest doesn't mean they can't send another request. There is nothing to stop them doing this. For example, I recently declined a guest because he didn't respond to my questions within the 24 hour deadline. He got back to me shortly after to apologise, saying he didn't realise his notifications were off. He was able to send another request.

I've also had guests whose instant bookings I cancelled simply book again!

If you want to prevent this, you need to block the guest. You can do this from the messaging thread. You hit the little flag icon next to one of their messages. You then have to choose 'they're being offensive' (I don't know why, but that is the only option you can choose if you want to block, rather than report, them).

[Kendra114]

Okay thanks for this info. I had no idea declines could resubmit. Good to know.