Anyone else experiencing this? Recent influx of requests from guests who just joined, without reviews, or profile pictures.

[Christina142]

Hello,

I'm an experienced Airbnb Superhost.  I have a couple policies in place due to past bad experiences.  I host guests who have a minimum of three (3) positive host reviews, and no negative host reviews.  I state this on my listings, and these policies have made my Airbnb hosting career much better.

However, the last couple days I've received six (6) requests to book from guests who just joined the platform, with no reviews, no profile picture, and minimal verification.  This is a high number of requests for me, and is coupled with the previously mentioned lack of qualifiers.  I gently declined all six (6) requests as they didn't meet the guest qualifications.  But, it strikes me as odd to have such a large influx of requests, all new to the platform, all lacking reviews, with minimal verification,  and without profile pictures. 

Why would this be happening?  Is anyone else having a similar experience with requests/potential guests? 

My Airbnb's are in Sacramento.  I thought it might be Covid-19 eviction related due to the Corona-virus reversal  of the moratorium of evictions.  But, evictions in Sacramento are upheld until the end of November.  I'm just curious if any other folks are experiencing similar requests and understand why they are occurring at such high rates.

[Bryan10]

I just had one of these today too - first time user with no reviews and just a first name, wants to arrive tomorrow and stay for 3 weeks, and.... you guessed it: she wants swap ph numbers and to pay cash. You can guess my reply lol.  The guest is called Vicki and my spare room is near Heathrow airport, London. 

[Cathy585]

Hi, I had a several inquires lately about " get togethers"  or " baby shower" .  I am starting to get worried about the vetting of guests that Airbnb is doing. It is difficult to evaluate when you have little to go on. If you have a full name and city sometimes you can "google" the names.  They have cut their staff so maybe that has something to do with it.

[Jennifer1351]

Does Airbnb vet guests? I didn't know they actually did. What do they or did they do to vet guests? I've gotten requests from time to time for people who just have a phone number, and they need an email to use Airbnb. You won't get the full name until after they have booked.

[Sarah977]

@Cathy585  Yeah, what's with the baby shower thing?  I've been to lots of baby showers. They were small gatherings with not more than 10 other gals- best friends and family and were always just held either in the home of the mom-to-be or one of her friend's or relative's places. Since when do people need to rent a place to hold a baby shower? Maybe the mom-to-be doesn't have a big place, but surely one of the other people who would be invited would have adequate space to host the gathering.

[Anonymous]

There is no vetting of guests. 

[Christine615]

I changed my perspective:

1. I've always had a setting that prevents instant booking if the guest does not have an ID on file with Airbnb. I just changed to also require a previous host recommendation.  But ALL of my recent requests seem to be coming after midnight (4 am, 1 am) from local guests or regional guests and for a booking only days away. Zero reviews, no last name, no profile bio, and in one case, no city listed. Only email and phone number verified (but hidden by Airbhb) which is ludicrous. I believe that Airbnb is stacking the deck and pushing us to first time users to artificially inflate its numbers in advance of the IPO. None of those guests seem to respond when I request more information.

2. BE CAREFUL - the moratorium on evictions has expired. So a lot of people are about to end up on the street because they lost their jobs and can't pay rent. Some hosts on another forum are relating stories about guests who book for a few days then won't leave. One produced a phony lease and forged the owners name and changed the locks. Police were called.

It's getting scary out there. I just turned a guest down that has been a member for three years and has ZERO reviews but is local and wanted to book for 24 hours later for four adults but wouldn't answer any questions about who and why.

Something just doesn't feel right about this.

[Anonymous]

@Christina142  It's very likely that all of the requests came from the same person, creating various accounts under fake names. Last-minute bookings are quite often for bad reasons - maybe the guest got kicked out of their current Airbnb, or they intend to throw a party.

You can spare yourself a lot of this particular hassle by adjusting your calendar settings to automatically block same-day and next-day bookings. You can always selectively unblock a specific date if there's a space you really want to fill.

[Christine615]

I just confirmed that the guest Airbnb is blocking for being 24 has a mutual friend in town. That friend, confirmed the young lady is not a party person. She's a self-employed, single mom with a kid who has a friend visiting the area.  But after 30 minutes trying to get Airbnb to remove the "block"  (why does Airbnb allow people to inquire, then block them when the host agrees to host them) I gave up and told her to come over anyway because we'd just consider her to be a friend of a friend. She doesn't have any reviews because Airbnb has been blocking people under 25 renting whole places (even though our building has an owner occupied unit) so she's been finding those same hosts on VRBO and booking that way. Smart lady. We weren't on VRBO hence the delay.

But now I'm considering doing a second platform like VRBO and Homeway to supplement because I can not take another day of the blank profiles and missing photographs and Airbnb thinking that verifying an email and phone number is considered a background check. If Airbnb blocks a guest they should be required to pay for that lost income.

Better yet, maybe they should consider us "employees" and give us stock options because they hold all the cards and arbitrarily change the TOS at will. I have a second guest who is "stuck" in the system now too. She shows "not possible" but unless she started having children at the age of 12, she's old enough to pass the "25" filter. The reservation is for her and her kids, not her and a bunch of adults. Still, Airbnb is messing that up too.

Airbnb keeps shooting it's own foot with these knee jerk decisions. I swear, a handful of people do something stupid and Airbnb blocks everyone in that category. That IPO is doomed if they keep this up.

[Sarah977]

@Christine615  Interestingly, the courts just ruled that Uber drivers must be considered to be employees. Uber has been fighting this for quite awhile. It's a precedent and Airbnb could be challenged in exactly the same way. Either hosts are left to work things out with their guests themselves, without Airbnb trying to micromanage everything, or we are their employees if they insist on butting their nose in everywhere.

[Christine615]

That’s exactly what I was thinking. They can’t continue to control all aspects of our business then call us independent contract. The proof is that they are censoring our communications and substituting their own language.