Are days blocked during a booking request?

[Dylan1]

I've had some bad experiences this summer when I okayed renters who had no reviews. So now I ask them a few questions first.

Are the days blocked from the calendar while I decide whether to accept or decline their request? I just got a text message to that effect:

[Airbnb] [AIRBNB] ___ would like to stay on May 21-24 for $___. If you don't accept or decline, May 21-24 will remain blocked.

I responded within 5 minutes asking the prospective renter my questions and now it's been 24 hours and I haven't heard back.

Is the property really now blocked out while I try to ascertain if the renter would be a good fit? This feels like it's a new policy. Is it?

[Sarah977]

@Dylan1   If it's a request as opposed to an inquiry, and the guest doesn't answer your questions, you can't just let the request go over 24 hours without accepting or declining.  If they don't answer in time, just decline the request.

[Dylan1]

Thanks for your reply. I still have questions.

- Are the dates blocked out during the process? (Seems bad -- it would hold the listing hostage to slow repliers.)

- Is the policy new? I haven't seen the calendar blocked out before when I got requests.

- How many requests can I turn down before it hurts my rating? I'm wondering if I should simply not accept requests from those without reviews.

[Colleen253]

 @Dylan1 Yes dates are blocked. No this isn't new.

You would have to turn instant book on to set the requirement of previous reviews unless you want to be constantly declining guests who don’t fit that parameter. Declines will garner finger wagging messages from Airbnb but I’m not sure there is concrete proof anywhere of how it affects your listing negatively. Airbnb says many declines will affect your listing in search ranking and affect your booking rate over time but that could just be another example of the psychological manipulation they specialize in. 

Try to prompt guests to reply with more speed by reminding them they need to respond to your questions before their request expires in 24 hours. Or tell them they have x amount of hours to respond and if they don’t, you will have to decline.

[Emilia42]

@Dylan1 

Yes. When a guest sends a request (note that inquiries are different) to stay at your place your calendar is blocked with this "pending reservation." You can communicate with the guest all you like but only the action of an "Accept" will confirm the reservation or a "Decline" will release that dates on your calendar and make them available to all others. Unfortunately, it sounds like you did neither accept nor decline in the given 24 hour period which ultimately is considered by Airbnb as a lack of response. Because you did not respond with an accept or decline within the 24-hour window, Airbnb will block your calendar permanently. 

[Colleen253]

@Emilia42 If you let the clock run out, dates are blocked, but you can manually unblock them. That was my experience the one time I let that happen.

@Dylan1 

[Emilia42]

@Colleen253 Interesting, thanks. Not the end of the world then 🙂

[Colleen253]

@Emilia42 Not the end of the world, like they warn you it will be. But, you must endure finger wagging messages telling you you best get it together. What's interesting is my response rate is still 100%. I guess because I did respond to the guest, but let the clock run out when I got silence. 

[Sarah977]

@Dylan1  I have accepted guests with no reviews- it depends on how they communicate with me. Actually the same goes for guests with reviews. If they ignore any questions I might pose, or communicate poorly, I would decline. For guests with no reviews you might want to really make sure they have read the listing info thoroughly, house rules, etc.

If you decline a lot of requests, Airbnb will send you a warning and might even suspend your listing if there's a quite high percentage, so if you can get a guest to withdraw the request, you won't have to decline.

But declining is better than simply not clicking on either accept or decline before the click runs out, as Emilia explained. The first affects your Acceptance rate, which isn't even a criteria for Superhost, the latter affects your Response rate, which is.

And in case you aren't aware, if it's an Inquiry, as opposed to a Request, you don't have to either pre-approve or decline- just messaging back within 24 hours keeps your stats from being affected.