Communication issue with potential guest

[Jasmine390]

Hi fellow hosts!

My husband and I recently listed our vacation home on Airbnb, we are brand new to this and still in the learning process. I ran into my first unhappy exchange with a potential guest, any advice would be welcome!

We don’t have instant booking on as our community has very strict rules about STR, all bookings need to fully register with the HOA with names and contact from every guest on a stay. So we made it a rule that guests need to communicate to acknowledge this prior to booking. For guests without reviews, my take is as long as they communicate well, and they are ID verified, I’ll take the shot, after all we were all new once. 

So two days ago I received a booking request with one sentence saying they’d like to getaway for a weekend in February. The account was then brand new on Airbnb with only phone number verified. I quickly responded to them asking for 1) ID verification and 2) guest names. I even sent reminders the next day, but got no response so declined before my time ran out. I also left them a very nice message saying they are welcome to rebook once they see the message and get the info fixed. 

Within five minutes they resend the request. Still NO reply to any of my messages. NO verification. I left another nice note to reiterate my points. Meanwhile I contacted Support to see if they can reach out to this guest and help them navigate the message on app. (I was suspecting this could be a new user and just didn’t see any of the messages. ) Later last night I did see their ID was verified, but still not a word of response to my messages. 

Support was not helpful at all, when I finally got on the phone with them today, they said unless I confirm the booking, they can’t reach out to the guest. I said I don’t want to confirm booking unless I know the guest is able to communicate. I also don’t want to get my rating reduced by keep rejecting the same request. Then the support person suggested I report the account! She made a firm case about either take the risk and confirm the booking, or report the account so they cannot keep booking with me. 

I caved and declined the booking a second time, with a report filed. There were some very limited choices for the reporting, but I did feel extremely frustrated with the situation. I did want to help out this guest if all they need is a nudge for how to communicate, but I didn’t want to take any risk with our house and all the strict community rules. 

then earlier this evening I finally received the first reply from this guest. They were apparently angry at me for being not helpful at all for a first timer on Airbnb. (Despite all the messages I sent them in the past two days. ) Needless to say I feel rather awful now...

Should I have just accepted the request? Should I have handled this differently? Please let me know what you think. Thanks for any advice.

[Sandra126]

Yet again customer service does a disservice, and you have two declines. This is not your fault, you really tried. 

[Jasmine390]

Thank you Sandra. Yes I was passed around multiple times never receiving any follow up from Chat Support, until I decided to give them a call. Still not what I expected as "customer service"...

[Sarah977]

@Jasmine390  Don't feel awful- you did what many of us would have done. No, you shouldn't have accepted. There's  only so much hand-holding you can do with a guest. A guest who doesn't bother to respond to your messages, and then gets angry, is not a guest you want.

Even if he didn't realize he had messages waiting (which it seemed that he did read, as he uploaded verified ID when asked to) he would have seen your messages when he sent you his angry message. A good guest would have said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't see your messages until now", and answered your questions.

He probably doesn't read the listing info, either, and would get angry about stuff that wasn't to his liking during the stay. You dodged a bullet with this guest, I think.

Sometimes guests do not have their notifications turned on and if the booking is confirmed, and guests aren't answering, you can try texting or phoning them to say you've sent them an Airbnb message, to please respond, and that they should make sure they have their notifications turned on. 

But you can't do that with a request, because you don't have their phone number yet. You can ask them in message to make sure to turn on notifications, but if they aren't bothering to read or respond, that's pointless.

[Jasmine390]

Thank you so much Sarah! What you said gave me some much needed relief. I did have a bad feeling about non-responsive guests. Like you said, I totally understand if someone have the notification turned off and never bother checking the app, I did have to contact one of my confirmed guests via their phone number and found out they just didn't pay attention to the app messages. 

But with this failed booking experience, you are right, I likely have dodged a bullet. Perhaps some guests are still more used to the Expedia/hotel booking experience where you pick, pay, done. And what if these guests also treat our homes like hotel...