Decline or not to decline

[Terri129]

Actual scenario: host receives booking inquiries for dates that are already blocked or booked. Host declines the bookings. Airbnb threatens to suspend host for declining too many bookings.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Terri129 you can avoid this problem once you know that an inquiry just needs responding to. You can (and should?) choose not to decline or accept the inquiry. If it is a request however you will need to accept or decline it.

[Terri129]

Thanks, I just received a message from support saying I don't need to accept or decline a "request."

[Mark116]

@Terri129  That's wrong.  If it is an 'inquiry' then all you have to do is respond within 24 hours, you don't have to accept or decline.  If it is a 'request to book' then you absolutely have to accept it or decline it within 24 hours.

[Terri129]

[Colleen253]

@Terri129 You need to understand the difference between ‘Request’ and ‘Inquiry’. The resource center article below does a deep dive into both.

https://www.airbnb.ca/resources/hosting-homes/a/understanding-response-rate-and-acceptance-rate-86

[Terri129]

I do know the difference.

[Lisa723]

@Terri129 what @Mark116 told you is correct. You only need to reply to an inquiry. You will be penalized if you do not accept or decline a trip request. If CS told you anything else they were just making stuff up, as usual.

But also, it's generally impossible to send (or receive) an inquiry or a trip request for dates that are already booked or blocked. Are you absolutely sure that's what happened?

[Terri129]

It happened three times.

[Sarah977]

@Lisa723  Maybe the guests entered dates that were available so they could send an Inquiry about the dates they actually wanted. I've had guests do that. But Terri doesn't say if that was the case.

[Terri129]

The dates they "requested" a booking were already blocked. They shouldn't have been able to. Then I had to decline it. Then Airbnb sends me an email saying my account will be suspended for too many "declines."

[Lisa723]

@Terri129 were they booked, or blocked?

If the dates were booked, in Airbnb, it really should not be (and has never been, in my experience) possible to send or receive a trip request or inquiry. If you theoretically accepted it then you would be double-booked, which Airbnb does not allow.

If the dates were blocked, then it is more plausible, as there are many reports of Airbnb "glitches" unblocking dates that hosts had blocked. This one has happened to me and many others. In this case I would call CS and tell them the request should not have been possible and ask them for a penalty-free decline.

If requests/inquiries for booked/blocked dates are happening to you regularly, something is very wrong. This should never happen.

[Sarah977]

@Lisa723  In my experience, they refuse to remove a stat ding, even if it was their fault. Like when I missed seeing a request before it expired because my alerts suddenly stopped, which they admitted was their tech glitch.

Something weird about that one, though, is that it was my response rate that got dinged, even though I've read here that an expired request counts as a decline, and dings your acceptance rate. Or maybe it's changed since that happened to me years ago?

[Lisa723]

@Sarah977 I was not suggesting declining then asking for forgiveness. I was suggesting asking Airbnb to do a penalty-free decline/cancel. When my high-demand dates were wrongly unblocked I suddenly got a couple of instant bookings; I called Airbnb and asked them for penalty-free cancellations, which they did. Of course, that was a while ago...

[Sarah977]

@Lisa723  Ah. I read Terri's post as saying she had already declined and gotten a warning message re "too many declines".