How long to wait for reply from guest before declining?

[Andrea-and-Glenn0]

Yesterday we had a request to book and we had one simple question we asked and expected a reply. 

My question is “how long do most hosts wait to decline a booking request when the potential guest does not respond to a direct question?”

Do I wait 23 1/2 hours and hurt my response time? What is reasonable?

Thanks in advance/Andrea and Glenn

[Emiel1]

@Andrea-and-Glenn0 

It is advised to sent the guest 1 or 2  reminders about the unanswerred question and also ask the guest to retract the booking if not interested anymore.

If nothing happens and you need to decline, then choose "feel uncomfortable" and reason "the guest is not communicating"

[Andrea-and-Glenn0]

@Emiel1  Thanks, you are always so helpful. I’ve used other examples you’ve given others here regarding communications with guests and wordings for certain circumstances. 

Thanks again/Glenn & Andrea

[Brian2036]

3 days ago I received a booking request that was rather suspicious. It came in very late just as I was about to go to bed.

 I answered immediately and asked a simple question.

 The guest never replied.

 The next morning I requested that he either respond or withdraw his request. 

No response. At 5 PM I declined his booking.

Today I accepted a booking from a guest who appears to be much more desirable and has rented in this remote area three times before.

[Emiel1]

@Brian2036 

it can be even more worse:

This week i received 4 booking request AT ONCE for 4 midweeks in september from a guest (student) never stayed with me before. September is a busy month, as new semester for students starts, so this guest blocks all oppertunities for fellow students. I told her this behaviour is not OK and to retract the requests. She started argueing in an unpleasant way and retracted one request.

I asked again to retract the other 3 request. She did not, and as i did not want to perform 3 declines, i let them expire and airbnb blocks the dates (which i unblocked).

These people bringing a lot of annoyance by hassling with your calender and at the end I (the host !) get the  "reprimands" from aunt Airbnb letting 3 request expiring (otherwise be declined, but i guess same punishment)

SO: for the first time in my "hosting career": I reported the guest profile to Airbnb and blocked the guest. Never ever knock on my door again !

[Brian2036]

@Emiel1 :

 I wonder if that “guest” was actually planning to stay at your place or if she would have canceled at the last minute for some fabricated reason.

Possibly she was trying to make things difficult for other students in order to gain some advantage for herself.

 I am confused about this issue with response/accept/decline.

If a prospective guest contacts the host, asking for preapproval, and the host responds with a question, doesn’t that count as a prompt response?

If the guest then refuses to respond, or responds inappropriately but refuses to withdraw the request, and the host declines to approve within 24 hours, does this somehow count against the host?

 I would think that it would be better to decline than to let the request expire.

[Sarah977]

@Brian2036   You are mixing up Inquiries and Requests. An Inquiry has the options to Pre-approve or Decline. But simply responding to an Inquiry message, without pre-approving or declining, is all that is required. You can then forget about it. There are no penalties if you have answered the Inquiry.

The options on a Request are Accept or Decline. You have to do one or the other within 24 hours unless you can get the guest to withdraw the request before the clock runs out.

[Brian2036]

@Sarah977 :

Thanks for the explanation. 

This seems to be needlessly complicated.

We ought to be able to simply say “I felt unsafe” as a reason for declining either an Inquiry or a Request.

That seems to be enough to get a rotten guest a refund and have the host’s listings frozen. It should work both ways.

[Sarah977]

@Brian2036 "We ought to be able to simply say “I felt unsafe” as a reason for declining either an Inquiry or a Request."

But you never have to decline an Inquiry, and shouldn't. You just answer the inquiry. It will expire in 24 hours with no penalties to you. So inquiries are not problematic, aside from being annoying if the guest is asking you to make some exception for them bringing their dog or chimpanzee or is asking for discounts.

The issue is inappropriate Requests, because we are forced to decline if the guest won't withdraw the request in time. 

And I agree we shouldn't be dinged for declining those if the guest sounds like a dingbat.

[Andrea-and-Glenn0]

@Emiel1  As a follow up question, when a guest booking request is decline, is that same guest then still able to submit more requests for other dates or is that guest blocked?

There needs to be a mechanism to block guests and block any future bookings from those guests. 

How do you report a guest profile on AirBnb and block future request? There is no category for that only other choices that make absolutely no sense. 

Help, I need this latest guest decline to go away, stop contacting me to plead their case, just want them to go away. 

[Cari3]

HI Andrea and Glenn.... I don't know if this would help you but a mere inquiry doesn't automatically block those dates on a calendar.  I'm always given a choice about whether I wish to block those dates for the guest.   I used to always block their dates from being booked while they got back to me.  But I no longer do that.  That way my calendar stays open and if another booking comes in in the meanwhile that's too bad for them.  And if they want to make an inquiry about multiple dates, all those dates still stay open for other guests.  Even if you've blocked those dates off off for this guest, you can still go in anytime and unblock them.  Kindly Cari

[Andrea-and-Glenn0]

@Cari3  It was a request to book and not an inquiry. 

[Colleen253]

@Andrea-and-Glenn0 Airbnb is loathe to turn away any potential booking and they don't care much about host preference. So no, that guest is not blocked from sending you future requests or inquiries etc. The only way to block someone is through reporting them. Again, Airbnb purposely makes this awkward and difficult. I have reported/blocked many a guest, and just select any reason. Then I briefly explain the real reason I'm reporting them (in order to block), and request Airbnb to implement a better way to do that. Once done that, you're given the option to 'block'.

[Andrea-and-Glenn0]

Thanks @Colleen253 we appreciate the feedback. When we first started I was advised that declining  a reservation request would automatically block attempts to rebook but now of course I know this to be untrue. 

I guess in the future, I’ll manipulate the system and report a guest for something else on the list to facilitate my needs. What a shame, really a shame it’s not simpler to do for hosts. 

I found this explanation on how to block from another posting when I searched the forum for “blocking”

Does anyone if we can still block guests using these methods? From Google chrome desktop I clicked either on the flag and also tried to report user...then it gave me another option of inappropriate, discriminatory, abusive. Does it matter which one? I read click on being abusive. How do you clarify that they are not and you want to block them ( that's what I believe I read)? Is this still working? Anyone blocked people recently?

Edit: I tried it and it didn't seem to work. I reported guest as abusive and went to next screen to type in some details and said I wanted to block her. But the message thread is still there, still showing in my inbox. Nothing states I blocked her. Maybe I missed the option to click on Block here, but I was able to do it -->below.

EDIT #2: I GOT THE BLOCK THING TO WORK! From the flag in the message thread I clicked on report, then on being abusive and told why I was uncomfortable and wanted to block this person and this time it a block option came up to click on. And I got a confirmation that at least she won't be able to send me messages or also reservation requests (as I looked further at the message!). Great to know this... I wonder if it affects us with the algorithm if we do this ( I want to do more...)