Incorrect booking

[Rosemary280]

I am new to Airbnb - this is my first listing - I listed 2 rooms and I thought it was the same price for each room.  Now a family of 5 have booked for 34 days for just $1000 - because Airbnb then added new listing discount plus longterm discount - if it were for just a night I would wear it but this is for an entire month.  I just can't do that. I see the cancellation policy and that is terrible. Any ideas on how to fix this dilemma?

[Sarah977]

You could try contacting Airbnb and plead new host ignorance and beg to have them cancel it for you penalty-free. If it was an Instant Book, you get 3 free Instant Book cancellations per year.

At this point, unless you have already changed those settings, I would snooze the listing and make sure everything is set up the way you want it before making it live again. Also, I would suggest that you set a maximum stay of 2 weeks or less. As a new host, hosting in your home, you really don't want to get stuck with an objectionable guest for a long period of time.

And you might also want to turn off Instant Book until you get more experienced. If guests have to send you a booking request, you would have seen what the price they were given was, been able to explain that it was wrong, and not accepted the booking, rather than have to deal with cancelling it after the fact.

@Rosemary280

[Colleen253]

@Rosemary280 First of all, turn Instant Book off, immediately. That way you get to pre screen and have to manually approve bookings. If you had had Request to Book enabled instead, you would have been able to see what was going on with the price, and been able to correct it. With instant book, you do have some leeway to cancel, though (see below)

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/2022/can-a-host-cancel-a-reservation-without-adverse-consequences

You could also try getting Airbnb to cancel neutrally without penalty, citing being a new host, that you were not aware the new listing discount would be combined with the long stay discount.