Penalised for not accepting booking requests

[Brian686]

It looks like we are now being penalised for not accepting booking requests - what I am referring to is booking requests, not cancelling confirmed bookings. 

I have instant book but people who don’t meet the requirements for this can still request to book even though they don’t meet our requirements. These were declined within the 24 hours. 

It now looks like we are expected to take whoever, regardless of whether they meet requirements or not. If you don’t accept booking requests there is certainly penalties in that we apparently don’t meet the basic requirements for hosting. Just another attempt at bullying hosts into taking whoever requests to book. 

Brian

[Emilia42]

@Brian686 

What is your penalty? 

[Robin4]

@Brian686 

Brian we have always been penalised for not accepting reservation requests. The odd rejection we can get away with but, if you go to your performance section > Superhost > Basic requirements you will be faced with a similar screen to this.....

If you have declined a few which has taken your Reservation Acceptance rate below 88% Airbnb will take action against you. This action will most probably be to suspend your listing for a certain amount of time and your stats will take  a hit. 

You are right, we are being forced to accept anyone who happens to look at our listing, but this is nothing new, It's been going on for a few years.....maybe your declines have got to the point where they have tripped the acceptance algorithm!

Sorry I can't put a more positive spin on it mate, just the joys of being an Airbnb host!

Cheers.......Rob

[Anonymous]

@Robin4  There is no automatic penalty that kicks in when the acceptance rate goes below the 88% target. Mine has almost never been above 70%, but the only consequence I've experienced was an obnoxious warning message.

@Brian686  I'm curious about what your actual penalty was, and what your Acceptance Rate was when it was imposed.

For what it's worth, this issue has been a bugbear for years, and Airbnb has been conspicuously silent on it. Note the date on this post:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Stop-penalizing-hosts-who-decline-inappropriate-reque...

[Alon1]

@Brian686 

The simplest solution and first one worth trying is rather than declining a reservation request, politely give the reason why your place is not suitable, and request that the Guest 'WITHDRAW REQUEST'. The Guest has this option. You can further inform the Guest they will not lose any money as no booking has taken place, and they are free to transfer their payment to another Host & Listing.

I found this method works smoothly in about 90% of cases. The odd ones rather insist I do the Cancellation. In which case, I wait till the last of the 24 hours. By then some of them are fed up with waiting and end up withdrawing the request.

[Sarah977]

The requirements you can choose if you use Instant Book exist specifically because guests who IB do not have to communicate with the host first. Hosts who do not use IB or who do, but also get requests as you do, use the Airbnb messaging to communicate with guests to determine whether we feel they will be decent guests, as well as reading ay past reviews they may have. 

If you are simply declining all the requests you receive just because they didn't meet your IB requirements, that's a pretty strange way of running your hosting business, and I imagine that while Acceptance rate isn't a huge deal, as Andrew mentioned, if you decline every request, Airbnb may eventually delist you.

You aren't expected to accept every request, but rejecting all of them isn't okay. You need to communicate with the guests who send requests to determine if they will be suitable guests.

@Brian686 

[Richard1830]

Not sure if this is related but I've had the following situation:.

Woke up to one enquiry and one booking request for similar dates.

The inquiry could lead to a more valuable booking BUT the booking request has now blocked out those dates even though I haven't accepted it. That didn't use to be the case....has it changed?

I have Instant Book turned off due to some issues over the summer.

[Anonymous]

@Richard1830 That one isn't new. It's always been the case that a Request blocks the calendar dates until you take action and either accept or decline it.

If you wanted to take your chances on the inquiry, you could have freed up the dates by first declining the request. That's not a strategy I would personally recommend, though, since a substantial portion of inquiries don't ultimately convert into bookings. 

[Richard1830]

Thanks @Anonymous  it's the first time I've encountered it in 2 years, bit maybe I've never had an enquiry and a request at the same time.

I used to have to "pre-approve" guests before they could book...or does that only apply to inquiries?

Sorry if this sounds like a newbie question but it felt as if something had changed.

[Anonymous]

@Richard1830  "pre-approve" has always applied only to inquiries - that's when the guest clicks "Contact host" instead of proceeding to "Reserve." A guest can inquire about any number of properties before they make a decision.

In contrast, a Request is binding, as the guest has already approved payment. If you accept a request, the booking is automatically confirmed.