Recent influx of suspicious booking requests??

[Jenn62]

I'm an Airbnb host in a major city (Philly) and ever since the covid lockdown started, I've gotten a lot of booking requests that are really weird because they all have the same red flags in common. My property manager doesn't accept suspicious bookings and there have always been a few once in a while, but recently that's the ONLY kind of booking request that I have received (about 12 total).  

The people making requests all have: 

- NO profile pics
- ALL are local from Philly
- ALL profiles are minimally verified
- All requests are for ~2 days on random dates this and next month (but 3 of them requested the same dates in June, a random mon - wed)
- Almost no one has any reviews
- No request really has a solid/detailed message stating their purpose for booking 

It almost feels like they are fake accounts compared to all the successful bookings I've had the entire time before the lock-down. I have a couple of theories but I'm not sure how much water they hold lol.. Eg. I know that Airbnb's algorithm accounts for the number of bookings a host accepts, so maybe now the time's tough and people are looking to take competition out by trying to lower their search ranking? Or maybe people are getting sick so they are looking for other places to shelter their family temporarily? 

I've also been reading up on the sketchy stuff happening on both sides of the Airbnb business so this is worrying me a bit. So I'm wondering if anyone else has this happened to them, or knows what is going on?

[Inna22]

@Jenn62 I have been getting a lot requests that seem to be local parties but that is because prices are cheap and calendar is open (I think). Also new members for the most part with minimal profiles if any

[Jenn62]

@Inna22 I'm not sure why all these locals would need to rent an Airbnb down the street for just a few days? Usually we don't let them book as they are just looking for a place to trash that's not their own house for parties, but I doubt all these people are having parties in the middle of a lockdown? 

[Inna22]

@Jenn62 absolutely non stop parties here in Chicago. 150+ people at each, several disbursed every weekend by police

[Pat271]

I had a booking recently - the guest lived in the same city, and gave me the reason “Just want to come and have a good time”. That’s it.  Last minute, 2-night stay, in the middle of the week. An odd request, to be sure, but these are odd times.  Normally, a firm NO from me, but I spent a bit more time chatting with her, and she was responsive, appreciative and friendly, and she had 2 decent reviews, so I accepted.

She and her fiancé were lovely, and left the place in wonderful shape.

I think there are a subset of locals during this shutdown that are tense, frustrated, worried, and really in need of a change of scenery.  I don’t know of a foolproof way to separate out this type of guest from the ones that just want to trash my house instead of theirs, but I guess I just want to put it out there that there might be a few more reasons now why locals might want to book.

[Sam397]

Well first of all you will be getting people without reviews because they are new to BnB because hotels are closed, the no profile pic has become common with my guest since BnB changed it to where they didnt need to have them( I would say half of my guest dont use a pic of themselves).  As far as the number of days I would imagine that has something to do with nobody's taking long trips right now and them having the minimum of verification's shouldn't be a concern because why would people put in more than they need too, and a lot of people dont go into great detail as to why they are coming down because its just not the host business.

I myself always thought that host who refuse a guest because of so called red flags are only costing themselves money for no reason. I personally have had at least a 100 guest that had one or more of the red flags you mentioned as well as others and I have not refused any of them and not one of them ended up being a bad guest.

And if your property manager is denying people because of these red flags you might want to think about finding another one because they should know that you cant deny someone because they dont put a pic of themselves or any of the other so called red flags.

In my opinion red flags are not something that should be considered when determining on if a guest should be allowed because they are based on assumption and you know what they say about assuming something. Just an example of why you shouldnt look at red flags is  the no profile pic, first off if someone was worried about putting a pic of themselves they would just use a photo thats not them, second there is a hell of a lot more chance that someone didnt do it because they just dont like their pics than someone doing it because they plan on doing something bad.

Besides that who is the one who determined that something is a red flag, how can a person not having a review be considered a red flag, every single guest didnt have a review at one time. 

[Jenn62]

@Sam397Yes I totally agree with you with everything you said - if they really wanted to have a fake profile it wouldn't be hard at all! 

But how weird is this:

Still ONLY getting bookings from accounts with all the "red flags" (no pics no reviews etc), and just got 4 consecutive booking requests in a row over 2 day period. They are ALL for May 31 - June 2 (I don't think there's any holiday/events happening then?), I mean, can't be a coincidence, can it??

- Not all of these accounts are new (so can't really say that they just didn't put down more info because they don't have to anymore?), in fact, most are made in 2017-2019

My property manager is adamant about not accepting these kind of bookings. He didn't used to accept them before either, but I've had plenty of "legit" guests to filled my calendar up. I'm at a loss as to what to do here!