@Debra48 Re: "I have suggested to Airbnb that at the very least, establish the same parameters for the request system as Instabook, and if the prospective guest fails to meet said parameters, then automatically reroute the prospective guest to an Inquiry."
I doubt Airbnb will seriously consider your suggestion. Primarily, Airbnb is interested in booked nights as a measurement. Instant Booking contributes much faster to booked nights than either Requests to Book or Inquiries (least likely to result in booked nights).
Switching Instant Book on does not prevent a person with zero reviews or other missing parameters from reaching out to you via a Request to Book. You would still have to have a conversation with those guests and possibly decline them.
As far as the 24 hours blocking of calendars is concerned, you can open the calendar at any time by declining the request, or finding a way to have the guest withdraw the request. If that can be done within 30 minutes, Voila! Your calendar is clear.
I have been hosting since 2015. I have never had Instant Book turned on. My space is on the property where I live, although it is a self-contained space with its own entrance. I prefer to have a conversation with every person wanting to book to make sure it will be a good experience for both of us.
Most often, I get people requesting to book for one person, and then, after some back and forth, it transpires that there is more than one guest. Instant Book would never pick that up, and it would seem to me to be a waste of a valuable cancellation card to have to cancel those after the fact.
Just this past week, I had a request to book come in at 11.30pm, which I did not answer until 7am next day. Fortunately, the person was online at that time. The request was for one person. He then indicated, after I asked several questions, that a friend would be flying in from a different location to join him. I said I could accept the booking, and then send a change request for the second person. An alternative would have been to have him withdraw the request, and re-request for two people. In this instance, I accepted, sent the change request, he declined. Apparently, the price for two guests was outside of his budget. He then cancelled immediately, after it became apparent I wasn't going to discount him the cost of an extra person for 5 days.
In an instant book scenario, I would likely never know about the second guest, unless it happened to be mentioned at some later time, or when both of them showed up on my ring doorbell.
Airbnb would, however, far prefer that I just accepted him without question, in order to contribute to booked nights. As it happens, he was also a recently-joined, no reviews guest. Airbnb would prefer that I accept that, too, without question. As I've said before, I have no issue with zero-review guests, as long as we can have a conversation first.
I had a zero-review guest stay just last week (after winkling out that it had been a third-party request, and then needing to have her make her own account) who was wonderful.
The idea that a Request to Book might be rerouted to an Inquiry (which has far less chance of resulting in booked nights) would never fly for an instant.