Reservation cancelled by AirBNB

[Donna-And-Cameron0]

I was contacted by a guest this morning who tried to book my place last night, paid and awoke to a message saying that the booking was cancelled and her payment was refunded. I received no notification that there was a reservation. When I look at the reservatoins page, it says cancelled - then the calender is showing a pending verification which says that she needs to verfiy the booking. She is telling me that on her dash it says host needs to verify the reservation. I do not have any specific regulations re verification and auto-booking is set. This looks like a glitch. I have put a ticket in but it says they could take up to 24 hours to respond. Does anyone have any ideas. Alternately what is the quicked way to contact AiRBNB support as she is arriving tomorrow.

Thank you - we are new hosts and this is teh first time this has happened. Donna

[Lisa6766]

Well, as a guest, I have had this happen and I have a 5 star rating and they confirmed its not my account why this has happened twice but something about last minute reservations for large homes. The answers are never straight. I'm tired of this. I'm not a bad guest. And I don't buy that explanation; if any guest was that bad, they'd ban them from the platform.

[Sarah977]

@Lisa6766  It isn't anything personal, but I know it must be frustrating when you have a history as a good guest.

It's an algorithm that Airbnb brought  in after the big scandal where people got shot at a party at an Airbnb in Orinda, Calif, a few years ago. (Happened in Toronto and other places, too.)

Airbnb, in an attempt to crack down on parties and "party houses", because it is terrible press for them, created an algorithm for bookings which they determined by looking at stats for the risk factors involved.

Not sure if I can remember all of them, but basically it's :

Under 25 and

Booking an entire home and

For only one or two nights and

Booking with short notice and

Lives locally.

So if you, for instance, changed what you were looking for to a private room, instead of an entire house, your booking would go through.

But I know that algorithm seems to be wonky sometimes, because hosts have posted here that a guest was being blocked, who, yes, was under 25, but had booked for date a month from now, and for a week. A young family with 2 children, not partiers. Guests who were repeat guests who the host had hosted before and had zero issues with were blocked.

Airbnb should at least tweak that algorithm so it doesn't block guests  with a history of good reviews.

I agree that it's ridiculous and insulting for a guest like you, who I see has  27 great reviews as a guest, to get blocked, as if you are going to show up with 50 people and trash someone's house.

I would suggest you send feedbackk about this to Airbnb.

[Lisa6766]

Thanks. The host has tried everything to get the booking to go through for me.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Lisa6766 if the host switches the listing to 'private room' then you may be able to book. Once booked the host then changes it back to whole home.

Bit naughty but if the host is confident to buck the algorithm this should work.

[Lisa6766]

Yeah that's a lot I guess though. Why can't they just allow hosts to accept their own bookings is what I don't understand.

[Sarah977]

@Lisa6766  I would guess that it is because the reason this algorithm was created, to try to weed out partiers, does not only have to do with guests. There are some awful hosts out there who list big houses that they just want to book out to make money. They are fine with partiers and the bane of the neighbors, whose lives are made miserable. Those hosts couldn't care less how their Airbnb affects anyone else and they are basically running party houses.

So if the algorithm allowed the hosts to decide whether to accept the booking, despite a warning that the booking could be a risk, those types of hosts would allow that booking to proceed. 

But as I mentioned, they could change that algorithm to at least let guests with a positive review history to cross that firewall and book.