concerns over crossed over listings

[Mee1]

Hi lovely hosts

We have two private rooms listed independently with instant book on. Each room can take two guests. We thought we would capture a market of group of four guests as well hence recently put up a listing of 2BR with a request basis. So far we have one upcoming booking for this 2BR listing. Last week we also had a request to book came through which we had to decline as timeframe clashed.

Our concerns are:

1. Would it affect us as a host (superhost) to decline a few booking requests? We would like to be optimistic and think if this 2BR also take off once we have had a few bookings. We would have to decline every time we have a request come through when one of the rooms is already booked? Does Airbnb punish hosts who decline a lot of request by pushing their listing down the line in search results?
2. Every time we have confirmed booking for the 2BR we will have to block those dates on our other two individual listings that have instant book on. Again our concern is: to block a few dates do hosts get punished by Airbnb by pushing our listings down in search results?

These two rooms are doing great in summer and we do not want to jeopardise that if it is the case. 

We would appreciate some insights from anyone who is also doing this or anyone who knows about this. 

Thanks so much and hope you all have a lovely day. 

[Tim-and-Holly0]

@Mee1:
Although I am not doing what you are doing, I can still provide some insight for you.

It is not good to decline reservations. You should block the days whenever the combination warrants it instead of leaving it open and declining. Declining will cause your listing to drop in the search rankings.

For optimum rankings your listing should be available as much as possible, however, blocking the dates will not hurt nearly as much as declining.

Blocking is what most people do in your situation.

[Mee1]

Thank you. I will now go block out the dates on the 2BR when I have bookings on either of the two rooms. 

[Denise188]

I need to put my listings (2) on hold

one of my church members needs emergency housing and has two kids

i blocked out the days