Airbnb API Integration & Instant Book

[Aman13]

Hi All,

I'm a Superhost and also a property manager in India with more than 15 listings currently and in the process of adding more.

I have been using Airbnb for almost an year now and have gotten good response to say the least.

However, I'm stuck with a few issues and I wonder if anyone at Airbnb is listening to this who can initiate a solution for the same:

1. I'm currently using a channel manager/Property Management System and Airbnb's API only allows Instant Book for all API connected listings. As a PM of luxury vacation homes, I find this very unsettling and I don't understand on what purpose does Airbnb gets to decide my booking settings. As a host who welcomes guests, it should be my decision of choosing the booking settings and not the platform's.
2. To get a workaround, I got the API implemented and then contacted customer care to try and see if they could switch off the Instant Book. For the first week, they were able to. However, a few of my listings kept having their IB turned on automatically and hence I had to pull those listings off of API.
3. Request to Book was one of the few reasons Airbnb took off as a platform since it allowed the hosts to vet the guests before they booked. Hosts like me who have multiple high-value properties need that option along with using an API or else managing price and availability through so many different platforms will certainly be a time-consuming effort that could easily be avoided.

If there's any other host who's also had this problem, do let me know of your experience.

If Airbnb is reading this, I'm willing to be there to talk to your developer or tech teams to make them understand the importance of this but it all starts from the main thing that Airbnb started off with - LISTENING TO YOUR COMMUNITY.

Wish you all the best

Regards.

[Suresh14]

@Aman13 I will try to answer some of the questions from my best knowledge.  

1. If you give control to Channel Manager, don't modify anything from Airbnb, it will override your CM. BTW, which CM you use. I use tokeet and lodgify. I use them mostly for invoice, calendar syncs up and pricing use something different. 

2. After Airbnb move to new API. tokeet having a lot of issues but do the necessary job. If you gave full control to CM, I would talk to CM to remove IB.

3. I usually keep the IB on but don't allow less than 24 hrs or 48hrs or whatever limit you want to restrict. 

4. Airbnb, do not want you to discriminate the booking and also it will reduce the acceptance rate which leads to jeopardize your superhost. I would suggest keeping good house rule, filter certain guest like without govt id etc.

5. For pricing use dynamic pricing with the 3rd party AI tools.

6. There are much more techniques to handle a situation on various issues. 

I learn more from J's STR course http://bit.ly/STRCFD

Let me know how it works for you.

Thanks