I don't know if other hosts have this experience also but I have received many booking requests (not inquiry) before that the guest didn't say anything in the message, the guest doesn't have any past review, from the profile the guest is from local (Philadelphia or Philly suburb towns), and the guest is booking for same day, a lot of time last minute. I'm feeling not quite comfortable with those requests but am afraid rejecting too many will affect my account somehow (like superhost status or the reception rate shown to guests).
I tried asking them for their intentions/plan and most of them just gave me a response saying they want a "little getaway" or something like that, very vague and nothing I can judge from.
There were a period of time I tried to accept them as long as their account is verified and they at least told us what they are doing here somehow. The result is that I'd say 70-80% of them are good guests, but the rest are HORRIBLE. My past experience: some of them simply color/stain my linens and/or towels with makeups that we cannot remove. Some smoke or use weed in our non-smoking room that we need to deodorize, while we clearly stated no smoking, no weed nor drug use. Some ignore my check out time and when we ask them to leave they be very rude. One broke my TV and refused to pay so I had to involve Airbnb. So on and so on. I'm glad my listings are all small so it's almost not possible to have a party in any of my listing,s but I know other hosts had their whole house listing being used for parties by those locals while they clearly stated no party. I can say 99% of the problems I had with guests are from those local guests. I know some hosts don't accept local guests, but I feel I have to accommodate for the rest 70-80% good local guests plus I don't want to hurt my account by declining too many locals. But this is really becoming an issue these days when travellers cancel massively and I receive more bookings from locals (actually now I've been having bookings almost all from local).
Some of them play the awaiting payment game with me. When I accept the request it shows "awaiting payment" and then they never finish the payment no matter how. I also ask them to cancel if they are not willing to but nobody responds. I had to wait till the 2nd day to clear my calendar. What a joke! Airbnb is not helpful at all in this point.
