How to send a special offer?

[Kelly149]

Dear All,

Can I send a special offer for different dates to an already booked guest?? They want to come for additional stays.

Thanks!

Kelly

[Emiel1]

@Kelly149 

You can sent 1 special offer at the time to guests which has sent you an inquiry ("contact host" option on the listing) for the dates.

But when it is booked, procedure can be repeated for other dates.

For multiple dates you can also setup the offers manually in the calender and open the dates as soon guest is ready to book.

[Kelly149]

@Emiel1 Right, this is what I’m wondering. I can only send an offer to an open guest request or inquiry. Once they are a booked guest I cannot make any special offer. 
right??

not helpful. I want the action to originate from me, not the guest. 

[Debra300]

@Kelly149,

The special offer can only occur in response to an inquiry, and is not a feature that hosts can initiate on their own.  You will have to ask the guest to send inquiries for the future dates, and then go from there.

[Kelly149]

@Debra300  So ABB will let any yahoo under the sun ask us for a discount but we cannot send a special offer to a past guest we liked. 

you can’t make this stuff up. 

now I’m wondering if a guest -with a current reservation - can even send an inquiry 

[Debra300]

@Kelly149,

Here's the rule:  https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/35/sending-special-offers.  The primary reason that I can think it's implemented in this manner is that ABB doesn't want hosts to spam guests with unsolicited offer.

"now I’m wondering if a guest -with a current reservation - can even send an inquiry".   That's a great question.  I don't have guests until this Friday.  I will ask them to give it a try.

If I remember correctly, a host also cannot send a special offer to a reservation request.  It has to be accepted, and then after it's confirmed an adjustment can be submitted.

Yes, anyone can ask for a discount, and as you've mentioned in another post, ABB doesn't have a nice systematic way to handle those types of requests.

[Kelly149]

ok, so I had a guest coming and they wanted more than one night, but not consecutive, so I wanted to knock some off the second stay... they can request to book (I'm not on IB, no idea how this would change if I were) BUT in that request I can only decline or accept, I can't change the pricing. And they can't "Inquire", bc when they hit the contact host button, it just puts a new message in the same thread they already had for the first reservation. Now, you could say, we'll just change the reservation after the fact, but it would only let me change the nightly rate, not the cleaning fee. (what I wanted to do was delete the second cleaning fee).

So, the only workaround is to go into the actual pricing that is open to the whole world and make the changes that you really only want to exist for this one guest in this one situation and then hope that the guest you're after clicks the button in the time that you want them to and before someone else stumbles into it.

Messy, messy, messy.... no wonder hosts just take second, third reservations off platform... abb has made it a total pain to try to get a guest back after their first trip

[Debra300]

@Kelly149,

Since you mentioned it, I did wonder why you were going through all of this for a repeat guest.  I might be wrong, but as long as you fulfill the initial reservation, the guest and host are not breaking the ToS with direct subsequent bookings.

I have a handful or repeat guests that first booked through an OTA who now book with my directly.

[Colleen253]

Airbnb’s off platform policy prohibits

“Asking or encouraging guests to book outside of Airbnb for repeat or future bookings”

@Debra300 @Kelly149 

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/2799/airbnbs-offplatform-policy

[Emilia42 · Accepted solution]

@Kelly149 

In this circumstance, in order to change the pricing, the guest needs to book and then you need to go into the reservation (make sure it's the correct reservation since the guest will now technically have two) click "Change/Cancel Reservation" and follow the prompts to change the price.

[Emilia42]

Also, no, a guest with a booked reservation cannot send an inquiry because an inquiry triggers a message thread with the host. You already have a message thread going. 

(@Debra300 )

[Gillian166]

this is a much needed feature! It would be great to be able to send existing guests a special offer to stay another night. 

I also had a guest who wanted to book our cottage and for 2 nights they had 4 people and then add another night for just 2 people, so they asked if they could have a lower rate. (it's $100 price difference).  It was a bit of a mess to discuss and try to do a workaround, and even if we'd done another booking there would have been 2 cleaning fees. So again, it would have been great to have just been able to send her a special offer for an extra night.

I think this is a very handy feature that is a win-win-win for hosts, guests and airbnb. 

[Kelly149]

@Gillian166 It used to be easy to add on to a reservation, even after it had started but maybe not anymore. 

this technically was trying to book another stay to a same guest. 

You’d think ABB would be on board with helping hosts book more nights. 

[Gillian166]

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@Kelly149 wrote:

You’d think ABB would be on board with helping hosts book more nights. 

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PRECISELY. It seems they are keen on measures that reduce their expenses and increase profits, so this idea surely fits in with that? 

They really should do pet fees by the night. 

And stop calling 2yo toddlers "babies".  I'm fine with people bringing a baby, but a 12month old human that is toddling about is NOT a baby. 

It seems all the new features bring us hosts MORE expense and LESS profit. 

[Sarah977]

@Gillian166  They don't call them babies, they call them " infants". Which is even more ridiculous. An infant, in English, is a newborn who can't even roll over by themselves. No parent refers to even a 4 month old baby as an infant. Unless they don't want to pay for them, of course.