@Rhonda301
That information is not 100% correct. If a guest is unable to instant book with you, they don't only have the option of sending an enquiry. They can also send a booking request and many guests do exactly that. True, with an enquiry, you just need to respond with in 24 hours, but with a booking request, you have to accept or decline it within 24 hours, or you will be penalised.
If you ignore a booking request and let it expire, your response rate will go down, regardless of whether you messaged back or not. If you decline it, then your acceptance rate will go down. So, it's a catch 22, that Airbnb employs to pressurise hosts into accepting as many bookings as possible. Response rate is more important than acceptance rate (as long as you aren't declining a lot of requests), so it's usually better to decline the request than let it expire, although I will ask the guest to withdraw it before I do that.
As for the IB filter to have no negative reviews/recommendations from hosts, Airbnb is deliberately vague about what this means. The wording is just:
"
- Recommendations from other Hosts: Limit bookings to guests who’ve travelled on Airbnb and received only positive reviews"
But what does 'positive reviews' mean? I would think it means nothing lower than 3*, but we all know that a 3* rating is not that great. Another host suggested it meant anyone who has reviews higher that 1*!
Of course, it's worth turning on that filter if you use IB, but unless Airbnb clarify what they count as a positive rating for a guest, it's by no means certain that only great guests with great ratings will be able to IB with you. All it ensures is that no newbies can IB with you and no one with truly terrible ratings.
Also, what's to say @Barbara2737 's guest had negative reviews? If she had had issues with other hosts for having people over (to do their hair or whatever), do you think she would have been so open about it?
The one advantage in terms of vetting guests that IB currently has over request bookings is that you do get 3 x penalty free cancellations a year if you feel uncomfortable with the guest or feel they are going to break your house rules. In theory, you can do this online without having to call CS. Unfortunately, in this case, the CS rep that @Barbara2737 spoke to decided instead to reach out to the guest rather than just do the cancellation.